[cooking] Thanksgiving Pies

I made a couple pies for Thanksgiving this year. A spicy pumpkin pie:

And I wanted to do something other than apple. I decided to do a maple bourbon pecan pie (I omitted the ginger from this recipe). Which requires blind-baking the crust. I don't have a lot of luck blind baking- whenever I do, the crust comes out as a big, round shortbread cookie. This time, I shaped the crust and refrigerated it for 20 min before taking it out and baking with parchment paper with risotto rice and pie weights.

And the final pecan pie came out very good, (very bourbon-y):

I think we might have Thanksgiving at our house next year. And I'll keep trying to do pies outside of my comfort zone.