The Earthly Goodness Of Pumpkin Pie

By Phran Novelli

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) - Keep your fork, there's pie!

To bake one of this week's favorite desserts, you'll need: two kinds of grass, plus roots, pods, bark, buds, seeds and squash. They're all ingredients in pumpkin pie.

Sugar and flour grow as different kinds of grasses; sugar is made from the cane or stem of Saccharum officinarum, and flour is milled from the grain of wheat, Triticum aestivum. Ginger is a rhizome; the root of Zingiber officinale, a plant with beautiful flowers. Cinnamon is the inner bark of several trees grown in Asia, with Cinnamomum verum being 'true cinnamon'. Nutmeg is the seed of a tree, Myristica fragrans, from Indonesia. Cloves are actually flower buds from yet another tropical tree, Syzygium aromaticum. And vanilla comes from the pod of an orchid, Vanilla planifolia, grown near the equator.

Pumpkins are a variety of squash, native to North America. They're loaded with beta-carotene which becomes Vitamin A when you eat it with some fat - and the crust, milk and eggs take care of that!

So as you're scarfing up the last slice of pie over the weekend, do remember as you chew, you're enjoying grass, roots, pods, buds, bark, seeds and squash too.