Thanksgiving

Okay, this is really what the holidays are about. Food.


We had Thanksgiving with our friends, who wanted to use our oven. Because I was in charge of pies and rolls, I carefully planned out the extremely busy week to get these done before my oven got appropriated. The best laid plans....

I was exhausted Monday night and fell asleep before 7pm. So much for cooking a pumpkin.

My Tuesday morning training session was canceled so I planned to cook the pumpkin Tuesday morning. Until I remembered that I still hadn't turned the cabbage into sauerkraut and I had no fridge space. I spent Tuesday morning shredding cabbage. I got off work at 8pm and stopped by the crowded grocery store on the way home to finish taking advantage of sales. No pumpkin cooking that night.

I worked a 12-hour day on Wednesday. While at work, I learned that Sarah and her roomie were spending the night with us. In the guest room with the unmade bed and fermenting sauerkraut. Oops. Nathan picked me up from Trax and I came home to tackle a pumpkin. I was supposed to be already baking said pies.

Instead I was up most of the night. I had purchased a pumpkin screen for my strainer, but by the time I was ready to grind up pumpkin it was past midnight and Nathan was asleep. I was tired and didn't assemble the strainer properly so Sarah's cranking efforts didn't work well. Pumpkin juice landed on me and the floor.

I took a little nap between 3am and 5am, started rolls, took an hour nap while the dough rose, then finished the rolls and no-bake pies in time for Rachel to use the oven. Nathan's turkey bowl game didn't have enough people show up so they played capture the flag instead. We were blessed with 40-50 degree weather that day, which was nice. It was an unusually warm Thanksgiving because it always warms up before a storm blows in.

I napped on and off during the morning, wondering why Rachel hadn't shown up with things to bake. Eventually Nathan called and learned we had somehow miscommunicated and she thought I had changed my mind and my oven wasn't available. Ahh! I stayed up all night so she could use it! My lack of sleep caused me to almost drop a baked pie crust in a sink of water. That would have been sad.

Three regular crusts and one chocolate crust turned out tasty, as did the pie filling experiments. Pumpkin, walnut crunch pumpkin, raspberry cream, and peanut butter. I'll share recipes later. The raspberry was a big hit.

Holidays are also about family! We played Speed and watched Sarah braid her hair.

Somehow we conned Nathan into letting her braid his hair too.

Once it was done, he thought he was a hair expert and started demonstrating how Bea's hair should be done.

=Eventually it was luscious food time with our adopted family. Afterward, we laughed and laughed about random things until we burned off lots of calories.

Everyone collapsed somewhere, even under the table.

Hope your Thanksgiving was good too!