Fall Feast

I have joked that orange and black are my favorite fall colors. But baseball aside, I neglect to mention how much I actually like my home at this time of year. Although there's more than enough orange and black to go around, there are all kinds of other colors too.

My mother may complain that liquid ambar trees are a menace to society, but I'm inclined to keep them just for this.

In my house, this time of year is also known for pies. The weekend before Thanksgiving, mommieN and I decided to conduct some experiments with pie crust to decide which recipe turned out best. The winner? Making pie crust with vodka. It was some of the flakiest crust I've ever had.

When it came to Thanksgiving, I thought I'd try a new pie this year. I found a recipe for pumpkin pie with a pecan crust. Sounded yummy. And the finished product looked lovely, if I do say so myself.

I also made my trademark apple/cranberry pie. It almost always looks good, but it looked extra good with the vodka crust.

For good measure...and because I had a good feeling that my family might not appreciate my experimentation with their beloved pumpkin pie, I made a couple of pumpkin pies using the regular ol' recipe on the Libby's label. This one turned out great. Dunno just what happened to the crust though.

My mother hosted Thanksgiving this year...which was just as well since my oven was dead. You may have noticed that there are two ovens to my range. The second one is a "roasting oven" and is really flaky about maintaining its temperature. I used it for a couple of pies, but I didn't really trust it. I made the others in a generous neighbor's oven.

We had drinks and watched football, then sat down to a fabulous feast.

As expected, the experimental pumpkin pie wasn't particularly popular. But the regular one was GONE. I guess that's what experiments are all about, huh? I'll have to find something more creative for next year.

Back from the Holiday Trenches

Happy holidays! Oh my, how very long it's been and how many blog posts have passed me by. I'll have to go consult my photo library (into which I just uploaded about 300 photos) to figure out where I left off and where I need to start.

O.K...so I just realized I forgot to upload a couple of photos to my last post. They were cute. You should check it out. And before I move on, a quick update on my dad, who seems to be doing much better now. A friend reported to me that he says he's feeling about 60%. That doesn't sound great to me, but his ailments have now taken a back seat to Gram's complications with a tooth implant. She's now the one in constant pain. I know it's miserable for her, but at least it doesn't feel so life-threatening.

Now on with the updates... Tradition in our household holds that the weekend after Thanksgiving is time for our Christmas photos. We take them ourselves and only include the kids since we generally don't consider ourselves photo-worthy. Of course, Daddy's lost so much weight this year that he really might be worth a Christmas photo! But I digress.

If I've got your address, you probably saw some of the best photos from our little adventure in the yard, but there were a lot of them, so here are some of the other good ones and a few out takes.

Sniffle, Sniffle, Cough, Cough

I really couldn't tell you where the time goes between posts. I know I meant to blog about Thanksgiving, but I caught a cold right about the big day and it's not gone yet. It started as a teeny little innocent, mild cold and turned into a monsterous sinus-clogging doozy. I'm still keeping Daddy up if I sleep in the same room, so it's the guest room for me.

It was supposed to be a fun Thanksgiving because Aunt Karen and SPENCER! were driving up from San Diego for the week. Our dad (mine and Aunt Karen's) had lung surgery the Thursday before Thanksgiving, but that was supposed to be minor. He'd be in overnight and that was it.

Then, Aunt Karen caught a cold much nastier than the one I've been dealing with and although it was almost over by the time she got here, her cough was still horrible-sounding and she was banned from the hospital. And, all of the kids were already banned from the hospital for being the germy little vectors that they always are...and in hopes of curbing the H1N1 virus that so many people are worried about right now.

Of course, grandpa's surgery ended up being far more complicated that he'd been led to believe. Although the "anomalies" they removed were benign, his recovery was and continues to be a nightmare. Turns out, they removed a 9cm x 3cm portion of his lung...much more than he'd expected...and left him with a chest tube sticking out of his side, which was something he only learned about a day before the surgery. After 4 days in the hospital, which included this very cute moment:...they let him go home, but with the chest tube still in there to vent any air leaking from his lung into his chest cavity.

Of course, he's my dad. Once upon a time, he ran marathons. Now, he has to settle for jogging and coaching Smunch's baseball team, but sitting still to "recuperate" is not one of his skills. He was discharged on Monday, went to work on Tuesday (still with a chest tube!) and Wednesday. Played catch with Gavin and bocce ball with all the grandkids. By Thanksgiving Day, he was in pain. Smunch spent some time with him, lying on the bed and watching football.And although his surgery and its complications made Thanksgiving a little more meaningful to all of us, he felt too bad to eat. Before dessert, he was on the phone to the doctor (who was probably none too pleased to have his own holiday interrupted), who told him to take another pain pill and take it easy. He took another percoset and was happier and downed a bunch of pie. But before long, he was back in his room lying down again.

For me, and doubtlessly, my mom and sister, it put a pretty big damper on the holiday mood. It's truly unpleasant to watch someone doubled over in pain. The kids didn't seem to notice, fortunately. I'm glad they didn't feel as freaked out as I did!By 10 o'clock that night, my dad was in the ER and by morning, he'd been readmitted to the hospital for another 4 days. They released him again on Monday...now with a fever replacing the chest tube. He's still in pain, he still has a fever. It's been a week. I'm now banned from seeing him because my own cold is so rotten.

It's hard to know just what to think. My dad, who always recovered from everything so quickly, suddenly seems very fragile. I'm painfully aware that a big turn for the worse could be right around the corner, and ever so hopeful that my feeling of dread is for naught.

Giving Thanks...for Pie!

This year, I hosted Thankgiving at our house. It was a seriously low-key event since only my parents joined us. But the six of us had a nice time and ate extraordinarily well. I even managed to roast a decent turkey this year...an improvement over my last endeavor a few years ago. But, of course, I didn't take any pictures of the bird. That's because my specialty when it comes to things like Thanksgiving is pie.

I learned to make pie when I was a preteen living in England, so I have a somewhat British style of doing things. Although I always forgo the lard that I learned to make pie crust with (this year, I used just butter as an experiment, but I usually use shortening), but I still use my hands to "rub" the fat into the flour mixture. I don't know that this is any more efficient than any other method, but I like to get my hands dirty. After learning that way, it feels like the "right" way to make pie crust.

Of course, I had to make the obligatory pumpkin pie. When we were given the opportunity to make whatever we wanted one day in "Cooking", I made a pumpkin pie. They don't have pumpkin pie in England and although I made one fit for a magazine cover, the teacher gave me just 8 out of 10 for mine. I doubt she knew what to make of my flat-centered, shiny creation. I hope she would have seen fit to grade this one higher.My other standard for the holidays is an apple/cranberry pie. I often just throw in some whole berry cranberry sauce, but this year, I opted for fresh cranberries instead. Yummy! I started out with heaps of apples and cranberries.And because I'm just that way, I had to cut cute little apples out of the top and attempt to make it all artistic.It sure looked pretty, but I also learned that cutting such big holes in your crust makes the apples on the top dry out. Good thing I put so many apples in!Yes, we ate dinner before diving into the pies, but really? Who cares about turkey and stuffing??

Giving Thanks

It was sort of a mixed bag of a Thanksgiving this year. I mean, it was good! Aunt Karen, Uncle David and Spencer came for the holiday. They stayed for 5 days, which felt ungodly short and we didn't see enough of them by a long shot. But, so it goes. The food was great. Nothing was a big disaster. You can see the kids enjoyed watching Grandpa cut up the turkey. Not as much as eating pie, perhaps, but it was interesting nonetheless.

On the downside, Mam had a rotten cold and Daddy caught some flu-like thing that had him totally laid out with a high fever by late Thursday and for all day on Friday. I also had a work project I was trying to finish up, so I wasn't around as much as I would have liked. I submitted my project to my client on Wednesday afternoon. There's something to be thankful for right there! Although I brought them, I never did manage to get the kids into their Thanksgiving duds. Mam looked like an absolute ragamuffin with her wild, unkept hair and runny nose. Oh well.

On the whole though, our Thanksgiving was a good one, filled with laughing kids, a little of the Macy's parade, a little of the National Dog Show and a LOT of food. I made some awesome butternut squash this year. Gotta remember that one for next year!

Pilgrims and Indians

I admit that I never really tried to explain to Smunch the history behind Thanksgiving. I guess he must've thought it was just a day when women cook a lot (and Daddy makes great dinner rolls) and we all eat ourselves silly. Fortunately, the public school system is pretty good at making up for my neglect. Not only did all four kindergarten classes at Smunch's school put on a little show of festive songs and poetry, but they all dressed as pilgrims and Native Americans for the event...despite the fact they sang a song called "Pilgrims and Indians". PC-ness seems to extend only to the lengths of a kindergartener's understanding and attention span.

The kids spent the previous day in class making their feast - mixing corn muffins, churning butter, bagging popcorn and decorating cookies. All the little construction-paper-clad pilgrims and Indians feasted together after the show, doubtlessly thankful to spot their families in the crowd and have the opportunity to dive into those cookies they'd had their eyes on for a whole day!