Happy Thanksgiving!

(burp) Happy Turkey Day!! Once again, I ate toooooo much... but it tasted good. Thanksgiving was at my house this year. No snow, just cold and windy! Our (mine and my sisters) culinary skills are slipping in our middle years... it started with the orange jello.

We've been making orange jello for 20 or more years, 3 times a year. You would think we'd know the recipe by now. Not so. This is how it's supposed to look....
Well... I got it backwards... instead of 2 boxes of tapioca pudding and one box of orange jello, I got 2 boxes of jello and one of pudding. We first noticed a problem when it didn't thicken up right.. so we put it back on the stove to cook some more. That didn't help. We ruminated about the cause, figured out the mix-up.... (I couldn't fine the recipe, we were doing it from memory-shoddy memories, us).. and just figured we would eat it anyway.... So.... we finished it today... took the electric mixer to beat the stiffness out of it, added a whole bowl of Cool Whip, dumped in some Mandarin oranges (why Mandarin? are they raised in China?) and it tasted gooooood. A tad thicker than normal, but goooood.

While Sister was busy on the stove with the jello, I was busy at the counter mixing up.... or, rather, attempting to mix up pastry for pie crust for the pumpkin pie. Got the dry stuff in the bowl. Went to add shortening. Guess what I ran out of 1/2 a cup shy of necessary? I had been to the store Monday to stock up... got butter, eggs, milk, flour, brown sugar, confectioners sugar, Kosher salt. I got it all. Except shortening. One 10pm trip to the store later, I had shortening. Unfortunately, I had lost the desire to bake so set everything aside for morning.

A night of sleep didn't help the memory or the ability to read directions.

Everything started okay... got the pie crust made and in the pan. (Ate the leftover dough, raw egg yolk and all!!) Set that aside and worked on the pumpkin filling. Got that all done, poured in the pie crust and popped it into the oven and turned to the next project. Sister was busy making mulled cider over on the stove.

A few minutes later, Mom wandered into the kitchen and stuck her finger into the pie filling bowl, tasted and grimaced. (Grimaced??) "Did you add any sugar to the mix?" Umm... Oops. We just roared with laughter as we pulled the pie out and dumped the filling back into the mixing bowl.... Welcome to pie - filling.... the crust in the back left corner totally ripped off and got in the filling.... we left it in there and decided to treat it like the baby stuck in King cakes at Mardi Gras.... Sister got the crust in her piece after dinner so she has to make the pie next year!

I also made an apple cake this morning... we haven't tried it yet, but we are pretty sure we got all the ingredients into it!! While we were in the middle of cake making, I went to get a cuppa cider... pulled the lid off and ladled me out some and took a swig.... TOTALLY COLD!!!! I started laughing again and waved my hand over the burner behind the one with the cider... it was hot... cider was not!!

The rest of the day went fine... the bird was a little frozen coming out of the frig... warm water fixed that. Got it stuffed and popped into the oven. Took a little break and ran Mom over to some friends house a couple towns over so she could deliver a baby quilt she made.. They sent us on our way with cookies and goodies.... (some of which made it home to Dad and Sis!)

Added green bean casserole and garlic mashed potatoes to the fray and called it dinner.

It tasted wonderful! The only thing missing was BB.

Maybe next year....