Showing posts with label Thanksgiving. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Thanksgiving. Show all posts
Thursday, November 28, 2013
Pie Day Mission -
Accomplished! (Everyone came and ate and left safe and sound. Excellent all around. Except remind me to tell you how I should never play Cards Against Humanity.)
Wednesday, November 27, 2013
Pie Day
I've made 5 pies today - 1.5 with gluten free crusts, thank you very much - and am exhausted. So, no super fancy words today - Just hope that wherever you are (or are heading) for the holiday, it finds you as well and as happy as possible.
My standards for happy Thanksgivings are low: Parade. Turkey. Mashed Potatoes. No Emergency Rooms, Paramedics, or Hospitals of any kind. You would think that this would be an easy standard to meet, but not in our family. So: Here's hoping for an Emergency Room-Free Thanksgiving for all!
I'm hoping that in addition to the my minimal standards our day will also include Family Members Who Are Not Yelling At Each Other; Game Playing; Pie Eating; No Food Falling On the Floor; and Surprises of Only Happy Kinds.
Fingers crossed, everybody!
My standards for happy Thanksgivings are low: Parade. Turkey. Mashed Potatoes. No Emergency Rooms, Paramedics, or Hospitals of any kind. You would think that this would be an easy standard to meet, but not in our family. So: Here's hoping for an Emergency Room-Free Thanksgiving for all!
I'm hoping that in addition to the my minimal standards our day will also include Family Members Who Are Not Yelling At Each Other; Game Playing; Pie Eating; No Food Falling On the Floor; and Surprises of Only Happy Kinds.
Fingers crossed, everybody!
Tuesday, November 19, 2013
Food stuffs (but not the fun kind)
I tried making gluten free practice pies for the first time today -
Other people in my family are trying to go gluten free for their health; I am following along because, at this point, I really have no idea what causes anything in my body, and the food in my house is the food I am going to eat.
I have done gluten free before, so I'm not holding out a ton of hope - I have, in fact, gone everything free - literally, for a time I was almost hospitalized because everything I ate caused a reaction. One summer I lived on Gatorade and Saltines. Another, while I was supposedly 'clearing' my allergies with a very sketchy acupuncturist, I lived on fruit and french fries, because I was apparently allergic to every other food in creation. I've been allergy tested for everything - but my test results - as always - come back in some form of completely screwy "I can't decipher this" gobbledygook that the allergist generally just throw up their hands and say "I'm not really sure what to tell you to avoid, because ... well... you have to eat food." Whatever; I'm used to it. I can only say that the reason I started drinking bottled water in college was that the allergist said to me - "You are so allergic to so many things, I wouldn't be surprised if unfiltered water was causing half of your problems." I don't know if it was or not (obviously not because I have developed 65,000 other problems since then), but I still drink bottled water. Tap tastes funny.
Anyways, the point of this post was supposed to be about making GF-pie crust for the first time, and how, really, pie crust is my baking nemesis in the first place - It's so... temperamental. And the butter has to be chilled and the real rolling pin is too heavy* and why can't the crust be as easy as the filling!!! Also: note to GF-companies: you start producing some of that ready made pie crust and you might as well be printing cash come Christmas, I promise you. Because pie crust is hard, man.
I made two mini-pies, one for here, one for my sister's house, just to see how they came out... I'm going to try it in a few minutes, but it's not as pretty as normal crust (not quite as golden colored or flaky, somehow). As long as it doesn't taste like sand, I'm going to go with it.
If you guys are GF and want to share some of your favorite recipes, please, feel free. And if you're not, that's ok too, I'll take them (my brother is so not going to go for this, so I'm going to have to stick to some of the regulars).
Also, I did not know that turkeys could have gluten in them - that is very strange and makes my brain hurt. Apparently, they can inject gluten-y substances into the birds for... flavor? I don't know; looking at it made my brain go, whaaa? Just a little something I learned today that I'm passing on to you.
(Insert The More You Know star and ding here)
*Spoonie tip - I use a pretend-play rolling pin now; It used to belong to the kid's playdough/pretend kitchen sets, but it is the right size and weight for me, so now it's mine.
Other people in my family are trying to go gluten free for their health; I am following along because, at this point, I really have no idea what causes anything in my body, and the food in my house is the food I am going to eat.
I have done gluten free before, so I'm not holding out a ton of hope - I have, in fact, gone everything free - literally, for a time I was almost hospitalized because everything I ate caused a reaction. One summer I lived on Gatorade and Saltines. Another, while I was supposedly 'clearing' my allergies with a very sketchy acupuncturist, I lived on fruit and french fries, because I was apparently allergic to every other food in creation. I've been allergy tested for everything - but my test results - as always - come back in some form of completely screwy "I can't decipher this" gobbledygook that the allergist generally just throw up their hands and say "I'm not really sure what to tell you to avoid, because ... well... you have to eat food." Whatever; I'm used to it. I can only say that the reason I started drinking bottled water in college was that the allergist said to me - "You are so allergic to so many things, I wouldn't be surprised if unfiltered water was causing half of your problems." I don't know if it was or not (obviously not because I have developed 65,000 other problems since then), but I still drink bottled water. Tap tastes funny.
Anyways, the point of this post was supposed to be about making GF-pie crust for the first time, and how, really, pie crust is my baking nemesis in the first place - It's so... temperamental. And the butter has to be chilled and the real rolling pin is too heavy* and why can't the crust be as easy as the filling!!! Also: note to GF-companies: you start producing some of that ready made pie crust and you might as well be printing cash come Christmas, I promise you. Because pie crust is hard, man.
I made two mini-pies, one for here, one for my sister's house, just to see how they came out... I'm going to try it in a few minutes, but it's not as pretty as normal crust (not quite as golden colored or flaky, somehow). As long as it doesn't taste like sand, I'm going to go with it.
If you guys are GF and want to share some of your favorite recipes, please, feel free. And if you're not, that's ok too, I'll take them (my brother is so not going to go for this, so I'm going to have to stick to some of the regulars).
Also, I did not know that turkeys could have gluten in them - that is very strange and makes my brain hurt. Apparently, they can inject gluten-y substances into the birds for... flavor? I don't know; looking at it made my brain go, whaaa? Just a little something I learned today that I'm passing on to you.
(Insert The More You Know star and ding here)
*Spoonie tip - I use a pretend-play rolling pin now; It used to belong to the kid's playdough/pretend kitchen sets, but it is the right size and weight for me, so now it's mine.
Thursday, November 22, 2012
Sadly? Still not our worst Thanksgiving story
Had to head to the ER this morning, after what was a small-ish rash yesterday tried to eat my whole upper body over night. By the time Mom got up this morning, it basically looked like I was wearing an angry red turtleneck, with weird splotches and bumps. Who knows? They diagnosis was "allergic reaction - to something," but since I haven't tried anything new (medicines, lotions, foods) in the past couple of days, I have no idea what that might be. After some steroids (my third dose in a month: yippee, all that weight I lost over the summer? Welcome back!) and Benadryl (which did nothing on its own, yesterday, but made a liar out of me with the doctor today), and a couple of hours, we were free to leave and continue with our feast.
Except.... when I mix Benadryl with my meds? Not so much for the feasting, and a whole lot of giggles at my expense. Stupid gigglers. The worst part is that the heating pad irritates the hives, so I have to double up on my pain meds to compensate. It's all just ridiculous. On the plus side, maybe I'll be able to close my eyes for a little while now.
Except.... when I mix Benadryl with my meds? Not so much for the feasting, and a whole lot of giggles at my expense. Stupid gigglers. The worst part is that the heating pad irritates the hives, so I have to double up on my pain meds to compensate. It's all just ridiculous. On the plus side, maybe I'll be able to close my eyes for a little while now.
Wednesday, November 21, 2012
Happy Pie Day!
Tuesday, November 15, 2011
I'm working on it...
Got a couple of more in-depth posts in the works, but in the meantime, I thought I'd report back on my no-roll pie crust experiment . I threw it together with some frozen strawberries and blackberries, a little oatmeal/brown sugar crumble, and am eating it for dessert right now. Grades are good - it's fairly sweet, but very flaky and hands down the easiest pie crust I've ever made. I'm not sure how I'm going to adapt the blueberry pie, since that tends to require a top crust (and this would not be pretty enough for that, I don't think), but I'm definitely using it for Thanksgiving pies. Thumbs up, for sure.
If you're interested, the recipe I used is:
To
blind bake, set the oven to 350F/175C and line the dough with foil.
Weigh the foil down with baking beans or uncooked rice (don't eat the
rice afterwards) and bake for 10 minutes. Remove the foil and weights
and bake for a further 4-6 minutes uncovered, until golden brown.
And it was originally found here . The best part was the idea of grating the frozen butter, rather than trying to cut it, mix it, refreeze it, wait, then cut it up again. Grating: why didn't I think of this sooner??? Anyways: Yum. Off to finish dessert now.
If you're interested, the recipe I used is:
In a medium bowl, whisk together:
1 1/2 c flour
3/4 tsp salt
2 Tbsp sugar
1/8 tsp baking powder
With your fingers, work in:
1/4 c (57g) frozen butter, grated
1 Tbsp plain cream cheese, room temp
In a small bowl, whisk together:
1/4 c oil
2 Tbsp cold milk
Add the liquid to the larger bowl and mix with a fork until all the floury bits are wet. It will be shaggy – that's okay.
Dump
the dough into a pie dish and press it into the bottom and sides of the
dish. Try to get it as even as possible. Freeze the dough in the dish
while you prepare the filling, or for at least one hour before blind
baking.
And it was originally found here . The best part was the idea of grating the frozen butter, rather than trying to cut it, mix it, refreeze it, wait, then cut it up again. Grating: why didn't I think of this sooner??? Anyways: Yum. Off to finish dessert now.
Monday, November 29, 2010
"Thanksgiving is a time to get together, and none of you are taking it seriously! None of you!
So, as slap bet commisioner, I institute a new law: at Thanksgiving there will be no slapping!"*
I promised a picture, and a picture you shall have. Here is the mock Thanksgiving dinner Lil Girl and I made out of Playdoh last week. I know it is totally not to scale (please note how the corn kernels are bigger than the blueberry pie), but when you're working with a four year old, things like scale aren't exactly that important matters. We worked diligently on this plate, with Lil Girl rolling all of those blueberries and corn kernels by hand, and Auntie NTE "carving" the turkey into an (not too shabby if I do say so myself) approximation of a real bird.
Clockwise, you've got cranberry sauce ("the kind in the can that goes Plop!"), the previously mentioned turkey; some carrots and baked potatoes ("because we don't have white for mashed potatoes and the gray ones look yucky"); corn (that's not Green Giant, but obviously should be) and two pies - a blueberry with no top crust (we made some, but she didn't like covering up all that hard work, so it was discarded) and an apple with a top ("because I am not making a lot of more little apples").
Our real Thanksgiving feast was pretty low key this year with just 8 of us: Mom & Dad, SisterJ and BrotherInLaw K, Me, Grandmother, UJ and SisterK. For us, that's pretty small. We had a good day, and there was very. little. drama., which, for me, is about all I'm asking for at this point. There were some laughs, and stories, and lots of food (pies, pies and more pies - five pies for eight people means pie for breakfast for the next week).
But I thought you all might get a kick out of our Fauxgiving, which we served to Mum at Lil Girl's request = "Because Grammy LOVES turkey, and because she doesn't have to cook it this day." Since tomorrow's going to be our last day for leftovers (hopefully), I hope Lil Girl is still in the mood to see the real thing.
----- Off Topic - -
Yes: I think the nicknames/code names have gotten out of hand and confusing too. When I was typing that last entry, I had to check it like three times to make sure it was even making sense. I will try to think of a better system, since I still don't want to use people's real names. I guess I should just stop adding letters (and words) to the names they already have, but poor Youngest Nephew really is No Longer Youngest Nephew (poor planning NTE!), so it would be even more confusing to keep calling him that. So I will come up with something, I promise.
Also, you might want to stay tuned this week for posts on the following topics: My hives are not really hives. Harry Potter 7 was sold out when we got there, but we didn't just turn around and come home. Christmas shopping and why I think grown ups should make wishlists. (hint: because some people are hard to shop for!). What I have been doing for the past 139 *and counting* days. And finally, how I am going to make my living space livable, so help me god.
*How I Met Your Mother
I promised a picture, and a picture you shall have. Here is the mock Thanksgiving dinner Lil Girl and I made out of Playdoh last week. I know it is totally not to scale (please note how the corn kernels are bigger than the blueberry pie), but when you're working with a four year old, things like scale aren't exactly that important matters. We worked diligently on this plate, with Lil Girl rolling all of those blueberries and corn kernels by hand, and Auntie NTE "carving" the turkey into an (not too shabby if I do say so myself) approximation of a real bird.
Clockwise, you've got cranberry sauce ("the kind in the can that goes Plop!"), the previously mentioned turkey; some carrots and baked potatoes ("because we don't have white for mashed potatoes and the gray ones look yucky"); corn (that's not Green Giant, but obviously should be) and two pies - a blueberry with no top crust (we made some, but she didn't like covering up all that hard work, so it was discarded) and an apple with a top ("because I am not making a lot of more little apples").
Our real Thanksgiving feast was pretty low key this year with just 8 of us: Mom & Dad, SisterJ and BrotherInLaw K, Me, Grandmother, UJ and SisterK. For us, that's pretty small. We had a good day, and there was very. little. drama., which, for me, is about all I'm asking for at this point. There were some laughs, and stories, and lots of food (pies, pies and more pies - five pies for eight people means pie for breakfast for the next week).
But I thought you all might get a kick out of our Fauxgiving, which we served to Mum at Lil Girl's request = "Because Grammy LOVES turkey, and because she doesn't have to cook it this day." Since tomorrow's going to be our last day for leftovers (hopefully), I hope Lil Girl is still in the mood to see the real thing.
----- Off Topic - -
Yes: I think the nicknames/code names have gotten out of hand and confusing too. When I was typing that last entry, I had to check it like three times to make sure it was even making sense. I will try to think of a better system, since I still don't want to use people's real names. I guess I should just stop adding letters (and words) to the names they already have, but poor Youngest Nephew really is No Longer Youngest Nephew (poor planning NTE!), so it would be even more confusing to keep calling him that. So I will come up with something, I promise.
Also, you might want to stay tuned this week for posts on the following topics: My hives are not really hives. Harry Potter 7 was sold out when we got there, but we didn't just turn around and come home. Christmas shopping and why I think grown ups should make wishlists. (hint: because some people are hard to shop for!). What I have been doing for the past 139 *and counting* days. And finally, how I am going to make my living space livable, so help me god.
*How I Met Your Mother
Thursday, November 26, 2009
Happy Turkey Day!
After we built (tore down and rebuilt) a block city today, Lil Girl and I threw our own Thanksgiving Parade. Using all of the little people, birthday cake characters, and happy meal toys from our various childhoods (there's been a kid around here continuously since 1976), we wound up with a Sesame Street float, a Lion King float, a Lil Mermaid float, a bunch of clowns, a Bambi float, about 6 other Disney themed floats and had Woody from Toy Story leading the whole thing. Block City residents really seemed to enjoy, as did she and I. Afterwards, Lil Girl decided to invite every single float, wrangler and character back to the main house for Thanksgiving dinner. Here's hoping that your Thanksgiving has a few less participants, so that you don't have to rebuild your house (again) to fit them all in.
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
Today is pie day
and I have just two things to say -
1_ Baking pies is a LOT easier with a stove that works. *I will try to take pictures before they get eaten tomorrow.
and
2_I am in need of a hot shower and a warm bed.
Happy Thanksgiving Eve, peoples. Wish you all the best tomorrow.
1_ Baking pies is a LOT easier with a stove that works. *I will try to take pictures before they get eaten tomorrow.
and
2_I am in need of a hot shower and a warm bed.
Happy Thanksgiving Eve, peoples. Wish you all the best tomorrow.
Thursday, November 27, 2008
People...
they Rick Rolled the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade. How awesome is that?
Of course: infinitely more awesome if someone in your house knows what the hell you are talking about, but that's what I have you for, right?
Happy Turkey Day, Friends.
Of course: infinitely more awesome if someone in your house knows what the hell you are talking about, but that's what I have you for, right?
Happy Turkey Day, Friends.
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
Pie baking day
AKA Thanksgiving Eve.
It's been a hard year here in the world of NTE, and I'm feeling it quite a bit as the holidays get closer and closer. But, that doesn't mean that I'm not aware that there are many things that I have to be thankful for. Tonight, I'm going to remember that I have a lot of people in my life that are vital & important. That they make the hard times bearable, the normal times valuable, and the special times extraordinary.
For those of you who take the time to read this please know that I'm grateful to have you, too.
Happy Thanksgiving, all.
It's been a hard year here in the world of NTE, and I'm feeling it quite a bit as the holidays get closer and closer. But, that doesn't mean that I'm not aware that there are many things that I have to be thankful for. Tonight, I'm going to remember that I have a lot of people in my life that are vital & important. That they make the hard times bearable, the normal times valuable, and the special times extraordinary.
For those of you who take the time to read this please know that I'm grateful to have you, too.
Happy Thanksgiving, all.
Sunday, November 23, 2008
If by 'lively' you mean 'batshit crazy and homicidal', then you're right on target.
Thanksgiving Horoscope for Gemini |
 You're the sign most likely to bring up interesting and controversial topics at Thanksgiving dinner. Your signature dish: Sweet potatoes with marshmallows Your signature dessert: Pumpkin cheesecake This holiday: Play bartender. You're family is much more lively with a few drinks in them. |
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