roasters and tantrums

This year was the very first year that I actually attempted to make any Thanksgiving related foods  - on. my. own.for thanksgiving (I can make green bean casserole 12 times a winter, but it's different when you are making foods for an actual holiday.)
This is a big deal, people.

I may have called my mom 17 times for advice, but I did it.  I also told the lady at the grocery store and everyone at our early thanksgiving celebration with friends that this was my very first stuffing and pumpkin pie making mission.

I like to toot my own horn from time to time.

First up was stuffing: since we were traveling to a friends house we bought a roaster to cook the stuffing in since we weren't sure about the space available in their oven.  Turns out their oven was completely free, however, it worked out well and now we have a roaster sitting in the floor of the office.

(Is that where you store your roaster too?! Small world!)

After making the stuffing the day before, I preheated the roaster to 350 degrees to cook the stuffing the morning of our celebration.  Mental note to self...even though a roaster doesn't look like an oven, it actually heats up - quite hot, in fact - so do not place any appendage on the inside of the roaster...my wrist will always remember my first stuffing experience with the nice burn I gave it.  (whoops).

Stuffing = delicious. We quadrupled the recipe for 16 people and 2 babies ( I like details, so while the 2 babies didn't eat much, I needed to let you know what we were working with).  After everyone taking home some leftovers, we only had enough for one meal of leftovers.

Stuffing = success.

Now moving on to the pies.  I made pumpkin and apple and had 2 toddler-like tantrums while making the crusts.  It's OK though, everything turned out well, albeit slightly deformed, but the taste was good.  And that is all that matters, my friends.

Pumpkin pie = success.

I was so happy with my pumpkin pie, I could make it every day.  Well, I'd hire someone to roll the crust out for me because that's where my tantrums stem from.

Apple pie:  not my first time making the Mike's mom's famous apple pie, but it was my first time without my sous chef (Mike)...again, tantrum with crust led to me sending Mike out to walk the dog.  I needed some peace and quiet with my crusts.  [warning crucial equation ahead]

One-on-one time with pie crust + self pep talk = delicious pie. 

[Side note:] I don't typically have tantrums. Like never.  I just hate when things don't go my way, that's all. From now on I will always roll my pie crusts out onto wax paper because the tantrums always are created after I roll the crust out and then I try to lift up the crust and BAM! it rips. I can only handle that so many times before I get annoyed. Once, actually, I can only handle it once. 

All in all, i am very pleased with my first thanksgiving baking and stuffing extravaganza.  I feel like such an adult (pie-crust-tantrums and all.)

happy thanksgiving!

Nothing makes it feel like Thanksgiving like watching all the Thanksgiving Friends Episode. OK, there are a lot of other things that make it feel like thanksgiving - celebrating with family, cornucopias, cooler weather, football, busy airports, typtophan, pumpkin pie - but besides those, it's the episode where Rachel makes her trifle that tastes like feet.  Best. Episode. Ever. 

Happy Thanksgiving!

things I learned in Wisconsin...

oh, Hello! We're back from our quick ( & COLD!) trip to Wisconsin for Thanksgiving.  So I thought I'd share with you the things I learned...

1. I look really good in blaze orange...(OK, maybe not, but I did have a whole heck of a lot of it on to go sit in Mike's deer stand.)
   1a. I thought I'd be the good luck charm for Mike to get that world record buck...but nope. We saw zero deer, 2 squirrels, and 1 bald eagle.  *My very 1st bald eagle sighting! So that was exciting.*

2. 14 degrees is much colder now that I don't live in the Midwest. (Yes, I know. I've become THAT wimp.)
  2a.  I was proud to wear my Northface puffy down coat this morning when it was 33 degrees.

3. I still don't like turkey. Try as I might, I just don't like the taste of that darn bird.

I blame the turkey farm volunteer experience in 11th grade.

I really did give it the old college try to eat it multiple times, but alas, I just stuffed myself silly with chex mix, mashed potatoes and pie.  That's not that horrible, is it?

4. My heart skips a beat anytime I see someone wearing Badger gear - which is unusual and VERY exciting out here, but in Wisconsin, every other person is wearing Badger red and I needed to get over the sightings.

5. We've converted my father-in-law to the dark side. That's right - he now is a fan of Cabernet! Yahoo for Al! I'm quite impressed.  Below are the pictures taken Castello di Amorosa (and yes, I know I have yet to hold up my end of the bargain for all the different wineries we visited in October and I told you I'd tell you all about it during the month of November.  I just want to take this moment to say, where did the month of November go?  Holy bananas, I can't believe we're on the precipice of December. We'll be blogging about that next month...and by "we" I mean "me" and by "next month" I mean to be as vague as possible.)  Below you'll see Al trying the Fantasia wine from Castello.  It's a gateway wine to the reds.  Not my cup of tea, as it's quite sweet, however the gateway wine really did just that...in the course of a month Al was a non-wine drinker, to a really-good-Cab drinker at Thanksgiving.  Now that's one quick working gateway wine!

[before]

 [after]

This isn't a reenactment, this is truly what his reaction was as he tasted the first sip. Isn't that great?

Happy Thanksgiving!

 Happy Thanksgiving!

 I hope you have a wonderful day full of all the tryptophan you can handle.