TURKEY DAY

Hey, I hope everyone had a great Turkey Day! Tom headed off to NY the day before T-Day, but my sister and aunt came into town to spend the holiday over at Cindy's house. All together we had 8 people. I was in charge of dessert, but somehow, I always end up making more stuff.

I figured since I was only making dessert, I was gonna do it all from scratch. So using my Martha Stewart Baking Handbook, I decided to make a classic apple pie and a pumpkin pie. I made the crust a couple of days before and froze them and then I got started on making my pumpkin puree for the pumpkin pie. Here's my pretty sugar pumpkin that I got at Monterey Market (which I'll write about in a later post)

It was really easy preparing this guy. I just cut him in half, cleaned out his insides and roasted him for like an hour. Then I just pureed everything. I did this the day before Turkey Day, and also prepped a few other things before the big day.

So when the big day arrived, I was preparing all my stuff. I decided to make a salad with roasted beets, oranges, avocados, toasted pine nuts and a citrus dressing that I got from my Chez Panisse cookbook. Since I had extra pumpkin puree, I also made a pumpkin and sweet potato puree and topped them with homemade candied pecans. Oh, I also made a batch of chocolate chip cookies, cause more cousins were arriving the next day. And of course, I had my pumpkin and apple pies. I really spent the entire morning cooking. So as I'm getting all ready to cook, I find out that my oven's out and it smells like gas.

So I had to wait for my cousin to arrive to figure out what was wrong (the pilot was out). He lit it, then turned it off to show me how to do it in the future. He left and I get back ready to cook and find out, the oven's out again. I didn't have matches, so after a trip to get some, the oven was back on and I was ready to cook. (of course this all happens on Thanksgiving).

I got the pumpkin pie cooking and had the apple pie in the oven when I had to leave and pick up my sister at the airport. The apple pie came out half cooked. And ended up finishing it while we ate dinner. Here's a pic of all the food:

And my apple pie, which came out beautifully (you go Martha). I served it with a side of fresh organic whipped cream. (I like that you can find that kind of stuff here).

Overall, Thanksgiving was quite yummy. I was stuffed and hauled my very full tummy home to sleep it all off.