Cheryl on the Web

My pumpkin pie yesterday - the first one I ever made - turned out perfectly! (win) In addition to my traditional cooking chaos, I forgot to halve the salt when I halved the crust recipe for the pie, but luckily I tasted the dough and realized my mistake in time .. and started over on the crust! Then, after I’d put the (revised) pie crust and the pumpkin filling in the pie form and into the oven, I watched in dismay as the crust started to fall down from the sides of the pan into the filling! Just as I was beginning to think I would end up with something that amounted to a pumpkin pie (soup) dough bowl, the crust started to stiffen and I carefully pushed it all back up against the sides of the pan. (This is a perfect example of why American pie pans have sloped, not vertical, sides.) To accompany the pie at our Thanksgiving dinner, Tim and I also made mashed potatoes, rolled pork, sweet potatoes in brown sugar topped with marshmallows, and green beans. Everything tasted really nice (win) but it was all a bit cold by the time we got it all on the table (loss).

Before our Thanksgiving feast, we played Rummikub and shared a few appetizers. The crackers with pineapple cream cheese were great (win), but the canned olives that we found in the cupboard were .. well, Tim’s face says it all .. a loss! NO, Tim does not normally look like that - but these olives had to have been the absolute worst he or I have ever eaten. I think they were canned in a combination of rosemary, vinegar, and garlic. Not recommended!

For those of you who read the previous blog post: By the time I’d finished the pumpkin pie, Tim figured out that he was supposed to have nagged me for it. So then he started randomly ordering me to make various types of pie. No, I told him, you are only allowed to demand pumpkin pie, and then only at Thanksgiving! And the one for this year is .. right over there :)