turkey day cooking {mis}adventures!

hi all!

did you all have a fabulous thanksgiving?  we did - i cooked as usual and trevor came and ate with us.  i LOVE cooking thanksgiving dinner - and i especially love having all those leftovers!

how about black friday shopping?  i go EVERY year - it is what jump starts my holiday spirit.  however i am NOT a night person.  and now that all the excitement happens at midnight instead of the usual 4 or 5 am i miss out on all the insanity.  yes i LOVE the insanity.  EVERY other day of the year i hate it but on black friday i love it.  now i rarely go out after some big item i just have to have and am willing to die for like some folks but it is fun just the same.  however, this year, since i missed the frenzy, it pretty much sucked.  guess i will have to figure out how to be up at midnight next year!

we ate early in the day - noon - because trevor had to work that evening.  we did the usual menu - having done it for so many years i pretty much have it all down to a science:

turkey - no brine this year but the carrots/onion/celery underneath

and oranges/leeks/thyme inside

then bacon covering the top:

seriously good turkey people - no basting, juicy as can be - we are talking WHITE meat dripping with juice - and as the bacon crisps you pull it off and snack on it

the stuff inside is thrown out but the vegies on the bottom along with the juices make for awesome turkey noodle soup and turkey pot pies!

we also had homemade cranberry apple relish, sweet potatoes with marshmallows, stuffing, giblet gravy, & brocoli - YUM!!!

pezza insisted on a drumstick

and we also started a brand new tradition.  my mom always heads to my brother's for thanksgiving.  last year she gave him a book from my great x ? grandmother Alida Lepine - we estimate it is from around 1900.  the recipes are hysterical.  for one thing they cooked over open flame back then so it's not like there are oven temps or anything.  some don't even have directions, just a list of ingredients.  that's it.  alida marked some of the recipes with an X BUT we don't know if the X is good or bad.  so we have decided that every year my brother will send out a list of recipes - no info JUST the title.  all participating families get to vote and then we all make the winning recipe for thanksgiving and report back.  this year the winner was lemon pie and runner up was almond kisses.  then we got the recipe....

Lemon Pie
1 Lemon                         Grated rind of 1 lemon
1 cup sugar                     1 tablespoon flour
1/2 cup seeded raisins    1 tablespoon butter

Cook over fire until thick, then ass raisins. Bake pastry and put in filling. Roll thin pastry
for top. Can make roll instead of pie and serve with lemon sauce

so my first thought was...ONE lemon.  ONE lemon for a whole pie.  nothing else ONE lemon and some sugar ONE??????  i told kevin about it and he said the same thing - he had to come read it for himself.  my next thought was RAISINS?  why????  like what purpose do they serve?  and then the instructions - who noticed the typo above????  ass raisins?  really?  of course that started a string of emails at which point my brother said "he who is without sin can cast the first ass raisin."

so we made the pie...

lookin a little empty ya think???

yea...turns out ass raisin was more appropriate than we realized because this pie was AWFUL.  awful really does not begin to describe how incredibly nasty this pie was.  without the raisins it might have been ok, doubling or tripling it might have also been an improvement but truly disgusting.

i was not going to make the almond kisses until my brother sent out his report and pics on his attempt with them.  dismal failure.  they were big running puddles on the cookie sheet.  so i looked more closely at that recipe:

Almond Kisses
1 cup blanched and ground almonds
6 eggs, whites
1 1/2 cups sugar

Beat eggs very stiff, add sugar, and beat well. Fold in nuts and drop with tube or spoon
on linen paper and bake in oven when fire dying out. Pecan kisses may be made same
way, using one tumbler of half meats.

it looked like meringue cookies.....i noticed the words VERY STIFF - which my mom and brother apparently MISSED.  i did not have almonds but i had pecans so i got to work.

pez was feeling uncertain about the entire experimental phase of dinner....

but these actually turned out really really well - in fact i may make more for xmas!

we have been taking it easy around here - we are re-doing our upstairs bathroom for pezza - it used to be the boys' when they were here.  new mirrors, new lighting, refinishing the cabinets - fun fun!  we also went out to the mall so pezza could ride the carousel and stopped at jareds to get my rings checked and cleaned.  while we were there hubby got me the most beautiful  black & white diamond stud earrings i fell in love with - early christmas!  then he took us out to the cheesecake factory - YUMMMMM!  he is the best!