Last week I bought, peeled and prepared sweet potatoes.
The side dish is always on my list of contributions for the family Thanksgiving feast.
Pretty hard to ruin a sweet-potato dish. Recipes vary, but mine always includes Imperial margarine, brown sugar and mini marshmallows.
Occasionally, I'll chop up some nuts and throw them in.
Every year, I like to get started on my items long before Thanksgiving. There's just something really satisfying about having the stuff ready in advance without a lot of actual holiday-preparation stress.
My contributions usually include dinner rolls, jelly and applesauce.
I also supply the turkey but do no preparation.
Willie or Debbie takes care of that, along offering the best potato dish ever (Willie's secret recipe). They also supply their home, their hospitality and a whole bunch of other goodies.
Whoever is coming for dinner contributes with other dishes like beans and relishes and cranberries. That way, nobody gets too worn out.
One item I haven't supplied in the past is pie because I've been a substandard pie baker most of my life.
One time I made some apple pies for potluck and learned at the potluck from a not-so-subtle friend that the apples weren't cooked.
Usually, my biggest challenge with pies is preparing a decent crust, so when I saw a post on Facebook from Ree, the Pioneer Woman, with a recipe entitled "Perfect Pie Crust," I decided to give it a try.
After preserving two batches of applesauce this fall, I had enough left over for a pie or two.
So, yesterday was designated as apple-pie baking day.
In preparing the crust, I learned about an essential step which had never been on my radar: freeze the dough for a while, then thaw and roll it out.
Well, let's just say that made all the difference, providing me with some very workable dough. And, if I made mistakes rolling out a crust, I could easily do some patching and fix them.
The process took most of the afternoon, and I knew Bill was keeping an eye out. When those pies, including an offshoot version made from leftover dough, came out of the oven, Bill wasted no time asking, "Can I have a piece of pie?"
Well, he ate the whole thing---that leftover-dough version---which was much bigger than a standard piece of pie.
"I didn't eat it all at once," he said, noting that he ate it in stages last night.
"Did you like it?" I asked.
"Yeah, it was good," he said.
That's when I told him about a little glitch I experienced during my pie-baking session.
When it was time to put the apples in the pan, I decided to add the sugar and cinnamon to them in the bowl before crust time.
So, I took the bowl of apples over to the counter where I keep the sugar and where spices are located in an overhead cupboard.
As usual, no measuring, just gestimating how much sugar to pour into the bowl.
Next, I opened the cupboard and reached for the cinnamon, a spice which I had used most recently.
I opened the top and started shaking the contents over the apples.
My first awareness: the bottle seemed close to empty. The cinnamon had hardly been used.
Second awareness: twas a lot darker than any cinnamon I'd ever seen.
"Oops," I said out loud, looking at the bottle.
Chili powder!
Glad that nobody was in the house to see, I began the tedious task of scraping chili powder off from apple slices.
It does take time and concentration and a few apple slices had to go to the garbage can.
Finally satisfied that this was about the best I could do removing the chili powder, I again reached into the spice cupboard and grabbed what was for sure the new bottle of cinnamon.
Good thing I looked at the label before pouring. This time I had grabbed cayenne pepper.
Someone must have been going through my disorderly spice cupboard, disordering it even more.
Well, the good news is that neither Bill nor I tasted any chili powder in the apple pie AND the crust is lovely and the apples are cooked.
So, a pie will be put aside, and this year I can confidently add to the dessert offerings on turkey day.
Possibly, in the future, with this new "perfect pie crust" recipe, I'll bake pies more often. It's a keeper. Give it a try.
In other news, the deer have been frequent visitors to the Lovestead this past week. One young one visited the lawn and area around the barnyard three times yesterday.
And, good ol' "One Antler" was enjoying those apples falling from the tree.
We're thinking that the deer know we don't allow hunting on our place so why not hang out here where there are apples aplenty.
Finally, I got spend some quality grandpuppy time with Kenny yesterday.
If ever there were a perfect dog, Kenny comes pretty close. So intelligent, so in tune with his humans and just plain calm, cool and collected.
Happy Monday.
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