Thanksgiving

Blogging Status

Well, I guess this home page will be the place where I update you on our status here in Utah. I guess the reason why I failed to right much on my old blog was the shear boredom that is my life (I feel like this awesome baby!). I figure it's hard to right about your life in an interesting fashion unless you have #1 talent, #2 a whole lot of drive to write.

I hope the second helps me to do better.

Thanksgiving Day

Well...

Let me walk you through the day. This year Kristi and I had no family to spend the day with, so we made plans with some friends of ours to prepare a huge feast (like a Viking Meade Hall style). It would be epic.

Our irreverently non-domestic household had the grand responsibility of making the following:

1. Three Pies - Two Pumpkin and my Dad's famous Chocolate Creme
2. Green Bean Casserole
3. Stuffing and...
4. Well, that's it. We couldn't manage much more!

We had never made any of these dishes, and, truth be told, we don't usually make any dishes. That's why this becomes such an epic story. We huddled together with a plan of attack. I would build the stuffing masterpiece, Kristi would defeat the casserole fiends, and then we'd jump on the desserts as a team.

Let me just say, our individual efforts led to hopeful success! The stuffing (easy as pie...hehe, that's funny considering) and the casserole (simple) turned out beautifully.

The pumpkin pies, however, were the beginning of our woes. At the end of side dishes, the kitchen was actually still pretty clean, but did you know that pumpkin pie filling starts as a liquid? The directions on our can of pumpkin mush said we had enough for two pies. We came prepared with two pie shells. Two cans of condensed milk and volumes of other ingredients later, we had about a gallon of liquid with the consistency and color of tropical V8 splash! Not what we expected.

We read over the directions a couple times a little confused. Did we make a measuring error or something? No, we obeyed to the letter...

Okay, I guess you have to bake it and then it will solidify as part of the baking process! Well, that turns out to be true. However, shallow foil pie pans have about the same strength as a paper plate. Not exactly the most rigid structure...

Needless to say we should have put the trays on the rack and THEN poured that goop into the pans. Instead, we tried to move them. Luck for us, the can that was supposed to make enough for two pies actually produced enough filling for about 40! We had two pies in the trays and about 20 pies worth, in combination, on our floor and burned on the inside of our oven. Our apartment looked like an ancient Greek sauna, minus the naked old politicians, and then substituting steam with smoke.

You think maybe an analogy with a smoke filled room would better? Fine, our house looked like...the foggy haze after an explosion. It was a mess; but although the battle was lost, we won the war!

The pies ended up tasting great, and even though I didn't stir the chocolate pie long enough for it to set, it too tasted very nice. All in all, the feast was a mad success. We ate like kings. and then I watched the Longhorns win...sigh...perfect. Thanksgiving is a holiday that I think almost gets under rated by our capitalistic focus on Christmas, but the truth is, Thanksgiving makes for an awesome time. Adventure awaits those gracious enough to seek it.