Whoa! Hello there! It’s been awhile, I know, for better or worse I’m not yet sure. I’ve had four days off in a row and I’m beginning to suspect that may have been a bad idea. I’ve grown so accustomed to cramming in as much work as humanly possible during the day that, when I have no work to do, I grow a tad bit…difficult.
Yesterday is probably the best example of this. Wes and I came home from church with nothing more on our agenda than to relax. Well, I’d already spent the previous three days doing exactly that and I was antsy.
I got it into my head to make an apple pie from scratch (don’t ask me why. Glutton for punishment, perhaps?) I went so far as to look up a recipe and create a shopping list for the ingredients before pulling the plug on the whole endeavor. I rationalized that it was folly to start making apple pie so late in the day, especially when our fridge was already full of desserts, and put the kibosh on everything.
This did nothing to help my poor husband, who had already gone to all the trouble of washing the puppy (even though it was my turn to wash him) and given me a pep talk about how I could totally make amazing apple pie.
When I told him I wasn’t making pie, he merely shook his head and poured himself some vodka and cranberry juice. Take it from me, this is not the first time he’s ever completely abandoned the idea of ever understanding exactly what goes on in my head most of the time.
Speaking of pie, I did make a custard pie on Wednesday. The pie-making process itself went off pretty smoothly. The crust and I got along fairly well (meaning that I neglected to throw anything) and I managed to get the filling all the way into the crust shell before getting frustrated.
You see, I rolled the crust out as well as can be expected using wax paper on a laminate counter (what I wouldn’t give for a large marble cutting board…) and transferred it without incident to the pie tin.
I spread it all out and stretched the crust all the way to the edges of the tin. Then I used a fork to make pretty little indentations on the crust, covered the edges in foil, and popped the whole thing into the oven for a quick second to bake the bottom of the crust before the filling could get to it.
When I pulled the pie tin out, the crust had pulled away from the edges (because I neglected to fold the edges over to prevent just such a thing). CURSES AND INVOCATIONS. Of course, this meant that the crust contracted toward the center of the pie tin and severely lessened the amount of custard filling I could use. Boo.
To add insult to injury, I think I must have then under-baked the pie or something, because even after letting the pie set on the counter for hours and then refrigerate overnight, when we served it the custard was too runny for me to stomach eating. Wes and my mom said it was good pie but I reserve the right to call their bluff on that because, no matter what, runny custard pie = eww.
Speaking of my mom, Wes and I had a terrific time with my family on Thanksgiving day. My step-father showed Wes how to properly carve a turkey and we were all very impressed with Wes’ mad meat-carving skills.
The reason his skills were so impressive is that this was quite the turkey to practice on. My mother bought the turkey from their neighbors (who grow turkeys I guess? I didn’t get the full story because there’s only so much I want to know about living in rural Washington) and was shocked to discover that this turkey weighed in at an astounding 39lbs.
39 pounds. As in, the weight of a six year old child. This turkey was mammoth. It was so big that my step-father had to weld together two roasting pans in order to accommodate its massiveness. They started roasting it at 11:30PM the night before Thanksgiving.
As you can see from the picture, this was a big bird. It’s so big that it makes my (incredibly strong and attractive) husband look small. Do not be fooled! This man is 6’3″ and weighs somewhere around 220lbs. He is not exactly what anyone would consider a lightweight, but this turkey is so behemoth that it makes him look diminutive. What a sham.
Of course, Wes couldn’t have any turkey making mockery of him so he ripped the turkey to little bits and we all feasted with glee. It was a very good day.
Doc didn’t think so, though. Even though we spent a ton of time with him the rest of the weekend, he’s not really a fan of holidays because he usually has to stay outside by himself for intolerable hours on end.
He consoled himself by chewing on his toys and pretending they were turkey bones.
We would love to take him with us, but his proclivity for eating large inedible objects and his injured hind leg make that an impossibility.
He does have one thing the rest of us don’t, however, and that is the ability to say he celebrated Thanksgiving with the squirrels who live in the tree above his kennel. I bet none of you can say you celebrated Thanksgiving with a bunch of furry rodents who can climb trees at high speeds.
