Thanksgiving pies

Before I get into the Christmas posts I figure I should do some my Thanksgiving post. We had such a fun Thanksgiving, Hal's whole time family came into town, so it was wonderful to spend time with everyone, especially since none of them are coming back for Christmas. We tried a new tradition this year. Apparently Hal's aunt's family has done this for years so we decided to try it. Since in a lot of families the women do the work for the Thanksgiving dinner they make the guys take care of dessert. Each guy has to make a pie and then everyone rates them and a winner is picked.

I was SO impressed with all of the pies. Hal's family knows how to cook, and from scratch! Here is a picture of all of the pies.

We were all so stuffed even from such a little taste of each of them. Lets see, we had a pumpkin pie, a pumpkin cheesecake, a key lime pie, a chocolate satin pie...I think that's what it was, a chocolate bourbon pecan pie, and a creme brulee pie.

Here are all of the boys with their pies. They worked so hard on them, and they were all really really good! Hal made the Key Lime pie. He actually made my pumpkin pie from scratch (even a real sugar pumpkin) a few days before, but then he found out his dad was doing pumpkin and so at like midnight the night before Thanksgiving he went to the store to get stuff for a key lime pie. I found him a recipe that didn't use key limes, since he couldn't find any, but then being the mathematical mind he is...he read that they were 2-3 times stronger than regular ones, so he calculated how much extra juice he needed....Bad idea...It was good, it just didn't set up all of the way and was well...very potent, so it was just right in the little taste testing bits we had.

The winner was....

Dane, the baby of the family! His was definitely my favorite. He made a creme brulee into a pie. Essentially a huge delicious creme brulee. I couldn't stop eating it. The next day I just sat there and just ate it for like 20 minutes. He added pretzels to his crust. I normally don't like graham cracker crust, but the pretzels made it so good.

Most holiday traditions have to do with Christmas, so it was nice to have a new one for Thanksgiving. I can't wait to see what everyone does next year. How could they even step it up?

Thanksgiving pies

My friend Meagan and I have become professional pie makers. Not really, we've just become super awesome at it. Since September we have had five pie making sessions. We starting out just buying a pie crust and making our own pie filling, to making both from scratch. The two in the middle didn't turn out so good...But we have had some pie making extravaganzas lately to make up for that. It ended with us attempting to make six pumpkin pies from scratch (from a sugar pumpkin) in one night.

Suggesion: Don't attempt to make pie crust from Betty Crocker's cook book when neither of you have any idea of how to make pie crust. Pie crust is the devil and our first two pies of attempting to make it ourselves didn't turn out so good, just think patch-work. We actually had to start over the first time we made it as "mix until dough is in small balls" is a rather vague term when you have no idea what it's supposed to look like. Also, Don't make pie crust in a kitchen aid...it over mixes it...just a bit.

Also, ignore the fact that I don't have an eye in the first picture. Apparently Meagan and I are awesome at taking pictures of ourselves.

Oddly enough atttempting to make six pumpkin pies in one night doesn't work out very well. By midnight we had two pies in the oven, all of the dough made for more than 6 pies and all of the filling made and we were dead tired. It takes a long time to bake and scoop and blend and mix pumpkin pie filling. So the next night, after our niece, Lily's first birthday party my brother in law Dane helped me roll out the dough for my pies as that is the part we never got to work out very well. After watching him, I did it all by myself and it turned out great! We even had enough dough for his from scratch Pecan Pie, 'cause that's how we roll.

Doesn't my pie look delicious? It turned out so creamy and fantastic, way better than the first time we made it. My brother in law Ric, ate almost an entire pie by himself on Thanksgiving. I'm drooling a little bit just thinking about it. Don't tell Hal...I'll just blame it on Ebony. 'Cause cats drool sometimes when they get really excited, right?

This year we had two Thanksgivings. Since Beck, Hal's brother had to leave on Thanksgiving we had Thanksgiving over there on Wednesday, and on my family's side on Thanksgiving. It really made for a great week. We had such a lovely time with both of our families. I didn't get any pictures from my side's thanksgiving, but here is a picture of how pretty the table looked at the Morgan's thanksgiving. It's a little blurry, but it was the only one where almost everyone was looking at the camera.

This is just for you...it's the BIRTHDAY MONSTER!!

P.S. I am watching Planet Earth. I don't like it when the animals actually get caught.