A Peine For Your Thoughts

This time of year always creeps up on me, no matter what I do. I think it might have something to do with living in this season-less area of the world I live in. I am sitting here, the day before Thanksgiving, drinking a beer in a short-sleeve shirt. That ain’t right.

Somehow, I went upstairs this year and when I came back down, my living room looked like this:

All that’s missing is the smell of gingerbread and the ornaments.

I’d rather deal with gingerbread than two boxes of fiddly ornaments, I thought, so I got to work.

The cookies turned out beautifully.

But tasted like cardboard. So, I’m not going to pass along the recipe, though I’m sure the cardboard taste was my fault and not the recipe’s. Still. You guys probably already have all the cardboard you need. The glaze was delicious, though. I caught Drew scraping it off the counter with a spatula. It made me feel like a bad wife, just the way I feel like a bad dog mom when I catch Truman pitifully licking the bottom of his empty dog bowl. Can’t I at least provide my husband with cookies to go along with the spilled glaze he’s licking off the counter?

No. Apparently no I can’t.

In honor of Thanksgiving, I picked my apron up off the ground and put it on again. I won’t be beaten by cardboard gingerbread.  So far, there’s this English Toffee Pecan Pie , a recipe from Marjorie Johnson who won Martha’s pie contest last week. In case yall didn’t see Marjorie, here’s a link to the video of her with Martha. She’s four-foot tall, 80-something years old, and she wore bright red stilletos to show Martha how to make her pie. She’s officially my hero.

Also in the oven over here is this Old Fashioned Apple Pie of Martha’s, my favorite apple pie I re-visit every year. I tried to buy my apples at the Houston Farmer’s Market this year in honor of global warming and the shrinking of the coast line and eating locally, but our Farmer’s Market didn’t have apples. They had an excess of beets and turnips, but no apples. I bought the beets and turnips just for fun, and I’ve been just completely surprised at the lack of enthusiasm my family has been able to conjure up at the sight of all my locally grown root vegetables. No one else seems to think beets and turnips are “fun.”

Thankfully, we have a double oven because we’re also baking a challah loaf right now from a tutorial and recipe I got on Brown Eyed Baker’s site. Somehow carbs are more fun when they’re braided.

In the morning, there’s the Turkey Trot. Because what better way to ring in the holidays than to use your day off to get up at 6 AM and run six miles with 5,000 of your closest friends? Last year, Drew got stuck behind a double running stroller at the finish line and I was able to cross the finish line just before him.

Fingers crossed for a lot of double strollers tomorrow morning.