Wednesday, November 21, 2007

Blaze Orange

I love a feast. Most any excuse for a party. To raise a cup, to break bread. This year Thanksgiving is with the in-laws, at the in-laws, and with other family in attendance too. We’ve made broccoli salad, deviled eggs, crystallized ginger, dressing, and two pumpkin and two pecan pies to take.

The pecan pie always makes me think of mother. It was one of hers, and it was especially loved by my brother who I hardly ever see. It is simply not a holiday without making that pie. Although I’m thinking about seeing if it works with hickory nuts.

Pumpkin pie, for us, starts -- oh, about this time of year with some garden bed preparation. Or maybe it is in spring when we plant them for the first time. Or maybe it is early summer when we replant or whatever. Before the frost we bring them inside; pumpkins, acorn and butternut squash, cushaws. They will all make decent pies (except for field pumpkins, don’t try that). This year the cushaws, which almost always make, didn’t. But we did get some candy roaster pumpkins and that’s what I baked Tuesday in preparation for Wednesday’s pie making.

I don’t do so well actually feeding my family while I’m preparing for a major feast but I did make sure I made a couple loaves of bread just for us to eat on Tuesday. On the first one, there was lemon basil sitting on the counter in a bowl from where a daughter had processed it off the stems just the day before. So I put a couple of tablespoons of that in. Mmmm.

But the pièce de résistance was the second loaf. We’d stripped the meat out of the candy roaster, and I’d measured out what I’d need for pies and had a cup left over. I dumped it into the bread, along with some onion powder and rosemary and freshly grated ginger (because after all, we had the ginger to candy laying right there). If you don’t know, candy roasters are long things, and sort of pale on the outside. Not too pumpkin-like. But inside they positively glow blaze orange. And so did my bread. And so do my pies in their whole wheat crusts.

Although I make bread all the time, we rarely eat wheat bread hot out of the oven. This time we did and it was such a treat! Tonight supper was cornbread with jalapeños chopped up in it. I’ve got all the containers set out to take with us to bring leftovers home in.

Happy Thanksgiving ya’ll. It’s rifle season in these parts so don’t wander too far.

8 comments:

arcolaura said...

Wow, you're making us hungry!

Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours. When you're finished celebrating, there's a question for you on my blog.

Dramaw said...

Hope you have a great holiday visiting with your family..

Dramaw said...

By the way, I am not sure why I am "Mom" now but this is Dramaw. I love checking in on you to see what you have been up to. I haven't been able to comment in ages though. I tried this logon just by chance and it worked.

Omelay said...

crystallized ginger? do tell

CG said...

ok, I'm going back and linking it on the post. BUT let me tell you, we made it in a single night instead of over two or three days, couldn't be easier, and talk about delicious! It was almost the talk of our extended family feast!

And I'm waving Dramaw! Hope all is well!

Anonymous said...
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Joe Tornatore said...

i love pecan pie.

Jim said...

CG-

The details of your feast (previous post) has my mouth watering but I think all of our leftovers are finally gone.

Dang it!

The paragraph below is classic CG, and I couldn't agree more.

"The age of oil is over. What are you going to do without your own personal oil? Three dollar gas hasn’t changed people’s behavior. I suggest that that is a measure of addiction. What will the DTs be like? I can solve the mortgage crisis too. Folks, you bought insane McMansions you can’t afford. Get together in your neighborhood and two of you who can’t afford your houses, move in together and make that one mortgage payment instead of the two. I'm so tired of the whining. And for gawd’s sake, grow a garden."

To quote a worn out phrase, "You Go Girl!"