As I prepared my Thanksgiving cooking schedule, Dean volunteered to help me make the pies, specifically the pumpkin pie. He helped get the dough together and then came back when I was shaping the crust. He used some dough scraps to make a tiny crust. I put a little filling in it and baked it up. It was so cute, about the size of a quarter. He popped it into his mouth before I could snap a picture of it! Also, showing my kid a sweater at the resale shop while thinking there's no way he'd be interested, only to have him declare it his favorite sweater and want to wear it all the time, even when in the kitchen, was the best.
I got the pumpkin pie in the oven, only to forget to start the timer. Eventually I checked on it.
The crust is a bit burned, and it has more cracks than I'd prefer, but everyone seems to love it. Whew! I made Gianna's favorite, a Brown Sugar Yogurt Tart. I had planned on making a Tart Tatin, which I've never made, but then I saw the frozen peach pie filling in the freezer and decided that it was meant to be. It was a gamble, trying something untested for a family holiday, but it totally paid off! It took over an hour to bake. It smelled like summer. I also made a Green Bean Casserole from Smitten Kitchen. It is so good. I make it every year.
Our approach to Black Friday is to avoid stores (too much of a zoo!) and get out in nature as a family. We played two games and took a walk in the forest. It was great. For dinner I made one of my favorite comfort food dishes: Pasta Pomodoro. I love it because it is delicious - like restaurant pasta delicious - and I almost always have the ingredients on hand. Canned tomatoes, garlic, spaghetti, parmesan; so easy and simple.
A couple of weeks ago we were at the park with friends. The park is across the street from the kids' old preschool. When there were in school there they got to participate in Soup Day once a month where each kid would bring in a vegetable and they would all prepare the veggies and turn them into a big pot of soup for lunch. Such sweet memories. Well, it happened to be Soup Day when we were at the park that day, and as we were shivering at the picnic table while Gianna ran with her friends, preschool teacher Brynn walked over to us bearing bowls of hot leftover Soup Day soup. It was such a treat. Dean especially loved it and continued the talk about how delicious it was the next day. I took note and decided to make my own special soup yesterday for lunch. One of the great thing about Soup Day soup is that it is different every time because kids bring different veggies each time. So I just used what I had; carrots, celery, a few tablespoons of starina pasta, onion, garlic, dry herbs, a can of cannellini beans, and chicken broth. I made a small amount of soup figuring that only Dean and I would eat it. Vincent isn't much of a soup eater and it had too many veggies for Gianna's taste. It was delicious and Dean and I both really enjoyed it. I was especially surprised to walk into the kitchen and see that Vincent had eaten the rest of it and enjoyed it! I fall in the trap of assuming that my family won't eat something new/different a lot. This was a great reminder that we aren't all completely set in our ways and making something as simple as soup can open new doors.
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