Saturday, November 29, 2008

Thanksgiving at the In-Laws

As the title states, we spent Thanksgiving with my in-laws. The girls went with my mother-in-law on Monday and spent Tuesday with her. Unfortunately, Isabella woke up on Tuesday and was sick. She slept a good portion of the day and when she woke up she told Mimi (my mother-in-law's nickname) that she hadn't had her cereal. When I called to check on her Tuesday afternoon, she was just sitting down to her bowl of cereal after badgering them about it. We arrived Tuesday evening after taking some time to have a date at Appleby's. Wednesday was spent preparing the house and making pies. I made pie dough for my mother-in-law and didn't know what else to do with myself, so I decided to go ahead and make some fillings to go with them. I made a blueberry pie, a frozen key lime pie, and two of the most delicious pecan pies I have ever laid eyes on. Doesn't my pie look yummy?Irresistible Pecan Pie
(found on allrecipes.com)
Ingredients:
Crust: 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 Tablespoons white sugar
1/2 cup butter, chilled
4 Tablespoons ice water
Filling: 3 eggs, beaten
3/4 cup light corn syrup
2 Tablespoons dark corn syrup
3/4 cup light brown sugar
3 Tablespoons butter, melted
1 pinch salt
1/2 cup pecans, finely crushed
1 cup pecans, quartered
1 cup pecan halves
Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). To make crust: in a medium bowl, combine flour, salt, and white sugar. Cut butter into flour mixture until it resembles coarse crumbs. Gradually sprinkle the water over the dry mixture, stirring until dough comes together enough to form a ball. On a floured surface, flatten dough ball with rolling pin. Roll out into a circle that is one inch larger than pie dish. Place pie shell into dish and refrigerate until pie filling is complete.
To make pie filling: In a medium bowl, mix together eggs, light and dark corn syrups, brown sugar, butter, salt and finely crushed pecans. Spread quartered pecans over bottom of pie crust. Pour syrup mixture over top of pecans, then arrange pecan halves on top of pie. Bake in a preheated oven for one hour or until firm; let cool for one hour before serving.
(I did not use the pie crust recipe. I also did not have dark corn syrup so I just used light syrup in it's place and I did not have light brown sugar, so I used dark. The filling was darker than I am used to but still tasted wonderful)
After slaving away on the pie, I had to listen to all of my in-laws tease me about eating it and then tease me more about being afraid of me when I am angry. Oh well... Being the good sport, I stayed quiet and let them tease me all they wanted. They didn't touch the pie, though. We managed to get dinner on the table on Thanksgiving day (and when I say we, I mean mostly my mother-in-law). My poor mother-in-law worked so hard that she disappeared for most of the remainder of the day to sleep off all the strain (she recently had a bad fall and is still recuperating). We all congregated again in the early evening to sample the pies and was it ever worth the wait.
Then guess what we did on Saturday! We took 7 adults and 8 kids to the mall for family portraits. I am soooo glad that is over. We have some nice pictures to show for our hard work and it will have to tide us over because I can't see us forgetting how difficult it was and doing it again next year.
We hope that you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday and we are thankful for having you in our lives. For those of you far away, we miss you and hope to see you soon. Please come visit if you have the chance.
Tobias working hard at sleeping in an awkward position while being held by Grandpa (father-in-law). Mark had already repositioned him several times before this picture was taken.


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