Today, my MacBook came home to me (cha-ching!), but I feel like I’ve been in the kitchen since yesterday, and I’m just now getting the Mac back in business.
Here’s a recap.
Lynne got here Tuesday afternoon for a visit until Saturday. She’s spending Thanksgiving day with her kids/grandkids from the other side of their family on Thursday, so we’ll have the Houndstooth Hall Thanksgiving dinner with her on Friday, which will also be her early birthday celebration. =)
The dinner I prepared for Tuesday night was a hearty homemade soup that simmered most of the day to go with cornbread.
One of the chapters I wrote in the sixth book of the Neverending Saga has two characters sharing a lot of confidences while they have a pre-Christmas baking day together. Maybe that’s what made Lynne and me decide to have a full-on baking day like we haven’t had in a long time. Tuesday night, while I took on dog watching/feeding duty, she and Tom went to the grocery store to get all the supplies I didn’t have or she hadn’t brought with her. After they got back, she and I began shelling pecans from her friend’s pecan trees.
Today, Tom worked from home, so as soon as I got up, I put together Jim’s delicious egg casserole for breakfast and added fresh cut fruit on the side.
After breakfast, the real work began. While Tom worked in the home office, Lynne and I shelled more pecans, enough to use for rum balls, bourbon balls, and Kahlúa balls. This was our first venture into Kahlúa balls. They all taste very good. =)
While I was rolling out the rum, etc. balls, Lynne made two servings of crack dip, one for the Hall and one to take with her tomorrow. It’s basic: cream cheese, chopped green onions, chopped pastrami, and dry Hidden Valley Ranch dressing mix blended together. No one knows why it’s so addictive. It just is.
I grated enough cheese for two batches of sausage cheese balls. These are also highly addictive. We both rolled them out, and now there’s one container for the Hall and one she’ll take tomorrow.
Oh! I forgot she also made a gazillion deviled eggs. One to take with her with sweet pickles, and one for the Hall with dill pickles.
Stacked here in the fridge, our deviled eggs on the bottom left, and above that, her many containers of sausage and cheese balls and deviled eggs that will go with her. I can’t remember what’s in the dish middle/top, but those are the Hall’s sausage balls under it, and on the right, that’s the turkey thawing for Friday’s meal.
Okay, it was driving me crazy. That Corning Ware bowl contains leftover chicken I chopped for us to use to make chicken salad sandwiches when we all ate lunches at different times. We also still have leftover soup and cornbread. So probably no cooking until Friday. (I’m sure there’ll be photos of that, too–can you tell Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday?)
We haven’t had these in so long, and in the ’70s and ’80s, they were a constant treat: a brownie recipe created by Lynne’s Uncle Austin, and they will melt in your mouth.
Another one of Lynne’s specialties is chocolate chip cookies, and she made a batch for us and a batch to take with her tomorrow, and I don’t seem to have a photo of those.
Finally, I grated (in the food processor) enough cheese/baking mix/margarine mixture to make three batches of cheese straws, which we halved–one for the Hall, one for her to take tomorrow. Lynne and Tom, who was by then off of work, rolled them into doughs and seasoned them with red pepper (hotter for Lynne’s batch, a little milder for ours, because I don’t like too much heat). Because the batches contained a variety of cheese brands and margarines (usually, I use butter, but the actual recipe from Lynne’s sister calls for margarine, so we did that this time), they were different colors and textures. They all taste great, though!
We put in about a dozen hours of kitchen time, and while Lynne handles most of the baking, I handle most of the clean-up. It’s a good thing I actually like washing dishes, because there were a lot of bowls and pans used, washed, and reused throughout the day. Even the dogs are worn out; I can hear them snoring all over the Hall. It’s about to be lights out for me, too. A good day hopefully gives me a good night’s sleep.
Happy Thanksgiving to you all!