Thanksgiving, Take One

I know you are all DYING to know how my apple pie turned out. Well, it was a success!! And no one was more surprised about that than me. On Saturday, this greeted me as I looked out my kitchen window:

Brrrr... I guess it really is winter :(

I started out my morning of baking by preparing Pioneer Woman's No-Knead Dinner Rolls. The dough had risen substantially since I put it in the fridge (which was good, since there wasn't much of it to begin with - the dough had only filled about 1/2 of this bowl when I put it in).

I put the little balls of dough in the muffin tins and left them to rise, and moved on to peeling and slicing apples. This took forever. Literally, forever.

A key ingredient in the pie filling

Then I took out my pie crust... let it warm up slightly, and attempted to roll it out. Wasn't really happening so much... it just kind of was falling apart. I decided to re-form it into discs and try again, and that seemed to do the trick of keeping it together at least enough to form a semblance of crust. It wouldn't win any beauty contests, but at least the crust pretty much covered the bottom and top of the pie... and I only had to piece together a few areas. I put it in the oven and hoped for the best. I used this recipe from Simply Recipes because I have always had good luck with her recipes in the past.

Sweet Success!

It was about 11am when I finally put the pie in the oven, and I still had to bake the rolls, and we had to drive approximately 40 minutes to my in-laws house. Oops - we ended up getting there RIGHT at 1pm, which was when we were supposed to eat. I don't think we ended up eating until close to 2pm though, so it was all good.

The rolls turned out all right, but burned a little on the bottoms, and I really don't know why. I even took them out 4 minutes early. They looked beautiful on the tops, but then when I took them out of the tin, I was saddened by the sight of the black bottoms. We still ate them though, and they still tasted great. I am going to try these again to see if I can do it right.

Mine didn't rise as high as Pioneer Woman's but I had to bake them anyway because of the lateness. I let them rise for almost 3 hours though...




Grrr...

The amount of food at this Thanksgiving gathering was nothing short of astounding. As I mentioned before, we were all supposed to bring something... so here was the menu:
Turkey, Stuffing, Mashed Potatoes, and Lefse - prepared by my in-laws Greg and Lisa
Green Bean Salad - Becca (Sis In Law (SIL) #1)
Sweet Potatoes - Joe (BroIL, Becca's hubs)
Dinner Rolls - Erin (me)
"Cranberry" Jell-o - Amanda (SIL #2)
Squash - Laura (SIL #3)
Garbage Salad - Matt (Laura's boyfriend)
Apple Pie - Me
Pumpkin Pie - Laura
wine - Steve (BIL)

I guess that sounds pretty typical for Thanksgiving, but I was so full after eating that I didn't eat again until the next day. I almost felt ill. But in a good way.

A few photos from the day...

cute table settings!


How many people does it take to assemble a salad??


Carving the turkey


Garbage salad


They are so in love


Green Bean Salad


Battle of the salads. I liked both, for different reasons. How diplomatic of me :)


Roasted Acorn Squash


Ben and his Poppa


These were damn good. Here is the recipe.


I love stuffing with all of my heart.


No holiday meal is complete without Jell-O.


Everyone busy preparing the meal. Except Steve, who is just sitting there chilling.


My plate of food, wine, and mountain dew to wake me up after my tiring morning :)


This picture had to be taken because Becca wants her mom to replace the current photo of all of us... because "Amanda and Laura look better now than they did then." So much for Minnesota nice :)


My slice of pie - this pie was GREAT, I highly recommend the recipe!


Laura's pumpkin pie made from REAL pumpkin

Okay, that's probably enough :) Stay tuned for Thanksgiving, Take Two this Thursday!