Thanksgiving Part 1

As I mentioned in my last post, we celebrated Thanksgiving with Ben's family on Sunday. This Thanksgiving celebration reminded me a lot of the one we had 3 years ago, mostly because I decided to make apple pie again :) This time, I shook things up by attempting a lattice crust! I am really not detail oriented enough for that job though, despite both Ben AND I working on trying to go every other piece over and under, there were still many mistakes :) Oh well - it tasted good!

I tried a different recipe, from Annie's Eats this time. She also has a helpful tutorial on how to make a lattice pie crust, that probably would have been useful if I had actually followed the directions :) I do think I slightly preferred the recipe I used last time - it just seemed a little more "Thanksgiving-y" to me.

I told Ben he could help me out by cutting the apples - he was pretty pleased when he discovered that his mom has a tool that peels, cores and slices an apple in one fell swoop :) (DORKIEST VIDEO EVER!!)

My dough - I made this the night before and just brought it over.


How perfectly sliced!


Steve wanted to help roll dough


You can note all my mistakes here :)


Sure is pretty still! It got really runny and was hard to slice though.


Sadly, forgot ice cream so we had to settle for freshly whipped cream instead - darn :)

I also signed up to make cranberry sauce, and used this recipe. That's one of those things that I like to have a tiny bit of, but don't really care much about. I don't even care if it's the stuff from a can - I actually like that quite a bit, but figured I might as well try my hand at making it from scratch! This was really easy and delicious! Ben reports that was quite good on a turkey and cheese sandwich too.

Simmering away, it smelled delicious!


Very pretty, and gelled up quite nicely after sitting out for a few hours!

Of course, in addition to the food, I also have a great many photos of some adorable children :)

Ben's parents hooked Annie up with an old disconnected cell phone - she was seriously in heaven - this is her taking a picture of me taking a picture of her :)


Such joy can be found in boxes!


Sam, Steve and Steve's old Tigger


Annie was very excited to see Grace. As you can see, Grace did not share her enthusiasm :)


Annie was tickling Grace - got lots of laughs from the rest of us, zero from Grace - tough crowd, that one!


At Grandma's house, Annie is allowed to play with glass pitchers and actual water - such fun :)


Cousins with their PKU friendly graham crackers - this is basically the closest I got to them all looking at me...


Family reading time


Annie watching the carving...


A few of Ben's cousins came too, with their tiny babies! Becca always goes right for them... I, however... do not :) Ha!


I just want to show how small this table was to start - soon you will see how HUGE it got!


Yup, same table! Crazy!




PKU friendly green bean casserole from cookforlove!


The toddler portion of the table


Annie really does love sneaking into babies carseats!


The whole crew!


Pretty sure Grace enjoyed her mashed potatoes


Gabe decided he really liked Annie :) Annie was less than thrilled - ha!


Lots of babies!


Annie just wanted to touch the babies - hope she is as gentle with her baby brother!!


Gabe is only 4.5 months older than Annie, by the way. He looks like he's 2 years older or something!!


Annie even got to hold baby Fiona!


Ended the night playing cards - a great pre-Thanksgiving celebration!