Whats going on?

My husband has become brainwashed.  Before we got married he didn't really care about Thanksgiving, one year him and his mother went to a health food store and picked up a couple items from the cafe and called that dinner.  When he told me what he was doing for his Thanksgiving dinner I thought it was very blasphemous and was shocked that someone would do something like that for a Thanksgiving dinner.  I grew up very differently, VERY differently.  Every year we go to my grandma's house and have the traditional dinner, complete with pie and ice cream for desert.  A couple times Ross has scoffed at my idea of Thanksgiving dinner.  However, over the past 4 years, since he has been stuck in Utah for the holidays, he has been coming to dinner with my family and I heard one of the most shocking statements from him a couple weeks ago.  He told me he was converted to the traditional Thanksgiving dinner and that's the way Thanksgiving should be.  I was pretty shocked, that's for sure.  And since he made that statement all he talks about is Thanksgiving and how many days away it was and how he was looking forward to the food (he even made a request to my mom for extra stuffing so he can eat as much as he wants).  It has gotten so bad and its brought up so much that yesterday I told him I am not discussing anything about Thanksgiving Day, Thanksgiving dinner, Thanksgiving food, any kind of countdown or anything to do with the day.   He is getting more excited for Thanksgiving than for Christmas, give him time on that and I think he will come around.

Ross and I were raised very differently in very different parts of the country.  A few times it has caused a few wrinkles but for the most part its great, we both have very different ideas and traditions to bring to the table and as we have started our little family its great to try to pull from the different traditions we both grew up with and make our own traditions.  I think its fun to try to pull some of the Southern traditions in, some are pretty different from Utah, which makes it more fun. 

Man I'm Ambitious

Yesterday my day revolved around my cursed pumpkins. I haven't had much luck with them from the start. The pumpkin plants almost died when I planted them, then they grew out of control and took over part of my tomatoes. I had over 40 blossoms and lots of little pumpkins start but the stinking bugs in my garden decided to eat all but two. Fortunately there is only 2 people in our house so both of us were able to carve a pumpkin. I wanted to use the pumpkins for puree so to keep them fresh we carved them late Saturday afternoon and I think they turned out pretty good if I do say so myself.

Even with all the wind and rain we had on Saturday night they stayed lit and looked pretty cool.

Yesterday I had decided I needed to get the pumpkins taken care of before they started to go bad. I love pumpkin cookies and pumpkin rolls and basically anything pumpkin at this time of the year and I figured I had these two pumpkins and honestly how hard could it be to make puree from them so I won't have to buy it. I thought I could find out how to do it online and it would be a breeze, I have never been so wrong before in my life. Online it said to slice it into quarters and bake them at 350 for one hour. I tried that and it ended up taking 2 hours for one half of my pumpkin to bake to the point of being able to remove the "meat". During those 2 hours the temp in my house continued to rise to a very unbearable heat. When it was finally done I then scraped the meat out and put it in my food processor then into freezer bags. As soon as I took the first half out of the oven I put the 2nd half in and it took another couple of hours, luckily I was able to go for a run while it was baking. On the 2nd pumpkin I decided to try a different method. I tried what we did last weekend when we made applesauce. I sliced the pumpkin and then cut the skin off and put them in a pot with a little water to steam. If anyone decides to puree their own pumpkin, THIS IS THE WAY TO DO IT. It was a bazillion times easier and like 2 years quicker. It didn't smell as good as the baking pumpkin did but who cares when it takes 40 min start to finish versus 4 hours. All in all I spent 6 1/2 hours doing pumpkins, but I do have 27 cups of puree to use that I won't have to pay for.

Now I want to try to make some cookies or pumpkin roll with it to see how it works compared to the canned stuff. I will just remind myself that it was free.

My other project this weekend was some cookies I made. I found this recipe online and wanted to try it but didn't have a reason to just make cookies. I like cookies but with just Ross and I its hard to eat a whole bunch of cookies, or sometimes its too easy to eat a whole bunch of cookies and we didn't need them in the house. (I usually end up giving baked goods to my neighbors when I am in a baking mood, however, these weren't something I wanted to take to my neighbors) My mom was doing a Halloween dinner while my grandma was down so I volunteered to make them and my sister and I got together on Saturday to try them. I think they turned out pretty good, I almost had a couple of my nephews convinced they were real witch fingers.