Giving Thanks...and stuffing our faces

Thanksgiving is a day spent with family giving thanks for everything we have. This year, two days before Thanksgiving my grandfather passed away. I will write more on that a little later, but we gave thanks for the 88 years he had on this earth, and the 66 years he had with my grandmother. 

Thanksgiving was hosted this year by my mother. We had a full day of cooking and hanging out in the kitchen. Everyone gets involved in our family. We cook together...parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, nieces and nephews. Like I said before, Thanksgiving is a time of being with family. When you have a large family you need lots of help to feed them. 

Thanksgiving food is my favorite. I love the smell of turkey and gravy and stuffing and vegetables and yams and pumpkin pie and apple pie. It all melds together so well. I always say that I'm going to do a Thanksgiving in June or July but I have yet to go that. Maybe this year I will invite the gals whose husbands are also on deployment and we can have a big Thanksgiving in July. Hmm...sounds like it could be a plan!! 

 Each year we try to make a few new recipes in addition to the traditional Thanksgiving foods. This year we had butternut squash risotto, green chili mac and cheese, an artichoke and spinach dip, and a pumpkin cake in addition to the traditional desserts. Everything was amazing!

 Here is our feast before anyone dives in.

We had a good time enjoying each other's company. Everyone was able to eat their weight in food, okay not really but it sure seemed like it! And desserts were amazing. No matter how much you stuff yourself with that amazing THanksgiving food you always can squish some dessert into the crevices of your stomach! 

Fruit Pizookie

Every been to Oregano's or BJ's?? The dessert option is cookie baked in a deep dish pizza pan topped with ice cream. I have done something similar but to make myself feel a little better I put fruit on top of mine.

Ingredients:

Pillsbury pre-made sugar cookie (you can make your own if you like, but to save time I use pre-made)
1 8oz. brick of fat-free cream cheese (again to make myself feel better)
about 1/4 sugar (truvia or splenda would probably work too)
a dash of vanilla
fruit of your choice: I usually use crushed pineapple, green grapes, and strawberries

Step 1: chop up your fruit and set aside. Preheat oven to temperature on cookie package

Step 2: evenly spread the sugar cookie on a cookie sheet or pizza stone.

Step 3: Bake cookie for 10-15 minutes depending on oven and how done you want it. I like mine to still be a little doughy in the center.

Step 4: Take cream cheese, sugar, and vanilla and blend until smooth. Spread "frosting" on top of cookie after it is slightly cool. It's easier to spread if the cookie is still a little warm because it melts the cream cheese a little bit.

Step 5: Layer fruit and voila! Enjoy!!

Build it up, tear it down

My mom was just our here for a week. We of course went wine tasting (post to follow) and went to see Mike's new squadron, but we also drove down to Santa Barbara. My mom has a brother who lives there and since it's only about 4 hours from my house we decided to go visit for a night. 

Their youngest son is 4 or 5, I'm not quite sure anyway he wanted to build block castles so that he could knock them down, correction: he wanted ME to build block castles so HE could knock them down. Here are my beautiful masterpieces pre-demolition:

My uncle Doug is an amazing cook! Every time I go down there I get to try something new and different and it is always amazing. Well this time he made paella for dinner! And it was so good!! I need to get myself one of these pans and a copy of that recipe so I can make it at home sometime!!

On the way back home mom and I stopped in a little town of Los Olivos for some lunch and meandering. Cute little town! Look at how huge these pumpkins are!!

This is the little patio where we had lunch. I love the trunks of this tree (or maybe vine), it looks so cool. I believe the name of the place was Los Olivos Cafe, and it was really good! Mom had a turkey club with avocado, and I had BBQ chicken pizza. 

I just loved the saying on this sign: 

"Wine improves with age, I improve with wine" So true!

After Los Olivos we pulled off in another little town called Los Alamos to check out a restaurant Doug had told us about that cooked everything over a wood fired oven/grill. We didn't stop to eat there (since we had just had lunch) We ended up finding this:

An antique depot mall & PUB, that's right the sign says and pub. Naturally we were interested so we had to check it out. Like most antique malls it was filled with a bunch of old stuff. It's amazing that all this stuff came from people's house. And it's also amazing what stuff some people have! Anyways, what we were really interested in was the "pub"...

Yep, there was a bar with a billiards table and dart board. They poured wines by the glass and also had some beers on tap. Weird!! But it was indeed an antique mall & pub.

Baking Bread

Mike and I have started to make our own bread. We don't do it all the time, though we have been doing it a little more often lately. It is so yummy to have fresh baked french bread with an italian dinner, or a pot of soup.

This was one of our first batches we ever made. It got a little bit burnt but such is trial and error. It still tasted yummy. We had this with a big pot of spaghetti. One of them we even sliced and rubbed olive oil and garlic to make some toasted garlic bread, yum!!

Once we got comfortable with the really easy, really simple white loaves (all it is is flour, yeast, water, and salt...that's it!!) we started to experiment a bit. I made a honey whole wheat loaf. It was a first attempt. It turned out very pretty, though I don't think the taste was quite right. But we did use it for a few days as sandwich bread and then once it started to get a little stale I made french toast with it.

These were all the ingredients that went into the whole wheat bread, quite a bit more then just 4!

Here it is after it all mixed and kneaded, setting for it's first rise.

This is after it has risen once. You then mold it into whatever shape you are going to use, in this case a load into a loaf pan, and let it rise one more time while the oven is preheating.

And when it is all done this is what you get:

Pretty huh??

I have also made homemade cinnamon roles a few times. This is an old Melde family recipe, and they are quite the commodity at gift exchanges!!

I didn't get any pictures of them after they were baked. But the girls I made them for loved them! I think there were only a few left after our breakfast meet up to watch the Bachelor! (BTW: I still think Jake made the wrong decision!)

As we do the basics more we have started to experiment more. I will try to remember to take pics as we continue to expand. I need to try the whole wheat bread again...