Thanksgiving Day

Both of my kids (the 20 year old son in college and the 23 year old daughter living in New York City) were home for the holiday weekend. As much as I love the empty nest, it has been wonderful to have the family all together, which only seems to happen a couple of times a year these days. New York Girl couldn’t wait to move to the big city, but she finds that a trip home to our little patch of woods in Spotsylvania definitely has its charms: the quiet surroundings, the smell of the leaves, the quaintness of the town, weather warm enough to play tennis or go running in the neighborhood in shorts and a T-shirt.

Of course, I planned a Thanksgiving menu that was designed to give everyone the nostalgic holiday tastes they look forward to. I cooked a 20-pound turkey for the 4 of us (Did you know the rule is one pound of turkey per person? Okay, so I overshot), which apparently is what we’ll be eating till Christmas. We’re sometime vegetarians, but I guess for a while we’ll be turko-vegetarians. The one thing I don’t do is bake. Oh, I can throw together some gingerbread from a boxed mix and serve it with ice cream, but don’t go looking for anything really homemade. Well, this year, in a delightful turn of events, my daughter decided to bake an apple pie from scratch. Crust and all. All I can figure is that the baking gene skips a generation. I know living in New York, she’s gotten used to eating some pretty amazing food, and she works for a publishing company that publishes a lot of culinary reference books, so she’s gotten to hobnob with some foodie experts. But when she lived at home, she had very little interest in cooking—well, other than watching all the cooking shows, which we still love to do. To make a long story short (or is it too late?), she baked a beautiful apple pie, using every apple-pie-baking tip she could gather, including the interwoven lattice top. And I was so impressed that I couldn’t resist blogging about it.

Hope your holiday was as delicious (in every way) as mine!