It's Not Thanksgiving Until the Smoke Detectors Go Off

I originally published this post on 11/28/2014.  Enjoy this blast from the past!

It's a tradition in our family.  Burning stuff on Thanksgiving Day.

Before the advent of smoke detectors, a smoky kitchen was just that - a smoky kitchen- the neighbors didn't know, and if you acted fast enough, you could turn on enough fans and open enough windows that nobody else would know.   Now, everybody knows when you have a cooking disaster on your hands.

The weekend before Thanksgiving, we begin to take bets as to when the smoke detectors will go off. Since I start much of the prep on Wednesday, that is the day that we decide that we are most likely to experience a kitchen disaster of some kind.  The person who guesses the correct 2 hour window for the advent of the smoke detectors is excused from washing the dishes after dinner.

Since we were eating at home this year, I decided that I was going to make the pies on Wednesday.

Pies have always been a weak spot for me.  Actually anything with a fruit filling has been a problem for me.  A particularly memorable occasion comes to mind when I attempted a pineapple upside down cake that ended up setting my oven on fire, as well as setting off the smoke detectors in the apartment building and summoning the fire department bright and early one Thanksgiving morning 25 years ago.

Wednesday afternoon, I started on my favorite pie.  It's just not Thanksgiving without a pecan pie.
I mixed the pecans, Karo syrup, eggs, and sugar, and poured it into my carefully prepared pie crust.  I slid the pie into the oven.  As the smell of toasty pecans began to fill the house, I knew that Thanksgiving was finally here.

Special, isn't it?

With 15 minutes left on the timer, I checked the pie.  Imagine my horror as I discovered a pie that was as black as a cinder.  As I hastily pulled the ruined pie out of the oven, the smoke detector began wailing away.

As the pie heaved up and down with a life of it's own, I reflected that this might very well be my most spectacular failure yet.


I still had more pecans, so I decided to give another shot at the pie.  Unfortunately, I had no more gluten free pie crust mix.  So, I decided to make a pecan pie without the crust.

The custard and pecan mix looked beautiful in it's pan.  Even without the crust, it looked fantastic.

While the pecan mix cooled, I began on an Apple Crisp.  I filled the pan with apples, sugar, and cinnamon, and mixed up the crisp part -  with the gluten free oatmeal, gf flour, and vegan butter.  (Good heavens, do we know how to live it up or what?)
 
Remember when I mentioned I have an incredibly bad record with anything involving fruit filling?

15 minutes into the bake time, the smoke detector began wailing away as a thick, black smoke began issuing forth from the oven.

As I was pulling the crisp out of the oven, my next door neighbor came running across the yard, phone in hand, shouting "Do I need to call the fire department, or are you just cooking?"

An aside here, how sad is it, that after 10 years, my neighbors know to come and check when there's black smoke and the sound of smoke detectors before calling 9-1-1?

Somehow, for the 10th year in a row, I was excused from having to wash dishes after Thanksgiving dinner.  Purely coincidence, I assure you.

Graduation Recipe Book

My oldest child is graduating from college next month.  He has lived on campus, and eaten food from the dining hall for the last 4 years. 

This fall, he's heading off to graduate school several hours away from here. 

He's also going to be cooking for himself.

As a result, I am compiling a recipe book for him.

I found this awesome recipe book at Hallmark not too long ago.  It's small, and it's a 3 ring binder.  3x5 inch recipe cards fit inside of the book, and each "page" is a plastic page protector that holds two recipe cards.  You can write front and back on the card, put it into the page protector, and read through both sides.  I love this little album.

You notice it has Mickey Mouse on the cover?  There's a reason for that.  When he was little, and he was getting ready to move to his "big boy" bed, we went in search of just the right sheets for his bed.  After more hours than I care to admit, my little man found his sheets.  (he was about 20 months old at the time.  We were trying to transition him to a big boy bed before his brother arrived on the scene 4 months later.)  He saw these sheets - red sheets- with the black and white Mickey Mouse on them.  He picked them up, hugged them to him, and the match was made.

Since that time, those sheets were his sheets of choice until he went off to college.  Worn down and faded with age and washing, he still has them on his bed at home, and he gets after me if they are not on his bed when he comes home from school.

Anyway, back to the album....

I thought I would collect all of the recipes for his favorite foods.  The stuff he has grown up eating and consistently asks for every time he comes home.

I hadn't realized what a monumental task this was going to be.  I have recipes on slips of paper, taped to the inside of cupboard doors.  I have recipes on paper, shoved into the cabinet next to the dishes.  There's 3 or 4 recipes in one cookbook, and 2 in another, and 4 in another.  A few are in e-mails, and several are stored on my flash drive.

I'm still working on copying the recipes, but I have finally put them all into one place.  Let me tell you, that is the most amazing compilation of recipes you have ever seen.  All of them are my favorites, too.  (I guess that explains why I fall back on them so often!)  From Arroz con Pollo to my mother's recipe for Buttermilk Pancakes, I have a treasure trove.  I sent my Mom a couple of recipe cards, and there, in her flawless penmanship are two of her timeless recipes. Not only is it a treasure because they are her recipes, but - they are written in her own handwriting.  That will forever be a priceless treasure for him.

You know, I've been realizing a couple of things as I've been compiling this book over the past few months.

1) I need to make my very own copy of this book.  I have too many recipes scattered in too many places.

2) While I have the recipes out, and tracked down, I need to go ahead and make copies for the other two children.  Life is uncertain, and I want to make certain that I have the recipes, written in their own handwriting, of the remaining members of the older generation. 

3) I wish I had thought of this 10 years ago, when most of the members of the older generation were still with us.

I know a lot of people don't cook from scratch very often anymore, but with a book like this - a book of easy, quick, favorite meals - I think it would happen a little more often! 

Christmas Presents

We work very hard not to go overboard on the Christmas presents at our house.   Christmas is about the birth of Christ, not the lining of the pockets of various large corporations.

To this end, our goal has always been to have Christmas week together, as a family, spending that most precious gift of all - TIME.

We go to church and have our big Christmas Dinner on Christmas Eve.

We make at least one present for each person.

Anything we buy, we buy from a small local business.  I have fewer problems supporting our locally owned businesses than I do with, say, Wal-Mart.

We spend a lot of time together.

We go into Washington DC to visit the museums, the Kennedy Center (for the free performances), and visit the national tree after dark.

(We come home exhausted, too.)

We play very long games of Monopoly, and Spades, and Uno.

We plan a movie marathon.  (This year, it will be the Hobbit movies before we go see the Battle of the Five Armies in the theater.)

We laugh a lot.

We spend time with extended family.  Maybe not on Christmas Day, but sometime between now and New Year's Day, we will spend time with all of our extended local family.

We drive around and look at Christmas Lights.

This year, I splurged and bought tickets for a play over break.  It will be a great chance to get dressed up, head into the city, and spend time supporting the arts. We're meeting up with friends while we're there, and we are going to go out together for dinner after.

Our kids will still get presents.  There's a pile under the tree, consisting of books, clothes, and kitchen stuff for the kid who will be moving out into his own apartment this year.

But the memories of the time spent together.  NOTHING can replace that!

It's Not Thanksgiving Until the Smoke Detectors Go Off

It's a tradition in our family.  Burning stuff on Thanksgiving Day.

Before the advent of smoke detectors, a smoky kitchen was just that - a smoky kitchen- the neighbors didn't know, and if you acted fast enough, you could turn on enough fans and open enough windows that nobody else would know.   Now, everybody knows when you have a cooking disaster on your hands.

The weekend before Thanksgiving, we begin to take bets as to when the smoke detectors will go off. Since I start much of the prep on Wednesday, that is the day that we decide that we are most likely to experience a kitchen disaster of some kind.  The person who guesses the correct 2 hour window for the advent of the smoke detectors is excused from washing the dishes after dinner.

Since we were eating at home this year, I decided that I was going to make the pies on Wednesday.

Pies have always been a weak spot for me.  Actually anything with a fruit filling has been a problem for me.  A particularly memorable occasion comes to mind when I attempted a pineapple upside down cake that ended up setting my oven on fire, as well as setting off the smoke detectors in the apartment building and summoning the fire department bright and early one Thanksgiving morning 25 years ago.

Wednesday afternoon, I started on my favorite pie.  It's just not Thanksgiving without a pecan pie.
I mixed the pecans, Karo syrup, eggs, and sugar, and poured it into my carefully prepared pie crust.  I slid the pie into the oven.  As the smell of toasty pecans began to fill the house, I knew that Thanksgiving was finally here.

With 15 minutes left on the timer, I checked the pie.  Imagine my horror as I discovered a pie that was as black as a cinder.  As I hastily pulled the ruined pie out of the oven, the smoke detector began wailing away.

As the pie heaved up and down with a life of it's own, I reflected that this might very well be my most spectacular failure yet.

I still had more pecans, so I decided to give another shot at the pie.  Unfortunately, I had no more gluten free pie crust mix.  So, I decided to make a pecan pie without the crust.

The custard and pecan mix looked beautiful in it's pan.  Even without the crust, it looked fantastic.

While the pecan mix cooled, I began on an Apple Crisp.  I filled the pan with apples, sugar, and cinnamon, and mixed up the crisp part -  with the gluten free oatmeal, gf flour, and vegan butter.  (Good heavens, do we know how to live it up or what?)
 
Remember when I mentioned I have an incredibly bad record with anything involving fruit filling?

15 minutes into the bake time, the smoke detector began wailing away as a thick, black smoke began issuing forth from the oven.

As I was pulling the crisp out of the oven, my next door neighbor came running across the yard, phone in hand, shouting "Do I need to call the fire department, or are you just cooking?"

An aside here, how sad is it, that after 10 years, my neighbors know to come and check when there's black smoke and the sound of smoke detectors before calling 9-1-1?

Somehow, for the 10th year in a row, I was excused from having to wash dishes after Thanksgiving dinner.  Purely coincidence, I assure you.

Are You Ready for Christmas?

This phrase has been repeated to me thousands of times over the last week.  I finally had enough last week and mouthed off to someone "Christmas is going to happen whether I'm ready for it or not".

Seriously, exactly what is it that we are preparing for?  The birth of the Christ child?  The celebration of the birth of the Christ child?  Or the annual gift grab that so many families engage in?

We have a birthday party at our house on Christmas day, and have ever since the birth of our first child.  Cake and ice cream.  I wanted the kids to equate Christmas with a birthday party.  Just like their annual birthday party, we have lots of family over.  Before the birthday party begins, we ice the cake, and I let the kids decorate the cake with sprinkles.  Lots of sprinkles.  When the kids were still under the age of 10, it was my contention that the sprinkles on that cake alone were enough to induce a diabetic coma.

After dinner, we always have cake and ice cream.  We put candles on the cake, and we light the candles and sing happy birthday to Jesus. 

My goal, since the beginning, has been to have the kids realize that first and foremost, Christmas is a celebration of Jesus' birth.  We do the same things at our Christmas celebration that we do at our family parties.  Lots of family, and lots of talking, lots of fun.

The presents have always been one of the last things we do.  And, we've always made a point of handing out the presents one at a time and everyone watching while each person opens a gift.  It's never been a grab.  We've never wanted the kids to race down first thing in the morning, rip the paper off, and then race off again.  Within an hour of getting up they'd ask "What do we do now?"  or worse, "I'm bored".

A few years ago, we decided to spin things a little bit more.  Just as the Wise Men hunted for the baby Jesus after his birth, we now hunt for our Christmas presents.  (Keep in mind... our children are 18, 16, and 14.  We didn't start this until the youngest was 12!)   We leave a clue out for the children to find, and we hide more clues all over town.  It's the ultimate treasure hunt.  If you've ever been geo-caching, you know what I'm talking about.  Our clues are fairly well hidden, written in rhyme, and do take a while to find.  Usually, the presents are hidden somewhere around the house or yard, but the kids do enjoy the search, and the time we spend together.

But, when I'm asked "Are you ready for Christmas?"  I am saddened.  I see people rushing, rushing, rushing, but never taking the time to stop, listen, and be thankful just for the ultimate gift that we were given so many years ago.  Christmas isn't something that's wrapped in a bag, or tied up with string. 
And it's definitely not something tangible.

Christmas is about that wonderful gift, so freely given to us all.

In these last few days before Christmas, I invite you to stop, sit down, and spend some time with your loved ones.  It doesn't matter if everything is done "just right".  What matters is that you are able to spend time together, play some games together, and make memories that will last for a lifetime.

We're Really Roughing It

My son and husband are celebrating Senior Week by camping and hiking in the mountains of Tennessee and North Carolina.  I received this picture in a text message yesterday, along with the caption "We're really roughing it!"

Senior week presents a special challenge for parents.  I live in the Mid-Atlantic, and the kids here head to the beach for the week after graduation.  Ocean City is the biggest destination. Thousands of eighteen year olds descend upon the beach every year, full of hormones, youthful energy, and a lack of parental supervision.  Every year, stories filter back of the horrible things that have happened to the kids.  Rapes, pregnancies, and alcohol poisoning dominate the stories.  Kids come back with stitches, broken bones, and STD's caused by bad decisions made under the influence of friends, alchohol, or drugs.

Years ago, when I graduated from high school, we were living in Virginia.  I wanted to go to Virginia Beach with my friends, but my father refused to let me go.  Instead, he offered to take me anywhere I wanted to go in the lower 48 United States.  With no hesitation, I told him I wanted to go to California.  Two days after graduation, he and I were driving down the Pacific Coast Highway in a rented convertible.

Now, here we are, twenty-seven years after my high school graduation.  I remember my Dad telling me when I was arguing about going to the beach: "I remember what I was like at eighteen.  There is no way on God's green earth that you are going by yourself to the beach for a week."  I look at son #1 with Dad's voice echoing in my ears.  Once again, I realize that he was right.

So, we offered our son a trip.  Anywhere in the lower 48 United States.   Just him and his Dad.  He decided he wanted to go camping and hiking on the back country trails of the Smoky Mountains.

We are not the only nut cases who have taken this stance.  I know of another family that pulled their younger children out of school for a week and are currently in Disney World.  I know of another family taking both children- 1 who just graduated High School and 1 who just graduated College - to New Zeland for two weeks.  Another family I know is headed out on a cruise next week as soon as school lets out.  The daughter is currently picking up tons of overtime at work, covering for all of the kids who are currently "Down the Ocean".

As I think through the last 18 years, midnight feedings, broken bones, homework, chores, sports practices and games, cleaning up vomit in the middle of the night, refereeing fights, and trying to figure out where to get poster board at 11:00 at night, it dawns on me:  Those were the years when we were really roughing it.

This post originally appeared in my now defunct "Mom's View" blog.  I moved it to this blog at the request of my kids, who wanted to have all of the various posts that accompanied their high school years in one place.  I've matched the publication dates here to their original post date.  If you're reading these posts, I sincerely thank you for taking the time to go back through them all!