Apple Raspberry Pie
I have this broken up into two parts, the crust and filling. I hope you enjoy and make some yummy pie this Thanksgiving!
Pie Crust -makes a total of 4 pie crusts
Crust Ingredients:
2 cups flour
1 tsp salt
1 cup Crisco
1/2 cup cold water (or Sprite)
Directions:
1. Sift flour add shortening and salt.
2. Cut together.
3. Add cold water a little at a time and mix with fork until dough holds together.
*Don’t overwork dough.
4. Lightly flour counter and rolling pin
5. Take out a handful of dough (about the size of an orange)
6. Coat ball of dough with flour and roll out to thickness of 1/8 in-1/16 in and size of pie pan
7. Put dough in pan, pat in and cut off extra
I found this filling recipe on Allrecipes.com. It was originally a crisp that I converted to a pie and I made just a few changes.
*This filling make for a really big pie. I used my largest pie pan and it was still mounded, this could make 2 smaller pies.
Filling Ingredients:
4 apples
1 cup raspberries
3/4 cup brown sugar
1 tsp flour
Directions
1. Core, peel and slice apples. I used my apple peeler/corer.
2. Put apples, raspberries, brown sugar, and flour in a large bowl and mix together.
3. Pour into pie crust.
4. Add another crust on top, be sure to slice some marks in the top so the juice has somewhere to go.
5. Bake at 350 for about 30 minutes or until crust browns.
Dinner Rolls
True to my word… a wonderful roll recipe from the kitchen of my Grandma. She also makes cinnamon rolls with this recipe and you can freeze these for later use if you want.
2 cups warm milk
2 packages (Tablespoons) yeast
1/2 cup sugar
1/3 cup shortening/butter
2 1/2 teaspoons salt
1 egg
5-6 cups flour
1. Mix warm milk, yeast and sugar. (I set these aside for a minute or two so the yeast can be activated.)
2. Add shortening/butter, salt, egg, and 5-6 cups flour and mix.
3. Let raise 1 hour.
4. Roll out half of the dough into a rectangle shape and cut into wedges. I use a pizza cutter to cut wedges, it’s much fast and easier than using a knife.
5. Roll wedges from wide to thin.
6. Warm some butter (about 1/4 stick) and coat dough with it. Let rise for an hour.
7. Bake at 350 for 20 minutes or until golden or if you have dark non-stick sheets cook at 300 for 25 minutes.
*Note: these rolls cook fast on bottom than the top so once the tops start to get golden take them out or the bottoms will burn.
*For Cinnamon Rolls
Spread butter on rolled-out dough and put a generous amount of cinnamon and sugar and cut into rows. Roll rows and use string or thread to cut into individual rolls.
Thanksgiving Cooking Questions Answered
Thank you so much for those of you who gave advice on thawing and cooking turkey, because it was badly needed! I was doing some turkey day research and found this site: Diana’s Desserts. There was some great information there and I thought I’d share!
Also, for those of you who saw and acted on my Free Christmas Cards post – good job! I just ordered mine and now they are charging a very small shipping fee (less than $4) but the offer is still good and going strong until November 30th so be sure to check it out and get your Christmas Cards for a steal! You can click on my post link above to to go straight to the site click here for Freebies 4 Mom.
Thanksgiving Week
I’m a little freaked out… I’m in charge of the turkey this Thanksgiving, and I’ve never cooked one… did I mention it’s a 25-pounder, that’s frozen? As of midnight last night we moved it to the fridge… I wonder how long it takes a turkey to thaw. Should I leave it out on the counter today and then put it back in the fridge tonight? *Shakes head*
Who knows. Anyway if any of you have any turkey tips I’d love to hear them along with any turkey recipes!
I have to admit I’m feeling a lot of pressure, I mean, the turkey is the main part of the meal right? Turkey and the mashed potatoes are my favorite dishes at Thanksgiving along with rolls – yum! What’s your favorite Thanksgiving dish? This week I’ll be posting my favorite recipes for yummy holiday food: rolls, pie, and I’ll report on my first turkey-baking adventure.
Product Review: Pillsbury Ready to Bake Cookies
I have to say I was impressed overall with the cookies… in fact they turned me into a cookie-monster and I ate EIGHT cookies and then got a stomach ache! But it was worth it! These cookies were really yummy and so easy to make you’ll probably see them on some holiday cookie plates coming from my house this Christmas! So this is a definite yes on the recommendation.
I’ve listed out the pros and cons of the cookies and then you can see some pictures of the product.
Pros:
-EASY to find and follow directions.
-You can freeze the dough and use later.
-It only takes about an hour to thaw frozen dough.
-Taste great.
-Fast, fast, fast!
Cons:
-The chocolate chunks/chips don’t seem to be evenly distributed as it cooks. (I ended up liking this because I’d get a bite or two with a few chocolate chips and then one big bite with tons -YUM!)
-The cookies are kind of small (put perhaps that’s the way the sizing SHOULD be and the reason I never get the two dozen my recipes usually say they make!)
*Don’t forget that after you take the cookies out of the oven you let the cookies sit on the cooking sheet for 2-5 minutes because they are very soft and fall apart. It says this on the directions but… if you’re like me you skim directions rather than read them! Happy eating!
Reindeer Ornaments
Okay, just for the record I’m not trying to give you holiday confusion with Thanksgiving and Christmas stuff all mixed together, but if you wanted to make these ornaments I thought it best to share them before Christmas trees were put up and if you are like me, the day after Thanksgiving the tree will go up and that leaves zero time for my ornament posts… now, on with the post:
I remember growing up we had candy cane reindeer ornaments on our Christmas tree. This year we were looking to save some money and so I decided to make our ornaments and among them I HAD to include the reindeer!
What you need:
Candy Canes
Pipe Cleaner
Pom Pom Balls for noses
Googly Eyes
Ribbon (optional)
Bells (optional)
Hot Glue Gun
I did some more traditional reindeer with the peppermint candy canes.
And I also did some fun, wacky reindeer with cherry candy canes.
My main reason for doing this was that I couldn’t find an all-red set of pom poms. I think as Christmas gets closer you’ll be able to find them. I also only made one Rudolf, so there is only one traditional reindeer with a red nose, the rest have different colored noses. So I thought I’d go all out and have multi-colored, fun reindeer.
How to make Reindeer:
1. Get your pipe cleaner and wrap it around the top of the candy cane twice, then twist the top to secure it. Shape into antlers.
2. Glue on eyes.
3. Glue on nose.
At this point you can call it good and hang these cute guys on your tree. I decided it would be fun to hang them and have them look like they were flying. So the rest of these steps are optional.
4. Cut a fairly long piece of ribbon (be sure to cut the end at an angle) thread on a bell.
5. Pull bell to the middle of the ribbon and wrap around the reindeer’s neck twice then knot.
6. Knot the end of the ribbon. Be sure to leave enough room that you can hang the reindeer on your tree!
You’re done! Doing the ribbon and bells does get time consuming. I ended up doing bells on half the reindeer and just ribbon on the rest. Feel free to even out antlers or curl them at this point. I also did two cyclops reindeer with funny antlers. Have fun!
“Ever” by Gail Carson Levine
*Contains Spoilers*
Overall rating: 2 out of 5; Don’t recommend.
It wasn’t what I was expecting from a more whimsical writer… it reminded me more of The Odyssey (but less tragic) and not nearly as “deep”. The plot and characters are severely underdeveloped. At first I was confused by the switching of narrators but quickly realized my mistake. I thought the story could have been really good, fantastic in fact but the author left too many things unknown. Near the end when Kezi (the chick) had to be nursed back to health didn’t really jive with being an immortal or strike me as something a “god” would need. And then I was confused about how one land could have gods and another wouldn’t. Shouldn’t gods be over the entire earth, not just a land?
I also wondered why they couldn’t tell Kezi parents about her becoming an immortal and bringing them to the land they “oversee” or whatever. I also thought it was weird that they never found Admat (the god Kezi and her parents worship) and thus leave you with the feeling that there is no all powerful God that can be everywhere and who cares about people’s day to day lives. And what kind of god would be okay with human sacrifices? Surely not a real one… The characters were under-developed and it’s weird that the gods don’t know about other lands, etc. Fate doesn’t know that there is some sort of ruler of the…. chicken people/underworld. And that they aren’t dead they are seeking people who have died… it leaves you with the impression that people that are in power, even gods don’t really know what’s going on. Not really a boost in the spirituality department. It was an easy read. I finished it in one day, but it’s not something I would reread or suggest to someone.
Gratitude Wreath
I saw this on No Time for Flashcards and thought it would be a WONDERFUL activity for Thanksgiving and would be an easy and fun activity to do after the big feast is over and people are settling down, or in the days ahead to talk about the meaning of Thanksgiving and what it means to be thankful.
On the No Time for Flashcard’s wreath they say thank you in several languages but I thought it would be fun to have our family write down things we are thankful for in our lives.
What you need:
Construction Paper
Glue
Crayons/Pen
Paper Plate
Scissors
1. Trace Hands
2. Cut out hands and write what you are thankful for on them. While I cut out hands my husband worked with our son to write down things he was thankful for.
3. Cut out the middle of your paper plate.
4. Glue finished hands on plate. I used hot glue so we didn’t have to wait long before our son got to play with the wreath. We also put ours on our harvest display, it’s a little big for the pine tree but that’s okay! We also put our hand turkey from yesterday on the top of the wreath.
Hand Turkey
My little boy loves drawing turkeys with his hands so I decided we’d make them really look like turkeys… well kind of. I still don’t know of any multi-colored turkeys but that’s okay!
What you need:
Construction Paper
Scissors
Glue,
Crayons
Hands 
1. Choose what color you want your turkey feathers to be.
2. Trace hands on construction paper.
3. Cut out hands and layer on top of each other with glue in between each layer.
4. Cut out an “8″ shape of whatever color you want your turkey’s body to be.
5. Glue to turkey feathers.
6. Cut corner off orange or yellow paper for a beak and a heart shape out of red paper for a waddle.
7. Glue beak and waddle, draw eyes with black crayon.
8. Cut out legs and color (optional).
9. Let dry!
Pine Cone Ornaments
The great thing about pine cone ornaments is that you can be as simple or extravagant as you want! These are the supplies I used but feel free to do whatever you want. Spray Glitter would make these a snap or adding sequins would be fun too! Or you can just buy scented pine cones, tie ribbon on them and hang them in your tree without any extra decorating. Mine are cinnamon scented. We’ll have a mix of decorated and non on our tree. These pine cones are great to do during the day for a craft or for family night activity.
Supplies:
Pine Cones
Ribbon
Glitter Glue
Pom poms (or sequins, bells or whatever you want)
1. I would suggest putting your ribbon on first. We didn’t do that and were sad when our pine cones were covered in glitter glue and we couldn’t get the ribbons on without dipping them into the glue repeatedly! I also tried to pick out cones that had some stem I could use to tie the ribbon on. If yours don’t, try hot gluing your ribbon on.
2. Decorate
3. Let dry. The glitter glue does take a while to dry to have a place prepared that you’ll be able to hang these while they dry.
Here are some pictures of our creations.
