Holiday Memories

This year I volunteered to make the pies and the homemade rolls for our family Thanksgiving Feast. Very homemakery of me, right? You are probably all kinds of impressed. You should be impressed. Just in case that alone does not impress you, let me walk you through last year.

The night before Thanksgiving I baked three lovely pies. I believe that there was a trip to the grocery store at some point, after realizing that not only did I not have a pastry blender to make the crust, but I didn't have a rolling pin. After getting the kitchen supplies under control, I commenced pie baking. My philosophy with baking is generally more is more, so I made sure to heap on the apples in my apple pies. I was making two apple pies, one for me, and one to share with my family. (I highly recommend this to anyone baking something yummy to be taken to a large gathering. After all that work, I want more than a piece or two, darnit.) What happened next I blame entirely on K. Somehow it was her fault. She distracted me. I'm sure of it.


As my lovely pies baked, I would peak in on them occassionaly to ensure that they reached the perfect state of golden brown. As they neared the end of their time in the oven, I took a final peak. Cracking open the oven door, I encountered what some might define as a large billow of smoke. I prefer to call it a small cloud of steam. The smoke alarm in the kitchen, I will assure you, works. Said alarm sounded. K found it incredibly amusing that I took the batteries out to resolve the noise issue.


My pies were not burnt. They looked great. Possibly a little lopsided, but they tasted fine. The steam was rising from the bottom of the oven, where some of the many juices from my delectable pies had dripped. Turns out when your pies are too juicy, sugary juices will pool at the bottom of the oven, brown to a lovely molasses color, and then the sugar will crystalize. Also, steam will rise. Oh, and it might not smell as good as the pie. For some reason K still thinks of this every time I bake. Small incident, I say. In fact, I don't think incident is the right word. Moment. It was a small moment in the Holiday Tapestry of 2007.


So I went to bed, possibly fairly late in the evening, having left the task of baking the rolls to complete the following morning. What could be better than to bake the rolls fresh, and take them, still warm from the oven, over to the house where Thanksgiving was being held. The next morning I began the process of mixing the homemade rolls, combining sugar, water, and yeast to disolve together. Next I was supposed to put in a few other ingredients, like shortening, eggs, and salt. I was doing great until the eggs. You know how in Home Ec. they always said you should crack your eggs into a seperate bowl in case there was egg shell to be fished out, or a strangely defective egg? I am here to recommend that you do that every time you bake. I cracked egg number one into the yeasty mix, and discovered what a rotten egg smells like. I only had two eggs, which was the amount I needed, and I'm sure egg number two was rotten as well. I also had no more yeast, having cracked a rotten egg into the yeast/water/sugar mixture. Immediate action had to be taken.



I ran out to my car and pulled out of my parking space, determined to run to the store and back in ten minutes and remedy my roll situation. As I took a left out of my parking lot, I noticed there was a strange dragging sensation as I accelerated. Pulling my car over, I got out and assessed the situation. The tire was indeed flat.

Fortunately my dad required me to learn how to change a tire years ago when I started driving, and I have changes many tires since then for different reasons. I walked my unshowered self in my flour-covered sweats and t-shirt with my greasey unshowered hair around to my trunk and dug out my little spare donut and my car jack. I commenced the tire changing process, as neighbors drove by and man-truck after man-truck passed me. FINALLY someone stopped to help. It was a woman, probably in her 40's who obviously understands The True Meaning of Thansgiving. I was a little crabby by this point, and a little panicked that I would not even make it to Thanksgiving dinner on time. She took pity on my aggravated state and just about changed my tire for me.

When my car was once again in working order, I got in , drove to the store, bought the first bag of rolls that I saw, and went home to shower, change, load up the pies, and go to my parents' house for dinner. I do believe I pretty much got there in time for dinner. And I am fairly certain not one person ate a roll.