More Thanksgiving

We had a nice, low key day. The night before, I made cranberry pear pie (Evan: from the Artful Pie book) which also had an apple because some of the pears had 'mushed' prematurely. The day of, we slept in, then Tom 'made' turkey and mashed potatoes. His dad got back to town mid-afternoon and Tom picked him up and left yams with him to bake. (Tom's mother was still out of town.) We ate dinner at his dad's then home for an early night since we both worked Friday.

Since then, Tom has created turkey gravy with turkey on mashed potatoes and is working on turkey soup, which apparently takes several days of heating and sitting and heating and sitting and repeat to get the flavors just right. And I made a spiced pumpkin custard. Tom expressed a desire for pumpkin pie but his dad doesn't eat unhealthy things like eggs and cream and butter and I couldn't bring myself to use the recipe in 'Cooking Without Fat'. The custard also avoided the crust problem.

I have ingredients to make chocolate caramel custard when the other is gone.

That's the food report.

Otherwise, my new employee starts on the 1st. I'm trying to figure out what I should have him do. I head to D.C. on the 10th. I'm hoping to avoid a trip to Cleveland in January.