Thanskgiving and Family

October is the month that Canadians celebrate Thanksgiving. It's celebrator day always falls on a Monday, but most of our family up here actually celebrated it Saturday or Sunday.

We had two wonderful Thanksgiving meals this month. We celebrated it with Dan's family in Claresholm, Alberta Saturday. We had the traditional meal, turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes...After dinner we played a really fun card game called "Fruit Salad"---and no, no one was throwing fruit around the kitchen. OK maybe it's a blonde thing but when they told me what they wanted to play, I invisioned having marchino cherries and peaches thrown at me, hahaha. We had a really nice time, even though there was no food fight.

Sunday we celebrated the holiday at another of Dan's family home in Raymond, Alberta. We had ham, stuffing, green bean casarole, salad (3 kinds), squash (I love sweet squash), scalloped potatoes---kind of traditional, alittle different than I'm used to, but again it was good food and good company.

Sunday every one was asked to bring a dish and a dessert. The dish we finally settled on was salad, which we had plenty of left overs. We like salads, so that was good as well as it's good for us.

Ok so we had to bring a dessert. So whenever I cook for someone I become a bit of a perfectionist---I guess what I mean, I want the food that I'm making to be the best any one has ever tasted----I know so unrealistic, but hey that's me.

So I had to make the perfect dessert. The recipes, would either be pumkin bars (so yummy), apple crisp (family tradition), or peanut butter cookies. So how do you decide which recipe will be worthy enough to bring to a family gathering. Pumkin bars couldn't be made becuase we didn't have enough cream cheese and it was Sunday and we don't shop on the Sabbath. It was down to the last contestansts. Apple Crisp or Peanut Butter cookies---

Apple Crisp is my families long time tradition and without my family being here, I didn't really feel like making it. The recipe that we use is one that my mom got from her, old Betty Crocker child's cookbook. The cookbook was her's when she was a little girl. So many times when I've seen or tasted Apple Crisp outside the home, it for some reason has oatmeal in it??? That's ok tasting, but I perfer our recipe---it's richer tasting---very few ingredients---apples, four, cinnamin, sugar, butter and water---yummy yummy!!!

So the Peanut Butter Cookies won out----I knew that at least one person would love them. These cookies are my husbands favorite. I knew if no one else liked them that it would be ok, because we would have left overs and Dan would eat them.

While I was preping the cookies I started to remember some of my earliest memories of my Gramma Witt. I remember sitting on the floor in her kitchen and being allowed to open all the cupboards that I could reach and taking out all the tupperwear and playing with it. I seem to remember her encouraging us (my cousin and me) to play with it all. Once there was a woman in the kitchen with us, I can't remember who it was, becuase I was too young, but I remember her trying to stop us from going into the cupboards and I remember Gram stoppng her and chidding her.

Gram never per say sat me down to teach me to cook, but what she did was make food in the kitchen while I was visiting. Oh yes some of her favorites; meatballs, soups, baked beans, pies, cookies, and any thing cottage cheese--honestly I think she had an opsession over cottage cheese. The first recipe she tried was home made Mac and Cheese---she found a recipe from a cookbook. I think I liked it the first time, but soon after that she changed it to make it "different"---ohm, yep different. Than there was the cottage cheese jello--that was a common holiday food item---oh don't forget the fruit with that. I'm not sure when, why, or how it happened but yes, "believe it or not" she made cottage chesse pie. To say the least I really don't care for the texture of this ingredient. But yep that was Gram.

While musing over the memories of gram in the kitchen and me making my cookies, I broke down in mighty sobbs. What a site it must have been to see, if any one had been looking. You see, Gram is now living in a nursing home, fading away phsyically and mentally and I'm so far away. I lemented that I missed her birthday this year, I didn't even get the opportunity to wish her a happy birthday.

When I started to cry I had a revelation----my family is a disfunctional family, hahahaha, well I've known that for a long time. What I finally realized, is that every one has some kind of disfunctional family....I mean what does disfunctional mean? It means that my family is different than your's, some of them act a bit different than your family members, so what, it's my family. I lay claim to my family, no matter how different they are. My family is a good family to be a part of. They are a small band of members. My uncle lives in Florida, my Gram and Mom live in WNY, my cousin (who raerly came to family gatherings) lives in WNY too, my Granpa Witt passed away when I was 16.

What my family gave me was unconditional love. They gave me an appreciation for; education, nature, service, prayer, church, scriptures, cooking, and being kind to others. So as we leave this month (October in Canada) of thanks and enter another month of thanks (November in USA), I say my thanks to my family for blessing my life so aboundantly. I say my thanks to my Heavenly Father for giving me my particular family.

Almost no Dessert

I was given the assignment for Relief Society (I'm a member of the board) to make a dessert in the crock pot for RS homemaking Wednesday night. I have several Gooseberry Patch recipe books that have just slow cooker recipes. Every one of those books have dessert recipes. Again as always I wanted to wow the people I was cooking for so I looked and looked to see what would be the best sounding thing. Most of the recipes that I was thinking of required 3 eggs, oops, we only had 2 eggs and I didn't have the time to go out to get any.

So I looked again and I found a Carmel pie that the only 2 ingredients were 2 cans of condensed milk and 1 Graham Cracker pie crust. I thought that sounds pretty easy, but wait I don't have a pie crust so I will make one. Than I realized that 1 pie probably couldn't feed all of the women that would be coming. What do you do with that problem? Of course make bars instead of a pie---make the crust thinner and longer and place it in a large pan--problem solved.

The recipe said to coat the slow cooker with cooking spray--we didn't have that so I used Crisco. Than it said to cook on low for 4 hours and very 15 mins stir---opps, they didn't tell me to not get any on the sides and to make sure the bottom was being stirred fairly well--what happened? Well pretty much a mess ensued. The sides of the crock pot had a crust of burnt condensed milk on it that took a sharp knife and very hot water to take it off.

In the middle of the recipe I did notice the dark crust and the smell couldn't escape my husbands astute nose. The middle of the pan was good still, I just now couldn't stir any where near the edges, because I knew if I did the burnt part would get into the recipe and than it would ruin the whole recipe. I didn't have enough time to cook up a different recipe.

While the recipe was cooking, I tasted it to see if it tasted like Carmel---nope so I put about 2 Tsp of  Rogers Golden Syrup (a product only found and sold in Canada---similar to corn syrup).

The crust I ended up making was for one pie but I was able to stretch it into a cake pan just fine. I got the recipe from my Red Betty Crocker recipe book. It's one of my most reliable recipe books

Easy Pie Crust

by Betty Crocker

1 1/3 c Wheat flour

1/3 c oil

1/2 tsp salt

2 Tsp water

Mix the 1st 3 ingredients together like any pie crust and than slowly sprinkle the water in as you are stirring. Place in a cake pan and push down evenly. Poke fork all around the crust to make holes. Cook for 4-5 mins at 350 degrees

I was still concerned that the recipe wasn't going to taste enough like Carmel or sweet enough. When the crust came out of the over to cool, I sprinkled a light layer of brown sugar over it to melt. When the Carmel was done I carefully took it out of the slow cooker making sure I didn't have any of the burnt part. I placed the Carmel in the cooled crust.

I had my husband borrow a cup of chocolate chips from my sister-in-law (she lives right around the corner and she is very kind). He came home with more than a cup of chocolate chips, probably 2 cups and a bar of homemade soap.

I sprinkled 1/2 cup of chips on top of the hot Carmel and let them melt. After awhile the chips melted and I took a knife and spread them around the Carmel so it looked kind of like light layer of frosting. I allowed the "bars" to cool on the counter. I placed them in the fridge to get nice and cold. Just before the meeting I asked if Dan wanted to try my recipe he said without any hesitation "yes"---well the recipe past the husband test and my taste test---incredible sweet, sticky and yummy!!! One of my other sister-in-laws came by, as I was getting ready to leave, with some eggs that she bought from the Hutterite's. I told Dan give her some of the dessert and she said it tasted good but she would like it again with a shortbread crust instead.

After the meeting I had some leftovers so I brought some of them to my friend---she liked the crust that I had made, but she doesn't like shortbread.

Lessons learned?

1) have in mind what recipe you are going to use for an event a number of days before

2) Mom's wisdom "don't try a new recipe for the first time for company, just in case it doesn't work"

3) Give yourself enough time for the recipe just in case something goes wrong and you have to make something else

4) When condensed milk is cooked in the crock pot it becomes yummy Carmel---but it can burn and become very difficult to clean up after

KELLY'S 2DIE4 NO FLOUR, LOW SUGAR PB COOKIES

KELLY'S 2DIE4 NO FLOUR, LOW SUGAR PB COOKIES

My husband does not normally like cookies, because "they are too sweet," he also hates the idea of using white flour. I invented this recipe with less sugar and no flour, just for him. He loves them, he ate a 1/2 dozen in one afternoon, he also named the cookies---Honey I love you.

Ingredients
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1/4 brown sugar
1/4 cup shortening
1/4 cup of softened butter (not melted)
1/4 cup of natural peanut butter
1/2 cup of chunky peanut butter
1 large egg
1 1/4 cup oat flour
3/4 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
extra granulated sugar

Recipe
1) preheat oven to 350
2) combine sugars, shortening, butter, peanut butters, and egg and mix together
3) add all dry ingredients to the mixture and mix
4) roll mixture into 1 inch balls and place onto baking sheet approx 2 inches apart
5) flatten cookies in a crisscross pattern with fork dipped in the extra granulated sugar
6) bake cookies for 9 min

serving size: approx 3 dozen

Recipe hints:
1) Oat flour---you can either make your own or buy it---to make it you just have to place oatmeal flakes into your blender and grind the flakes into flour. You can use either quick or rolled oats, it does not really matter.
2) you don't need to use natural peanut butter, if you don't you will need 3/4 cup of regular peanut butter, but the natural makes every thing taste even more peanut buttery