Pie Overload!

When co-workers and acquaintences, (even my parents!) ask what a vegetarian eats on Thanksgiving, I have taken to announcing "WHATEVER WE WANT!" That said, I am dozing on Tofurkey-induced tryptophan!
I am so stuffed right now, but I still want more! My tongue says YES, but my belly (and pants) say NO! My favorites were the tofurkey itself and my new cranberry sides. Zipper's favorites were the crunchy french onions (nearly burned perfectly) from the green bean cassarole, along with everything fresh and/or crunchy. I tried hard to avoid the starch overload that I usually succumb to.

My new sad favorite is the ABC series Pushing Daisies. Sad because it's been canceled in only its second season. But I am inspired by the main character's gift of pie making (and the other main character's great love of cheese). So our Thanksgiving holiday really started last night when I got it in my head to bake not the two pies we had planned on, but four. So I did a pumpkin pie (plus two mini pies thanks to some leftover pie crust), a pumpkin cheesecake, Zipper's favorite blueberry pie, and an apple pie for myself (I don't like pumpkin). I can't believe I've never made an apple pie before! I didn't have one in my recipe book, and had to go hunting for one, but this one was phenomenal!

Apple Pie:

3/4 c. sugar

1/2 tsp. cinnamon (heaping half-teaspoons, if you're me)

1/4 tsp. nutmeg

1/4 tsp. ground cloves

5-6 apples (firm, tart, peeled, cored, sliced) I used champagne apples and gala

2 Tb. butter

Toss apple slices with sugar & spices. Pour into a pie crust and dot with pieces of butter. Put the top crust on, cut vents in crust, brush crust with a little soy milk and sprinkle with sugar. Bake at around 375 for about an hour.

I am also delighted to have kitchen-tested a couple of cranberry recipes. I'm sure by now, everyone's already picked their positions on the jelly can and sauce teams. My mom's always experimented with various recipes, and Zips likes to eat them fresh, raw, unsweetened. While I do enjoy the popping noise they make, and the fact that they resemble tiny apples, I simply can't do it. SO, I found the easiest and tastiest recipes for both a fresh raw cranberry relish, and a simmered sauce:

Cranberry Relish:

2c. fresh cranberries

2 skinned, cored apples

1 whole, seedless orange (skin on, chopped)

Pulse in a food processor until combined and relish-y. Add

2 c. sugar

Mix until combined and store at room temperature until sugar dissolves.

Cranberry Sauce:

1 c. sugar (more if ya can't take it)

1 orange

1 Tb. grated ginger (use a microplane zester)

zest the entire orange into sugar. Add juice of the same orange into a pot with the sugar and ginger. Simmer until dissolved and add

4 c. cranberries

Simmer until all the cranberries pop. Yum.

Here Zipper and I lounge in front of the Garfield Thanksgiving Special (the one where Garfield has to go on a diet just before the big eatin' day).

Here Zipper helps clean up. I am thankful she makes me laugh so often.

Even Better Than Halloween

This weekend must've been one of the busiest of the year around here. Between NMSU's homecoming football game (where we got trounced by Boise State 49-0) (hey, last year we got trounced 58-0, so it is a kind of improvement), Halloween, a Carrie Underwood concert on campus, Dia de los Muertos, the local Renaissance Faire, if you count the early voting that ended on Saturday, my head is spinning!

So we spent Halloween giving out vast quantities of chocolates and organic fruit suckers (mmmm.. mango tango!). Saturday we went to both the Dia de los Muertos festival in Mesilla as well as the downtown farmer's market. I've never been to a day of the dead, having just heard about the holiday, and appreciating the asthetic of calavera sculptures, paper banners, and nichos or shadow boxes (take that! Joseph Cornell!).

In any case, it was amazing! The little plaza square was packed with tables and altars filled with photographs, mementos, offerings to deceased family members and pets. Often these were paired with an 8x10 printed description of the person's life and death. It was often touching, sometimes funny. One of the most memorable was a shrine that featured this skeleton decked out with a lap tray that included a portrait of its subject, along with a tv dinner and clicker. It was so personal and specific a tribute. Another invited viewers to eat a piece of their grandfather's favorite candies (those chewy caramel squares), and to ring a bell.

Then there was a woman selling sugar skulls. When I bought a couple, she directed us over to the altar she had created. It took a second for me to put together that if she had constructed an altar, that meant that she had lost someone. It was her son, who died in 2000. He was actually born the same year I was. It was a difficult and wonderful public kind of intimacy (sounds contradictory, I know). Here I was buying a decorated skull made of sweetness, sharing a stranger's grief. This makes me want to participate in a more personal way next year.
There were some that were altars for mass deaths. In addition to a large installation displaying what must've been thousands of paper cranes for the American death toll in the Iraq war, there were also at least two altars to commemorate the women murdered in Juarez.

It was pretty emotional. One of the past posters said "To Remember is to Live"-- I think that's a nice way to acknowledge how it's not morbid, but rather life affirming. One of our favorite (super LIFE AFFIRMING) booths was run by a pair of sisters (Kristi from Dexter, NM and Konsuela from Roswell, NM) who do ceramics, make t-shirts, and had several kick ass calendars. They were both such characters (think Paula Deene, then multiply by two, amplify the volume and laughter, make them arty, and park them in the southwest handing out skull lollipops!). We loved them so much, we had to come back on Sunday just to buy their other calendar. (We came too early and even hung out and waited around just for them to open up.) They even pointed out that we had to visit the booth next door and check out their cool stuff.

Which we did, but nothing could beat Kristi and Konnie.

Okay, finally. I don't mean to brag/gloat but to my friends in Syracuse, NY and Wisconsin, and even Indiana. It is the first week of NOVEMBER and I bought home grown watermelon (seedless but SUPER SWEET), tomatoes, green tomatoes, and canaloupe. And it is sunny and clear.

We are fortunate indeed!