Happy Thanksgiving to all!

I hope your Thanksgiving was as marvelous as ours was!

We spent most of the day preparing the feast -- including a turkey that Rod suprised me with after we agreed that a turkey simply wasn't in the budget this year.

But Rod know that for me, Thanksgiving just isn't Thanksgiving without a turkey. (He's heard my "hotdogs for Thanksgiving" story often enough...) So he sought out a smaller bird, and not as high quality--and by gum, we had our turkey!

To that we added what feastables we had in the house or garden -- cranberry raspberry sauce, mashed potatoes and gravy, a medly of carrots, beets, and butternut. (I had only one pan left, so we cooked them together. They were pretty, but I have to admit that it could have been a Valentines day dinner, so red and white was our feast.) We followed it up with pumpkin chocolate pie in a walnut crust.

It was the first holiday meal I can remember making in which everything turned out and it all came to the table at the same time!

After dinner, we made new leaves for our Gratitude tree and posted those.

And then, finally, we worked on our holiday cards. Jack got all of the card he has finished autographed and sealed into envelopes. I got mine as far as into envelopes, but I still have to finish putting the appropriate greeting on each one.

(I found Merry Christmas and God Jul stamps this year, so more of my friends can have the greeting appropriate to what they're celebrating. Next year I hope to add Hanukkah -- though Kwanzaa will wait until I know someone who celebrates it.)

Then Jack has six more cards to complete his list and I have *16*!!! I thought I was just about done, but no.

While I was looking for a walnut pie crust recipe, I came across this:

Sweet Walnut Crust:
1 cup walnuts
¾ cup chopped dried apricots
¼ [2-3] chopped dates, or raisins
1/3 cup maple syrup

Place the first three ingredients in the food process and process into a moist meal. While the processor is running slowly pour in the agave until the mixture turns into a ball. Press sweet crust into 9-inch pie dish to form piecrust.

It sounds Amazing! We didn't have the ingredients to make it this time...but maybe for Yule.

This was the pie recipe we settled on:

Walnut Pie Crust:

2 cups of ground nuts
3 tablespoons of butter
4 tablespoons of coconut oil
1/2 cup sugar
1 tablespoons molasses
2 tablespoons cake spice

Mix well and press into two buttered pie pans.

Pumpkin Custard Filling

2 cups (cooked) pureed pumpkin
9 pastured egg yolks, beaten
1 cup of grass-fed heavy cream
1 cup of grass-fed sour cream
1/2 cup maple syrup
1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
1/2 nutmeg, ground
1/3 of a vanilla bean, ground
pinch of sea salt
1 ounce of baking chocolate
2 ounces dark, semi-sweet chocolate
a small handful of raw coco nibs

Mix the all ingredients except the chocolate until they're light and fluffy and almost ready to peak.

Whir the chocolate in the food processor until it's little pebbles.

Stir the chocolate into the pumpkin foam.

Topping
a handful of walnuts
a handful of pecans
2 tablespoons butter
1 tablespoon sugar
1/4 teaspoon molasses
1 teaspoon cinnamon

Warm the nuts, sugar and spices until the sugar is melted into the butter and it all smells faintly of caramel, making sure to stir well so that the nuts are covered.

Pour the pumpkin into the crusts. Drizzle the toping over it.
Bake at 350 F for 45 minutes.

It turned our amazingly well!