Our bounty was great

Well, I hope your turkey day was as delicious as ours! Q helped out and learned alot about how to make this feast.

Pics below:

Bread that Q helped me make.



The Turkey and some fixings.



This is what it looked like outside when I got up at 6:30 to start the bread dough. A lovely delicate snow all day long, was amazing.


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Apple Pie Pastry Purses

Like I said earlier, we started on our Thanksgiving prep today and we just finished our desserts!

Q made these pastry purses. Arnt they yummy!

Enjoy!







(Recipe, as per request. This is not meant to be a professional recipe :-) and I made it up myself. As you can see, its not hard to do)

This is quite easy, the hard part is not eating them immediately.

My 9 year old made the ones you see above.

Ingredients:

- Store bought pastry dough (I have made this from scratch before and it IS good but I was not in the mood to make pastry dough for like three days straight).

- Apple Pie Filling in a can

- Egg wash (make 30 mins before baking (or overnight) - 1 egg, some salt, a bit of milk to thin.. beat the bejezuz out of it, let sit in fridge 30 mins)

Directions:

Preheat oven to 400F

Cut squares of pastry dough (dunno - 3 inches per side?), roll out a bit, cut little strips too for the purse. Keep these as cool as possible and re-fridge it all before baking.

Put a dollip of apple pie filling in center, bring opposite corners of square together and then pinch just so to form them into little purses, add the "string".

Brush with egg wash, spring with granulated sugar.

Put on cooking sheet with parchment paper, cover with foil, bake until they look like the pic above. This varies per oven, make sure not to burn the little guys (check often). Dont take out too soon else you will have raw dough in the neck of the purse.

Let cool a bit or they will burn you when you bite into them. Keep them from humidity while storing.
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A Homeschooled Thanksgiving

First, I hope you all out there have a joyful Thanksgiving! It surely can be hard, what with financial pressures and job market instabilities. We had an oh-so lovely visit from Santa Greenspan and now we will have to work even harder ($200 a month harder) to stay where we were treading water just last month. Nice of him wasn't it?

ANYWAYS, frugality is always something I admire and aspire to.

For this year's Thanksgiving, Q and I will be working together to create the feast.

She will get a chance to make apple and pumpkin pastry purses (two different kinds, not together), a baked brie, snap beans and help me steam them, steam/prep other veggies, make a bechamel sauce, makes the cranberry sauce from cranberries - oranges - ginger, prep the turkey and learn about how best to do that, and cook said bird without drying it to jerky.

She has been preparing for this by browsing our cooking techniques book (with amazing pics of "how to").


Encyclopedia of Cooking Skills and Techniques

She is also browsing our Culinary Institute of America's text book "The Professional Chef".



As well as our Professional Patry chef book:



These are both text books at the Culinary Institute of America and excellent resource books for much of what one would want to learn about cooking!

We will also do a photo-documentary of Q's work, so Stay Tuned!

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Saxaphone Monday

We start our week with a sax lesson. The cats become scarce, the baby dances to the sounds (looks like toddler modern dance in the living room), I sip my tea, and we encourage sibilance from a reluctant saxaphone.








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A nice sunny place

Winter sun is so beautiful! We reconfigured our homeschooling space and now it catches so much sun, its wonderful!
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