Not stuffed, but thankful anyway

Our Thanksgiving preparations were small.  A local menu for sure, pork roast with fresh apple sauce, stuffing, mashed potatoes and gravy and apple pie.  None of us particularly care for leftovers unless it is stuffing and pie, so that was the menu plan.  We snacked on veggies during the day and carbed out on pie and stuffing for dinner!

Plus,  Hangdog wanted to swap out the coils in the wood furnace.   He helped my brother install the last set in 1988, while my brother was battling cancer.  And I am thankful that my brother was here to show him how, and explain how the system worked.  So he decided to do this in segments, which meant plumbing parts, torches  and the smell of soldering would be in the kitchen with Matron.

So I approached this meal by baking bread early in the week, so I could make it stale enough for dressing by Thursday   What would the Pilgrims think?

After I milked Thursday morning, I grabbed some celery and parsley from the garden.

My favorite food group – anything fried in butter.  In this case – garlic, onion, celery and parsley.

Add that food group to my now stale bread, along with more butter, chicken broth and enough salt, pepper and sage to make the dogs sneeze – and bake separately in a large covered casserole.  I am thankful that my mom always made enough dressing to stuff a turkey and to fill a large dish too – dressing for breakfast is a good thing!!

While all the plumbing was going on just to the left of this picture – I was trying to bake a pie, as you can see the guard dogs are at the ready.  No one told me the kitchen would be their sentinel post.  Or that my kid would be taking photos and applying the cartoon feature to them.  Good thing – pie dough and solder do not make for good food blogging   Other key items in this photo:  a bucket and crate of plumbing fittings, pressure cooker, water bath canner rack, coffee can of eggs, and the last of my Azure order that hasn’t made it to its final home.

I figure every apple that makes it to a pie, isn’t going to become applesauce.  Just trying to save energy here… .

Pies should be fun right?

And pies should definitely be pretty.

Usually I draw pictures with a knife in the dough, but I got a larger star cookie cutter so I played with that instead.  And if I look busy enough, I won’t be asked to hold up pipes above my head.   I have to watch that pie you know!

This should be filed under “you know you’re a redneck when…”,  you think  a box of 180° return elbows are a romantic Christmas gift.

Ahhh, the coils.  Note to husbands:  to stay out of the doghouse, you must be in hot water.  See you can’t win!!

And the lash-up.  Our thermal siphon hot water system.  Sixty-seven soldered joints, and twenty-seven galvanized ones.  I’m thankful I only had to dry out the bread and make the pie!

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