Thursday was Thanksgiving in the United States! We had a good time in my family. My sister was able to fly out, and we had brunch and also turkey dinner.
I also ran a 5K Turkey Trot because I am, last I checked, completely weird. Well, not the Turkey Trot part, actually, because it’s one of the most popular race days in the United States. But the fact that I ran it alone, and also ran it competitively. I mean, the only competitor was myself, but it counts.
As you can see, I had a blast.
No, actually, I did enjoy it! I just got a new phone without a headphone jack, and I forgot to grab the proper headphones, so I ran the entire 3.1 miles without music. It was kind of fun hearing other people’s conversations as I weaved around the slowpokes. I also managed to PR, and finished the race with a time of 31:05. That beat out my former Personal Best by 21 seconds. I would have definitely run it faster if it weren’t for the fact that the race was VERY hilly, including a killer hill at the very end. They’re making us work for our Thanksgiving dinner!
They gave us doughnuts at the end so I can’t complain.
Wednesday night I started making a pie from my cookbook! The one I mentioned a few entries back. I saw there was a recipe for cranberry nut pie, and figured it might make a good thanksgiving treat. Even though I don’t care for cranberries, other people in my family do so I made it
Cranberries and water
Sugar.
Tasty
I’ve never cooked cranberries on my own before (again, I don’t care for them) so it was fun doing something new.
I actually somewhat misread the directions, as I was supposed to get the sauce to boiling and then adding other ingredients. But I cooked it down somewhat and then added everything but it ended up being fine. I used orange zest, flour, orange juice (squeezed from the orange I got the zest from), corn syrup, and pecans. The recipe called for walnuts but my mom wanted pecans. So I added all this, let it cook a bit longer, and then let it cool
Then it was time to make the dough! Now, I used All Purpose FLour, and we determined that next time I’m going to use pastry flour. The gluten over activated and the crust was pretty hard. But I’m sure it’ll be good if I try this crust recipe again.
COLD butter.
This Pastry cutter saved my life when I finally bought it.
Ya gotta get your hands in there and make sure the butter chunks are the right size! I somehow missed photos of me adding water a bit at a time. COLD water.
This was a beast to roll out.
Eh, it works.
I was so hyper focused on getting the lattice right that I forgot to get pictures of the process. You can also see where one of the strips broke, but eh, it’s just getting eaten. I put it in the fridge to back on Thanksgiving.
I was so out of it I forgot to egg wash or milk wash the crust and sprinkle sugar. It didn’t matter too much, the crust was way too hard. HOWEVER it wasn’t BAD tasting. And I got two thumbs up for the filling! It was a hit. SO I think with a proper crust it would be amazing. My mom even wants to see about adapting it for the bakery!
Who needs to cut a proper slice? Hehe.
I did not try it, though I meant to (in spite of my dislike of cranberries). I just tried a bit of the crust. And I’m writing this at the airport as I”m about to jet off on a 3 week adventure so I won’t get to try it. This time!!
Hopefully my next update will be something super cool about where I’m traveling too. Have a good weekend, friends!
The Solo Geographer 