This Thanksgiving was the first Thanksgiving we have ever spent at home without family or friends…..and without a lot of our favorite Thanksgiving recipes… I was getting a little depressed about it, but it ended up being a pretty good holiday over all!
A table decoration Jessica made with her babysitter before Thanksgiving.
We spent Thanksgiving morning watching the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in our PJs and munching on hoecakes (one of John’s new favorite foods)!! This is a huge deal to me because we were never able to watch the parade when I was growing up because we were always traveling it seemed! Actually I think I used to watch it at my grandmother’s house back when we did Thanksgiving at her house before she died….which might explain why it is so important to me….something else that reminds me of her, but I digress… I now have a Parade-watching buddy!!!!!!! John LOVED watching the Parade!!! He loves to label everything and got very excited when he spotted the Sonic the Hedgehog balloon!!
My little helper in the apron her grandmother made for her great-great-grandmother <3
It has become a bit of a tradition at our house for Jessica to help me make a Pumpkin Pie. I was a little concerned when she started talking about it this year because we are on such a limited list of foods that I wasn’t sure we could manage to make a Pumpkin Pie. Thankfully for Jessica, her mother is very creative and stubbornly dedicated to tradition! I had to replace at least half the ingredients and leave out the crust entirely, but I did manage to replicate my grandmother’s Pumpkin Pie recipe with it tasting very close to the original!!
Pumpkin “Pie”
1 cup Sugar in the Raw, 1 Tbsp Corn Starch (for the portion I made of Jessica I used Tapioca flour because she is allergic to corn), 1/2 tsp salt, 1 Tbsp pumpkin pie spice (or 1.25 tsp cinnamon, .5 tsp nutmeg, .5 tsp ground ginger, .25 tsp ground cloves), 1.5 cups hemp milk (made by blending half a cup of hemp seeds with 3 cups of water and straining), 1+ Tbsp of Knox Gelatin (one package plus a little if you have it)
Mix dry ingredients. Add other ingredients except gelatin and blend until smooth (I had to divide the pie into several containers before adding the rest of the ingredients because Jess is allergic to corn and John is allergic to nutmeg and cloves…let me tell you that was complicated!!!!). Add gelatin to pumpkin pie mixture in a sauce pan. Let it sit for about a minute. Then heat the mixture while stirring for about 3 minutes until the granules dissolve. Pour into custard cups and bake at 375 F for about 15 minutes (I think) till firm in the center.
Jessica helping set the table for Thanksgiving Dinner.
Our Thanksgiving Dinner: Turkey, Mashed Sweet Potatoes, Green Beans, “cranberry sauce,” and Pumpkin “Pie.”
Thanksgiving dinner went pretty well except that the turkey apparently had seasonings in it that John and I were allergic to. (Jess is allergic to turkey so she had chicken.) Thankfully, I caught it before John ate any and was able to replace his turkey with some of Jessica’s chicken. The sweet potatoes were just water and potatoes, but everyone seemed to like them.
“Canned Cranberry Sauce”
And now for my masterpiece: “canned cranberry sauce.” The kids LOVE canned cranberry sauce, but cranberries are not currently on their list of safe foods so I decided to create a “canned cranberry sauce” using purred cherries, organic fresh pressed black cherry juice, and Knox Gelatin. Basically, I took about half a can of leftover cherries and purred them. Then I added enough juice to make a total liquid amount of about 15 oz. Then I poured that into a sauce pan and sprinkled about 1 T plus 1 tsp of Knox gelatine on top and let it sit for a minute. Then I cooked the entire thing on low heat for about 3 minutes until the gelatin dissolved. Finally, poured it into a can and put it in the fridge. It turned out great! The next time I think I will use more purred cherries though because as you can tell from the picture the purred parts floated to the top so the bottom slices didn’t have as much texture.
And the traditional picture of my bird 
And a shot of the chef….and my new haircut! I had to get a lot of my hair cut off because now that my body is beginning to heal my hair is growing in much thicker and curlier so my hair was beginning to look really weird!!
For the rest of the weekend, David and I worked our tails off moving furniture around, touching up paint, etc so that we could switch the kids into separate rooms. They have always shared a room since John was 6 months old, but my mom suggested on a recent trip that John might sleep better if they were in separate rooms. We’ve been trying it out, and decided that we liked it, but we needed to do a lot of moving around to make things work….preferable sooner rather than later because we wanted Jessica on the backside of the house (she is my less trustworthy child…).
This is what the kids’ room looked like when we first set it up (before we had to “Jessica proof” the room.
And this is what it looks like now as Jessica’s “big girl room.” Aunt Katie is giving us a pretty bright bedding set to replace Jessica’s current bedding. Jessica has also requested that we paint flowers and butterflies on the walls, so after Christmas I am going to try and get Jessica’s babysitter to help her with that project.
Another angle….like I said still need to get the bedding and do something with the walls but not bad considering this was a last minute decision this weekend and it cost us nothing!
This room was the guest room. I used it for guests, storing clothes the kids hadn’t grown into yet, rest time for Jessica, etc.
John’s new room! Still need to do something with the walls and need to clean out the closet (thankfully all his stuff fit in the shelves and chest), but again not bad considering this was a last minute decision and we didn’t spend any money doing it!
Another angle of the room
And one more shot.
That pretty much sums up our Thanksgiving holiday! I didn’t end up getting a shot of John with all of the hullabaloo of switching the kids’ rooms around, but I will try to snag one soon. Now to get the rest of the house back in order so we can finish all of our doctors appointments and set up Christmas decorations!
