Pie and Daughters, Daughters and Pie

The pie is finally gone, which means it's time to talk about pie some more.


We had four pies in attendance on thanksgiving.

If you're scratching your head, counting pies, and saying to yourself, "Hang on, she said..." it's because Derek's sister brought the fourth pie.  I took this picture Wednesday night, after Adelaide and I had made our three offerings, and smack dab in the middle of an epic wrestling match with my flighty self control.  I so badly wanted to somehow sneak a piece, but this is difficult when the pies are still whole and your guests still have functional eyes.  If I can remember to do so, next year I might take some of the leftover pie dough and make myself a tiny, mini-pie in one of my ramekins along with the big kid pies.  I think that qualifies as having your pie and eating it, too, right?

It's entirely possible Adelaide loves making pie more than she loves eating it.  Well, it's close, anyway.  She was giddy all afternoon, waxing poetic about the crimping and the stirring and the rolling.  If you ever get a hankering for homemade pie and don't mind your kitchen being destroyed (we're still working on the whole clean-as-you-go concept), have her over.  She's a riot.  

She ended up making the Berry pie herself, along with completing about half of the recipe for the Caramel-Pecan Pumpkin pie (which was so, so good).  She has already said she wouldn't make the berry again, and that I need to come up with a more challenging pie for her.  I'm thinking strawberry rhubarb, maybe?

When we weren't making pie, we were making mashed potatoes, which I did not get a photo of, but I did get this:

Roasted garlic:  Looks disgusting, tastes delicious when mashed into the potatoes.  Also makes your house smell amazing, provided you think garlic smells amazing, which of course I do.  Do you think there are people out there who possibly don't?  Probably the same ones who say things like, "I don't actually like ice cream," and "I always drive in the left lane on four-lane highways.  I just prefer it on that side, even if it is supposed to be just for passing."

Amidst all the state-sanctioned gluttony and Christmas decorating, I've become increasingly aware of a role reversal between Adelaide and I.  When I get too busy, I don't always use the wisest parts of my brain, and Daughter seems to feel the need to mother me at those times.  Wednesday I got so preoccupied with food prep that I forgot to actually eat anything, until it was 3 p.m. and I was getting a little light-headed.  I made up a pitcher of smoothies for some quick nutrition, but then I got distracted with kitchen clean-up and forgot to actually eat the prepared food, until Adelaide got in my face and commanded me to "SIT DOWN AND EAT BEFORE YOU COLLAPSE."  

Then, I went to haul the Christmas tree out of the basement (we have a fake tree, not a pine forest in our basement.  Just in case you were wondering.), and although Adelaide wanted to help, I insisted on bringing the (rather heavy and large) box up myself.  After much tripping and histrionics on my part, I finally managed to wrestle it up the stairs, and paused for a brief moment to sprawl flat on the kitchen floor, which allowed Adelaide time to tap the box meaningfully and glare at me.

Apparently this is what happens when a bossy eldest child has a bossy eldest child.  I am okay with it, except when I'm not.  I'm pretty sure Daughter feels the same.

Pie, Glorious Pie!

"Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it."

Bible scholars and I all agree:  This verse is about pie.

Well, maybe faith, too.  But mostly PIE.


Pie prep is underway in the House of Crisler.  I have large amounts of butter and parchment paper, because pie crust demands both, particularly if you want to complete the process with no nicks in the surface of your sanity.  After all, it's almost the holidays!  Time to make everything smooth, smooth, smooth for those Christmas cards you're sending out to 250 of your closest friends you don't even talk to anymore!

*clears throat*

Pie.  We were speaking of pie.

Here's what I'm looking at this year so far:

The New

Caramel-Pecan Pumpkin Pie
First and most importantly:  How do you pronounce the word "caramel"?  I say "CAR-mull," even though when I'm looking at it my eyes tell my brain that it should be "CARE-uh-mell."  This dichotomy causes great suffering to the word- and grammar-lover in me, but even so, I will fight to the death in insisting that it's "CAR-mull."  I just will.
I'm a very lukewarm pumpkin ingester; I mean, if you stick a piece of pumpkin pie in front of me you won't exactly have to force-feed it to my face, especially if it's loaded down with appropriate amounts of whipped cream, but if I have to choose between pumpkin pie and almost any other kind I will always choose almost any other kind.  Still, this is Thanksgiving we're talking about, and pumpkin pie feels kind of necessary, doesn't it?
So when I came across this recipe- complete with tempting photo- for Caramel-Pecan Pumpkin Pie in my trusty, beloved Better Homes and Gardens cookbook and it had the little "Best Loved" heart next to it, I knew it had to go on the menu.  The topping alone on the pie in the picture looks like something I'll have to keep myself from "sampling" until there's none left for the actual pie, and this pie counts as the traditional Thanksgiving dish, at least in my rosy little world.

The Trusted Favorite

French Silk Pie

This is a major favorite around our house.  It is rich, it is dense (insert inappropriate trophy wife/husband joke here), and if there's any way you can make it in the presence of those you will be feeding, DO THAT.  Something about the the step that instructs, "Place the saucepan [of boiling mixture] in a bowl of ice water, stirring occasionally, until the mixture stiffens and becomes hard to stir," seems to impress people, even if in practice it's just not that hard.  If you can boil chocolate and you can dump ice in a bowl, you can make this pie.  Just channel all those inspirational posters featuring mountains and sunsets and "BELIEVE IN YOURSELF," although what the harsh nature of the wilderness has to do with self-esteem, I do not know.  What I do know is that your guests/Eaters of Pie will be grateful if you serve this up.  

One thing I will say about this pie:  It does not need the whipped cream that BHG suggests you top it with, and I do not advise that lightly, because when it comes to my Sacred Whipped Cream Beliefs, I am normally quite firmly in the "More is More" camp.  I've dished this French Silk Pie up to a number of people over the years now, and the unanimous opinion is this:  It does not need whipped cream.  This is a pie best left unadorned and unspoiled, which is the opposite of how I feel about the interior of our house during the holidays, meaning Christmas is about to EXPLODE all over this house and I couldn't be happier about it.

The Undecided

Lemon Meringue Pie

While I love Lemon Meringue Pie, the honest reason I want to make this is that I've struggled to achieve that pretty meringue that isn't either weeping or beading, and this makes me cantankerous and obstinate, because meringue is not the boss of me, I am the boss of meringue.  This may not be the right attitude to model for our children, however, especially Adelaide, who is eager to get in the kitchen and get to pie-making.

Berry Fruit Pie

This one is attractive because last year Adelaide mastered the Art of the Pecan Pie, so I'm trying to find a pie recipe that will 1) Be simple enough for her to execute for the most part on her own, 2) Won't be so simple she'll be offended and just sure that I'm infantilizing her, but 3) Still tasty.  This recipe has only four ingredients, aside from the crust, and the directions seem well within her abilities.  

Sour Cream Raisin Pie

I am both attracted and repelled by the name of this pie.  I think the attraction stems from the delightfully old-fashioned feeling I get from it, the revulsion from the suspicion that this pie could be legitimately disgusting.  Or delicious!  

For Consumption Before Thanksgiving Because Sharing is Hard

Apple Pie 

I'm more or less being forced to make this pie because I still have a big pile of apples from a friend sitting on my kitchen counter, and I don't want to be wasteful, do I?  

I've shown you this picture at least half a dozen times, already, but I don't care:  It has Adelaide and it has pie- a pie that Adelaide made, in fact- and she is cute as a button.  Don't tell her I said that.

Obviously we won't be eating six pies throughout the remainder of November; these are just the front-runners, from which I'll choose... probably three.  Trying to hold myself to three.  Well, three plus the apple pie.  That one doesn't count.  Because... apples are healthy?

Am I Allowed to Talk About Christmas Yet?

It's December 1st, and that means I can finally express my intense and undying love for All Things Christmas without having hostile scrooges be all, "Um, exCUSE me, what about a little thing called THANKSGIVING?"

Look, I like Thanksgiving just fine, but for me, November is like a month-long build up of delicious Christmas season anticipation, where I get to listen to Christmas music but not put up Christmas decorations (hey, man, you got to have some kind of completely arbitrary boundaries, right?), and Thanksgiving is really more of a celebratory feast to kick off the commencement of CHRISTMAS CHRISTMAS CHRIIIIISTMAAAAS.

I acknowledge that this is just a tiny bit annoying for some people.  I also don't care- not even close, not even a little bit, not even at all.  (There, a non-Christmas movie quote for any Christmas haters who have mysteriously made it this far.)

Really, though, I'm not sure there's a single thing I hate about the Christmas season, and that right there is a miracle akin to the birth of the Messiah (a symptom of my insane excitement for this season:  tons of hyperbole).  Even the Elf on the Shelf, which I find to be extremely creepy and which other parents seem to spend astonishing amounts of time and creativity on, even that is fun for me to read about when other people are doing it for their kids, provided that little fiend hasn't slithered his way into my own house.  (All I can think of when I see Elf on the Shelf is that little creature thing in Cat's Eye who is trying to suck the breath from a little girl every night and lives in the wall; the Elf has to be the effeminate, Marfan syndrome-stricken younger brother of that thing, and we don't have a cat to protect our children, so no Elf on the Shelf for us.)

ANYWAY.  Because of this swirling vortex of Christmas cheer, you can expect a lot of slightly manic posts this month (starting tomorrow with my favorite Children's Christmas Picture Books, because I am afflicted with very strong opinions on this topic), featuring even more caps lock than usual.  I'M SO EXCITED.

GUESS WHICH ONE I AM.

Not Actually an Anglophile

I don't know if you've heard, but there's an American holiday coming up tomorrow.

I've been feeling a little guilty about my level of patriotism lately, as Derek and I have been spending our evenings engaging in things that lean a bit more British:  We've been watching the BBC show Midsomer Murders, an English crime-drama (but still humorous) type show that Derek has identified as a kind of precursor to the wildly popular Sherlock (which we also love, but apparently Brits produce television episodes at a rate of around one per year, so we're patiently waiting for the next season with the rest of the world), which isn't bad in and of itself, but the other night I found myself alternately watching a British show while reading a book set in England (Maisie Dobbs, it was terrific), then the next night watching the same show while sewing a Gryffindor scarf for my cast iron chicken named Hermione (boy, if I had a nickel for every time I've said that, right?).  Plus I've spent the past week quashing a rather wild urge to bake scones.

Look how warm she looks, standing guard there over our snow shovels.

All this makes me feel like I need to meditate upon the image of a bald eagle, or maybe go throw some tea in the puddle in our backyard or something.

I think I'll settle for this:

I won't judge your pre-Thanksgiving madness mess if you won't judge mine, mmkay?

Homemade (by Adelaide, no less) pecan pie.  It's taking everything in me not to take a fork and demolish this baby right now, before any of my family or guests have a chance to partake.  But I'm an American, and sharing is totally American, right?

The Trail of Tears by Robert Lindneux

Oh, wait...

Thanksgiving Travels

Our family spent the last week down south, eating and seeing family and eating and going to movies and eating and visiting with friends and eating and enjoying warmer temperatures and also eating.

I took half a million pictures (but still missed a bunch of stuff I wanted photos of), so I think I'll spend this week highlighting a few per day.



First up:  The Best Movie Theater in the Entire World.





Or at least in the midwest.  And if not the midwest, then in Kansas.  Or maybe just in southern Kansas.  Or just in the Wichita area.  Definitely the best movie theater in the Wichita area.  Also in the world, as far as I'm concerned.

ANYWAY.  The Warren Theatre ("theatre" because Wichitans like to pretend they're British?) on the east side of Wichita is my favorite theater ("theater" because I'm perfectly aware no one will ever mistake me for a Brit) ever.  But I think I've already established that.  It's huge and everything is art deco and covered in gilt and velvet, there's a fireplace in the bathroom, a balcony in the biggest theater (the one pictured above, where we watched Catching Fire) where 21+ can sit and have a meal and be waited on while watching the movie, and there's an old-fashioned diner just off the lobby and everything speaks of old Hollywood glamour.  Derek and I drove an hour north just so we could see the movie in this theater.  Oh, and so we could double date with old friends we don't get to see enough of.  That too.  (Somehow I got a photo of the movie theater but not of our friends.  Priorities:  I have them.)  Big thanks to Mom and Mark for watching the kiddos so we could visit the theater!  And our friends.




We also jumped on the trampoline:

That's Derek, Adelaide, and me, although Adelaide and I were the only ones who made sure to spend plenty of time jumping every single day we were at my mom's house.

I also finally got to meet my friend Megan's baby Iris, who is beautiful in fact and in name:

She's pretty and tiny and petite in a way our children never were.  (They were never tiny and petite.  Of course I thought they were pretty.  Most of the time.)  Well, Adelaide was petite for about five seconds after she was born then she discovered eating and started growing and hasn't stopped, which I realize is a good thing, but I'm still a little freaked out about the thought of my children someday being taller than me.  My sisters and I never reached the height of either of our parents, so it's sort of unimaginable to me.  Don't get me wrong; I want our kids to be taller than 5'4", but still... it's hard to picture.

  

We also got to ride in a horse-drawn wagon, and our friend Liza, the driver, invited Adelaide and Atticus to come sit beside her, which they jumped at.  She gave them an impromptu lesson and answered millions of questions.

Liza's sister Anna was there with her adorable baby Kenyon, but of course I didn't get a picture of that.  It would have made too much sense.

I also didn't get any pictures of Derek and Mark golfing (que lastima), or any of the portion of our trip at Derek's parents' house, which actually is a shame.  

Never fear, though!  There are still plenty of baby pictures to look forward to this week!

Thanksgiving Over-Explanations

I was going through all the photos from Thanksgiving weekend.  I took 173, and 168 of them seem to be of babies.

I have no idea what happened.  Must have been some kind of fugue state.

You therefore should not be shocked to find that most of the following photos, originally intended to be a little highlight reel of our Thanksgiving weekend, include babies in some form.

Consider yourself warned.

I'd like to submit the following two photos as evidence that Vada should be this generation's Gerber baby.

[You should really click on these to embiggen.  It's the right thing to do.]

Not that I'm biased or anything.

In addition to turkey, we had a little ham present on Thanksgiving.

Her name is Charlotte.  

(Sorry about the turkey-ham joke.  I just had to.  Sometimes I can't control myself.)

Now, I realize Aaron's eyes are doing a kinda scary Exorcist thing in this photo- but just look at Charlotte.  Isn't she so cute?  *Said in the most sickening, gushy voice possible*  

(Not the scary Exorcist eyes.  Charlotte.  Charlotte is so cute.)

(Sometimes I don't know when to stop explaining things.  You should ask me to tell you a joke sometime.  I'll tell you exactly why you should be laughing, and just keep going until you're crying and I'm confused.)

Anyway.

This photo is driving me crazy.  My sisters and Char are obviously enthralled with something... but what is it?  Is this when Becky was throwing a cat in the air?  And did she actually throw the cat, or just pretend to?  I mean, I know they have a few extra kitties they're looking to unload, but I can't see her actually throwing a cat.  

Come to think of it, those aren't 'I'm watching a cat being thrown in the air and it's both hilarious and terrifying' expressions on their faces; that looks more like polite-but-forced interest.

Was I telling a joke?  

No, wait.  I was behind the camera.

Can you tell I'm not at my most coherent right now?

I think right about the time I was snapping the following photos is when Mom was leaning over and asking me, "Isn't that Kelli, the girl who doesn't even like kids?"

Motherhood really does change you.  Although, to be fair, Kelli's been good with all our kiddos, from Adelaide on down (well, once Adelaide got old enough for Kelli to stop being afraid of her).

Charlotte seemed to find Atticus to be particularly interesting.

I think Atticus enjoyed the attention.  Hey, maybe Charlotte should come live with us!  (I'm asking purely on behalf of our son, of course.  There's absolutely nothing in it for me.)

Had enough babies yet?

TOO BAD!

Oh, I'm kidding.  I'm fresh out of baby pics.  But I do have a couple sweet kitty photos, if that's more your speed.

Adelaide and Boots the cat.  

See, they call him Boots because he has white paws.  Which resemble footwear.  Boots, to be specific.  Hence the name.

(Over-explaining again.  Obviously.  It's a disease.  Except I don't know if it afflicts me or the people I interact with.)

Adelaide, Caedmon, and Boots, whose name you now understand thanks to me.

Do you spend tons of time with your kids, and when they eventually go play by themselves you're like, "FINALLY," but then you start to get curious/frightened as to what they're doing, so you spy on them, and try to take pictures without them noticing?

Me, too.

I hope you all (that would be y'all to the uninitiated) had a terrific Thanksgiving, as well.

Baby Fever

We spent Thanksgiving at Derek's folks' house.  They graciously offered to host my family for dinner, which meant we got to see all kinds of family, including...


BABIES!


I may have mentioned my nieces, Charlotte and Vada, a time or two.  Charlotte is the daughter of my sister Kelli and her husband Aaron, Vada is the daughter of my sister Stephanie and her husband Clinton.  And just to refresh your memory, Aaron and Clinton are also brothers, which makes Charlotte and Vada double-cousins.

You'd think sharing both maternal and paternal genetic material would mean these two sweet girls look very much alike.  You'd be wrong.



Vada with her daddy.

I just love pictures of babies with their daddies, don't you?

Then we have Charlotte...

...with her daddy.  Note that she looks nothing like Vada.  

And here's Charlotte and her daddy again:

You're just going to have to take my word for it that she was enjoying this.

I know she looks terrified.  I somehow caught her between big smiles.  Trust me.

Vada giving me a big, wet kiss.

You may notice that I'm in the midst of pure, baby-induced ecstasy here.

I love babies.  Especially babies named Charlotte and Vada.

Caedmon has a thing for babies, too.  He kept snuggling up next to one or the other of them, giving them one of his gentler hugs that he reserves for stuffed animals, dolls, cats, and apparently babies.

I have no idea where he gets it.

Farewell, Fall

Cooler temperatures have recently blown into central Iowa.  This morning when Adelaide left for school it was 29 degrees out, which I know will feel downright tropical come January, but for now feels pretty chilly.

These more winter-like conditions, plus the fact that we only have two more days in November make me feel like Autumn is over.  How about a photo recap?


We continued to go for lots of walks throughout most of the Fall.

Atticus likes to pull the wagon, which makes me look like a really lazy mom straggling behind the wagon, forcing her children to do all the work.  I'm okay with that.

We continued to water our mums, hardy pansies, and tulip and hyacinth bulbs.

Caedmon was really helpful.

We went to the apple orchard/ pumpkin patch.  We got zero apples and zero pumpkins.

But we did play in the corn pool!  After all, this is Iowa.

What's that?  You've never been in a corn pool?  It's basically a giant pool... of corn.

Aren't you glad I'm here to explain these things to you?

Atticus showed Mark how to make it rain corn...

Then Mark showed Atticus how to make it pour.

Mark and Atticus also sped down the giant slide.

It really is huge, and somehow the burlap sacks you slide down on make it very, very fast.

No, really.

Top...

...bottom.  Big.

We also jumped around on the big bouncing pad, saw a bunch of farm animals, and went on a hay rack ride that busy day at the orchard.  In the following weeks we kept finding corn in our clothing and coats.  When I washed the clothes the boys had worn that day, I opened the dryer and a cataract of corn came spilling out onto my feet.  I still find kernels at odd places around the house.

A few days after that trip we celebrated Halloween.

I feel like my kids are at a perfect age to go trick-or-treating:  They aren't old enough to start whining about going without Mom and Dad, and I can still basically make them wear whatever I want, like cute and fluffy chicken costumes that make our youngest boy look like a girl.

The beginning of October was unseasonably warm, and we took advantage of it by spending lots of time outside.

A month later it was no longer quite so warm, and while the kiddos still wanted to play outside, I retreated indoors.

Of course, fall brought with it football season.  It will continue through part of winter.  I will not exactly be devastated when it is over, although Derek has mellowed quite a bit, on the outside, at least.

I have this wild and crazy notion that our sweet, sweet Spudley might have something to do with that.

Here's hoping everyone had a magnificent Fall, a terrific Thanksgiving, and a better football season than we have.