Prelude to a Turkey

I rushed home from work (got out early) and started straight away on cooking. Got the cranberry-orange-red wine sauce done, along with the gravy base first thing. Then started in on the pies. I couldn't find gluten free graham crackers, so I searched around the internet until I found a recipe for a pie crust that is made with almond meal, cocoa powder, a little sugar & butter. Yum! That's the base for the chocolate cream pie.

Next, I crushed up GF ginger snaps for the pumpkin pie crust. Baked the pumpkin pie, and the edges got a little crispy so I just picked them off & made the evidence disappear into the garbage disposal. Bye!

Melted the two kinds of chocolate for the cream pie, made the custard base, mixed it all together & put it in the refrigerator. That will get dumped into the crust tomorrow.

Had to stop to eat dinner. Eat? Ugh! But the kids were hungry. I usually order a pizza the night before Thanksgiving, and then give thanks that there's someone out there willing to bring food to my door. There was a nice Amy's GF pizza in the freezer for Daniel as well, so he was happy.

Now the stuffing is cooking. It's a new recipe. I've made my hubby's family's bread stuffing for so many years. When I was growing up I never liked bread stuffing, but I've kind of gotten used to it. Now because of Daniel's celiac, we can't make that recipe.

I don't trust the GF breads to be good enough to hold up to stuffing. They crumble like crazy when you try to make a sandwich out of them, and would probably just turn to mush in stuffing. When I was younger I always made a wild rice stuffing, and my parents let me go wild, experimenting with ingredients. They NEVER stuffed the turkey. They swore it would poison us all. I went back to my childhood experimentations (along with a little recipe research) and made a brown basmati/wild rice stuffing. It has onions, celery, chestnuts, garlic, sage, apricots, slivered almonds, and fresh parsley. I'm cooking it in a combo of chicken stock w/a bit of orange juice mixed in. It smells heavenly. And because my husband LOVES the stuffing inside the turkey, that's where it will go. You know what? My parents will eat it anyway!

It's so hard to figure out all the carbs in all the foods that will be on the Thanksgiving table. With a little help from Calorie King, Daniel will figure out an amount to bolus, and hopefully it will keep him in range. He said he's really going to miss the soft dinner rolls that we always serve fresh from the oven. I told him I could prepare some from the GF "Chebe" mix that he likes, but he'd have to think about it. How many carbs does he want to bolus for? Bread AND potatoes AND sweet potatoes AND stuffing AND pie? Daniel thought about it for a half second and said, "NO ROLLS."

We have a day-after Thanksgiving tradition in our house. I host a get together with friends and neighbors and we combine leftovers and have a second night feast. It's very low key, with just one rule: NO STRESS. Children run madly through the house, wine and conversation flow cheerfully in the grown-up dining room. Since everything has already been prepared and is all up for grabs, there's no set time to eat. We hang out, have fun, and clear out a few of the tupperware containers.

I hope everyone in the d OC has a great Thanksgiving. I'll check in with you guys this weekend!