Y'know, Thanksgiving has already been fairly dramatic, and it's only 8:19 am on Thanksgiving Day.

Yesterday evening got a little stressful due to our family's quirks and eccentricities. I love my family, but they're all insane. I'm not going to go into the details here, and it wasn't really all that bad, just requiring patience and breathing.

Anyway, eventually my brother and I ended up back at my apartment around 9 last night, and I started making the two pies I'd planned on starting considerably earlier (blackberry and apple). Everything was going hunky dory until I started laying the top crust on the apple pie. Usually I nibble on stuff as I'm making it, but I hadn't yet, so I took a little bite of pie crust dough scraps and almost spit it out. It was so incredibly salty and awful! Ohmigod, it was so bad. Well, of course, I had added two tablespoons of salt instead of two teaspoons. At least I hadn't actually put any pies in the oven when I made this discovery. And I hadn't filled the blackberry pie yet, so all the blackberries and juices were still in the bowl. I am thankful for both of these things.

Of course I had to throw away the crust and start again. Unfortunately, I had less than a cup of flour left. It was now 11:00, and I called my sister, who thought she had just under 3 cups (the recipe calls for 4) of wheat flour. But she also had some oat flour, which is low-gluten and therefore should work okay to fill in what was missing of the 4 cups. So I drove over there to pick up that stuff, and while we were talking about apple pie, something she said reminded me that I was supposed to use brown sugar, not white, in an apple pie. (Actually, I used xylitol instead of sugar, but it works the same as white sugar.) Luckily she had a little bit of molasses too, so she gave me that. I also remembered that apple pie should have a little bit of cinnamon in it, which I had in my cupboard but had forgotten to put in, and to keep the apples overnight, I needed some lemon, which neither of us had.

And then when I was loading the stuff into my brand new car (right before we were going to tiptoe into the neighbor's back yard for a lemon or two from his tree [remember this is now about 11:15 at night]), the container of oat flour opened up and I spilled a bunch all over myself and the inside of the Prius. You know, at that point, there's really nothing you can do but laugh.

Jessie and I stood there in the street, laughing hysterically and hugging each other, and then I handed her the bottle of molasses, closed up the flour container, put everything into a shopping bag, brushed out as much of the flour from my car as I could, she declared my car christened and blessed (the car's name is Lulu, by the way), and we went and got a few lemons.

I decided that I really wasn't, um, sane or awake enough at that point to make any pies, so I went home, cleaned up my kitchen and went to bed. Right after remembering that I was also out of vegetable shortening.

So at 7:40 this morning, I was at Safeway, which is thankfully open on Thanksgiving Day, and I bought enough vegetable shortening and extra flour that I can make four sets of pie crusts if I need to. I expect I'll only need to make the two that I actually need, but I didn't want to be without the ingredients to save myself should I mess it up again.

I'm sure it will all be fine, and there's only a medium amount of flour I need to vacuum out of my car now.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! I hope you all have a lovely day full of love and whatever kind of food you like best.