Mincemeat Pie

Ever since I was young, I would hear my Dad rave about my Great Aunt Marion's Mincemeat pie. When my mom told me it had meat and fruit in it, I refused to eat it as a kid! Great Aunt Marion died a few years ago, and I know that is one thing my Dad really misses about her. She would make him one any time he worked on his car or for birthdays, and always brought them to holiday gatherings. In my quest to be a great pie maker, I thought I would try one this Thanksgiving. It helped that Chris liked a little taste of one he had before. I went on line, found a recipe from Alton Brown, but it required a TON of work. I wasn't that adventurous. I have a great cookbook from Good Housekeeping titled "Great Baking". There are some tasty recipes and how too's. The recipe was one of thos semi-homemade ones, my specialty, so I went for it. Here are some photos of the filling:



And here is one of the finished product:



My Dad loved it, and my cousin Karen, Aunt Marion's daughter, said it tasted just like her Mothers. Score!! My Grandma Patsy, Aunt Marions sister, really liked it too.
Here is the recipe. Try it out!

1 28 oz jar ready-to-use mincemeat (there is brand Nonesuch that worked well. Found it at Albertsons.)
1 large granny smith apple, pealed, cored, and finely chopped
1 C. Walnuts coarsly broken
1/2 c packed brown sugar
1 TBSP lemon juice
Double pie crust (I cheated and used Pillsbury. Haven't mastered crust yet!)

1. Prepare dough.
2. Preheat oven to 425. In a medium bowl stir mincemeat, apple, walnuts, brown sugar and lemon juice until well mixed.
3. Roll out bottom pie crust and place in pie plate. Fill with mixture. Dot butter (about 2 TBSP total) over filling. Roll out top dough and place on top of fillling. Crease two crusts together. Using a knife, make a few slits in top crust of pie.
4. Bake 30 to 40 minutes or until golden brown. Enjoy!

This just in. . .

Zander is at it again. . . while I was just posting the bit about he and Chris playing he managed to get into the Ziplock bags AGAIN. Its sort of my fault because i didn't put them in the very back of the cuppord. I swear, that is his most favorite thing to do. Pull EVERY SINGLE BAG out of the box. And then, he scoots around and kicks them all around the kitchen, spreading the wealth everywhere! Grr. Oh well. Makes for a funny story. And a stronger desire for a new kitchen with more drawers!

Playing with Daddy

One of my favorite things is watching Chris and Zander play. Zander has such a good Daddy, so he gets played with often! This time I just happened to have my camera handy. Earlier I made Zander a fort by pulling the ottoman out a little and draping a blanket over it and the couches so that he had a crawl (scoot) space. He had such a blast going in and out! When Chris got home he chased him around and they had a ball. I love these two guys so much, and love watching them play.

A Photo

Since I didn't have any pictures of our big date, here is one of our Wedding.

Three Years

Chris and I celebrate our 3rd anniversary today! We joke that it really seems so much longer, but in a good way! I think back to friendships and usually three years seems to fly, and before you know it, its been 10 years since you have been friends with someone! With Marriage though, the realtionship is so much deeper, involved and meaningful, so even a short amount of time seems like a long time. Does this make sense to anyone but me!?!?! Since our Anniversary is today, on a MONDAY, we went out on Saturday.

We went and ate at Claim Jumper, my alltime favorite restaurant. Maybe not all-time favorite, but its very close to the top! We had these parmesan zucchini sticks that were to die for. . . i can still taste them now. . . they were in a mini-appetizer, a smaller portion so that we could actually eat out dinner without getting too full. There were only 4, so we savored them as long as we could. Man, they were good. If anyone has ever had these homemade and has access to a recipe, let me know!!

After dinner we drove down to Hollyweird and saw WICKED!! It was Amazing, to say the least! We laughed so hard and really enjoyed ourselves. A confession- I have a little ADD and have a hard time sitting still. Not during this show! I was so sad when it was over. The music, costumes, acting, sets, all were just spectaular. I highly recomend everyone to go see it, soon too, because its leaving LA in January. We actually got really good seats, and could see the actors mouths moving. So amazing.

The only bad part- I had left the camara case at my parents house, so we had NO pictures. Total bummer, my hair looked really cute!!

Pumpkins!

Ok, I know tomorrow is Thanksgiving already, but I took some cute pictures of us (Zander and Chris, really) in our quest to have a great carved pumpkin and wanted to show everyone!

Here are two of Zander at the Pumpkin patch. He is so big this year!

Tripple Layer Peanut Butter Brownies

These are the best. I made pan last week for FHE and Chris and I just finished them yesterday. They are from the Kraft Foods website. I should have taken a picture of them for the blog before I gobbled them all up! Oh well. Check them out!

kraftfoods.com

First Ever!

So, its my first ever post on my first ever blog. It may be a little boring now, but just you wait!! Talk about entertaining! This baby will blow your socks off!

Ok, so I have lofty goals for my little blog. I see some amazing ones as I waste away in cyberspace. Although I won't even try to keep up with them, I will promise to post fun crafts, family photos and info, and of course, my NEW Favorite recipe!

I need someting to fill Zander's nap times like I need another rubber scraper, but oh well, it will be fun! Thanks for looking!