Thursday, November 27, 2008

Thanksgiving

Abram, Owen, and I celebrated Thanksgiving together today.
We prepared roast (local) turkey, green beans (frozen from our garden), roasted veggies (turnips, onions, celery, and ghee - all local - with carrots), cranberry sauce, "gravy" (actually a reduction of turkey drippings and extra chicken stock with the giblets and some hard boiled egg), and sauerkarut.
Before lunch, we played outside in the fresh air, and tried to teach Owen "Follow the Leader;" he sorta' got it and especially appreciated when we did silly things and smiled when he ended up the leader.
I was thankful for Owen and Abram who love me even when I'm grouchy. Abram was thankful for good food. And Owen was thankful for Biokult (probiotic which we were taking at lunch, having forgotten it during a rushed breakfast.)
Despite having eaten a rather substantial and late breakfast, Owen ate quite a lunch too. For dessert, we had two custards cooked right inside of pie pumpkin shells - a pumpkin custard and a coconut custard - really a plain custrad with coconut milk substituted for the milk. It was the better of the two. We ate the cooked pumpkin along with the custard. This was actually my second attempt at this. Last year, it was a flop with a larger pumpkin, but I think the secret is to use a small pumpkin and bake it long and low. I found a website that said the Colonial pumpkin pies would have been custards cooked in pumpkin shells; they would have eaten the cooked pumpkin too! We will definitely be using this recipe again:

Custard in a Pumpkin Shell

1 7/8 cup coconut milk
2 jumbo eggs
1 egg yolk
scant 1/3 c. honey
1/4 t. ground cinnamon
1/4 t. ground nutmeg
1/4 t. salt
1 pie pumpkin ~ 6-8" in diameter

Preheat oven to 325 F. Cut around top of pumpkin and clean out stringy pulp and seeds. Save lid, wash both pieces, and drain on a towel while you prepare custard.
Mix coconut milk, eggs, egg yolk, honey, cinnamon, nutmeg, and salt. Whisk by hand until smooth. Pour into pumpkin shell, leaving about 1/2" at the top. (You can drink any leftover; it's like eggnog!) Place lid on pumpkin. Cover loosely with foil, and bake ~ 2.5 - 3 hours, taking off foil and lid for the last 30 minutes or so. Cool. To serve, remove lid if it has been replaced, and slice through the pumpkin and custard as you would a pie shell and pie.
Enjoy!

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

The pumpkin is so pretty! We missed ya'll so much yesterday!

Anonymous said...

opps that was me Lauren ;)

Possum said...

We missed being home with y'all too. We are looking forward to being with everyone for Christmas. How are y'all doing? What's Carter up to these days?

Anonymous said...

When we were last at the doctor we found out that Carter was going to need a circumcision. His opening was too small, so he had it last Tuesday. I hated it but I was glad we discovered the problem this early so we weren't doing it when he was older. Sadly he had just started sleeping through the night from 7 to about 6 and now he's waking up again, but hopefully we'll get back on track again soon. I think the weird holiday schedule has bothered him some too.