What a day!

For the first time in my life I made pie crusts from scratch.

Now, while I admit this doesn’t seem to be that big of a deal, please consider the following:

– As I began to pull out all of the ingredients for the crusts, the
apple, cherry and pumpkin pies… I notice the flame on the stove that
is heating my teapot. It is low. Which wouldn’t have been bad, IF I had
set it to low.  So I check both pilot lights that we have in the
house. OUT. OF COURSE. It’s the day before Thanksgiving, I am
responsible for making homemade pies that have to be baked TODAY and
(incase you didn’t know it already) the Propane is GONE. Which poses a
pretty significant problem since our stove is run by propane. ( Not to
mention it snowed almost all day and the next two days are highs below
freezing. YEAH our heating system in our house is also run on propane,
so is the hot water… you get the point.) So, I call my loving
husband, to let him know that his efforts of preventing the current
situation had failed. ( He had called a month ago, two weeks ago, and
last week to remind the propane company we were getting low.)  In
case you didn’t catch my first couple entries after we first got
married, being without propane is NOT FUN.

Of course my loving husband comes through for us, and he calls to tell me the propane is coming soon.

-So I begin making my pie crust dough. And I look up to see Prize (a 22
year old whitish-gray horse) walking by. Not an uncommon occurrence.
What was uncommon… was that I saw red on his lower stomach. So I take
off my apron, put on my boots and go outside to Prize’s stall. Sure
enough… a HUGE wound the size of my palm, is dripping blood. I’ll
spare the rest of the gory details.

I called Ian and Sally to let them know, hoping that they were still in
town (because they were supposed to go out of town till Sunday). Ian
came down to check it out, and as I thought…. it was bad. Here is the
blessing in all of this… had I not looked up, had the wound been on
his other side, we would not have found it until tonight when I fed
him. (Or IF that, because the angle is such that I may have not seen it
then either.) I am just very thankful Ian was home and able to call the
vet.

After I regrouped from that, (being the animal lover that I am…
seeing a wounded animal is painful for me. I mean, I mourn every
unidentified road-kill we see on the interstate) I came back inside,
put my apron back on and continued working on the pie-crust dough.

Somewhere between my no-sugar-added cherry pie, made with splenda (the
ONLY non-homemade item, and which coincidentally tastes like bad baby
food- which I only bought because the other cans of normal cherry pie
filling were sold out at Walmart last night, AND of which I only found
out how bad it tasted once it was in the oven.) and my totally from
scratch apple pie… which I peeled all 8 granny smith apples and
madethem fit into the tiny pie shell that barely fit …
               
            a knock on the door.
Propane lady and Ian were standing there. Ian asking when we think we
will be leaving the guest house and me trying to explain how we really
don’t know for sure until the bank signs our offer. Then the lady and
her husband/Propane guy come back into the house. She wants a full tour
while taking pictures on her cell to show her sister to see if she
might want to live there. I don’t even know if Ian had offered.

               
         Did I mention I was in the
middle of cooking? Oh and Charlie was going BERZERK!
But we got the propane and the nice propane people finally left. And I returned to my baking.

Finally, I was taking my last pie… my perfect pumpkin pie… out of the oven.

Exhausted I decide to have a glass of apple juice. (From the
concentrate I had used in my apple pie recipe.) It tastes like it was
on the verge of being fermented. Not exactly bad and NOT good.

So… great. My splenda cherry pie tastes like very yucky nastiness,
and I made an apple pie with possibly fermented apple juice. My only
saving grace is the pumpkin pie…

               
              
              
     of which, only 3 people coming to Thanksgiving
dinner tomorrow, will even try.

I will never be asked to make the pies again….

            
           
           
           
           
           
           but at least my crusts were from scratch.