When I asked Tom what I could do to help for Christmas, he told me I could make the pumpkin pies. I did pack up cinnamon, cloves, and ginger to bring with me, fearing they might not have them, but it never occurred to me to bring pie pans and rolling pin. Surely everybody has those, right?
Well...no. I forget that there just are people in the world who manage to survive without really "cooking." If you "cook" you naturally have all this stuff readily available, if you don't cook, you don't need them.
So this morning Walt and I went out to buy stuff for the pie: flour, sugar, spices, pumpkin, evaporated milk, eggs, butter. Some of those things I'm sure they had, but I wanted to pay for it all ourselves, since Joe and Alice are hosting us for the rest of the week. I managed to find a food processor in the cupboard, so I planned to use that to make the crust. I couldn't find a rolling pin either here or at the store, so I just planned to use a wine bottle, which I had used once to make a pie crust in Ireland.
Wellllll...it didn't quite happen that way. The dough stuck to the bottle and the breadboard. I had a minor hissy fit. Walt decided to go out and buy a rolling pin, then I got a call from Alice Nan at Long's, looking for a rolling pin but she had called Joe to ask if they didn't have a rolling pin and he sent me looking into cupboards (but either there isn't one, or I can't see it in the dark cupboard). Then I got a call from Walt saying he was buying a pastry cloth. These were going to be the most expensive pumpkin pies ever (and tougher than they needed to be).
But it turned out Walt found something for the house he'd been looking for for years when he bought the pastry cloth and Alice Nan visited with friends she met in the store when she bought the rolling pin, so everybody came home happy, the pies got made and all turned out OK.
When the pies were finished, we drove over to the place where Walt's mother lives. We were all having Christmas Eve dinner in the dining room there. Joe joined us around 5 and we all traipsed off to the "big" dining room in the Independent Living section.
It was probably the best dinner I've ever had at Maravilla (and I've had some very good meals there). Most of us had prime rib (which even came medium rare, as I ordered). The sweet potato/coconut soup was fabulous, and it was all topped off with a pecan torte with a bourbon caramel sauce.
Walt's mother didn't finish all of her meal, but she had help...whether she wanted it or not.
Joe and Alice went off to a Christmas party and we stayed behind until Walt's mother was getting ready for bed. We watched the "17 and counting" marathon ─ the story of the Dugger family, which just had its 18th baby ─ because Walt's mother simply couldn't believe it.
Everyone has gone off to sleep and I'm about to myself. As a mousetrap was sprung earlier this evening and its unfortunate victim dispatched to the garbage, it's really true that at the moment "not a creature is stirring, not even a mouse."
Tomorrow we will get to spend Christmas with Brianna (whom we have not seen yet).
I hope everyone is having a more wonderful Christmas than the poor little mouse.
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