Let the Madness Begin

It’s here — Thanksgiving Week.  The official kick-off to the holidays, a short work week and time to feast, gather, give thanks.  Maybe even rest (yeah, right).

I’m excited.  I’m a holiday dork — I love this season, even though it causes me all kinds of stress.  Every year, I vow to enjoy it more.  Some years I do better than others. Since I’ve had kids, it has become both more important to me to enjoy it and simultaneously more complicated/stressful.

And so it begins this year.  I have a few things up my sleeve this week.  We are going to P’s family for Thanksgiving Day and then off to my family for Thanksgiving 2.0 on Friday (there’s more coming on that soon).  We’re also planning to hit the holiday festivities in town this weekend.  And, on the more practical/less fun, yet highly satisfying side, there will be some purging of the basement — again.  Yesssss.  This time, I’ve upped the ante.  There’s a storage pod coming to our driveway and I’m going to be ruthless (purge, purge, purge).  I’ll fill you in when said eyesore arrives on our property.  I’m sure our neighbors will love our Sanford & Son look as they hang their lovely holiday decorations.

This time of year always brings up some great and even strange memories of past holiday seasons.  We’ve all got the bizarre-yet-funny-in-retrospect family stories, right?  I’m working on recapping one or two of those over the next couple of days, just to help get into the spirit.

In the meantime, let’s talk about the main event — the food.  Everything is pretty traditional fare in our family but I will share with you my mother’s crown jewel Thanksgiving dessert.  Hope that’s OK, Mom.

For those of you who, like me, find pumpkin pie a little too, well, pumpkinny, check out the Pumpkin Chiffon Pie (or, as we call it, P-Chiff).  It’s much lighter — at least in taste, no promises on the calorie front —  and I think much better than the traditional version.   And super easy.

Ev’s P-Chiff

• 2 pie shells (graham cracker tastes best — psst, I buy mine pre-made but Ev makes her own)
• 1 cup sugar
• 2 envelopes unflavored gelatin
• 1 tsp. salt
• 1 30 oz. can Pumpkin Pie Mix (make sure it says Mix, not straight pumpkin)
• 2 cups milk
• 2 eggs, beaten
• 2 cups Cool Whip

Combine sugar, gelatin and salt in saucepan.  Blend in milk.  Cook and stir over medium heat until sugar and gelatin are completely dissolved.  Gradually stir mixture into beaten  eggs in bowl.  Slowly blend pumpkin mix into bowl.  Chill until very thick (about 2 or 3 hours). Gently fold about 1 cup of Cool Whip into mixture.  Spoon into pie shell and refrigerate overnight.  Top with Cool Whip.

Enjoy.  And remember, the recipe yields two pies — so keep one at home for yourself (it’s really good for breakfast — trust me on this).

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Gwyneth/Glee Stuck Song Update:  No relief today.  She’s still singing in my head.  My friend Nessa said that this is called a head splinter, according to urbandictionary.com.  I asked her if she had a large cranial tweezer.