Someone made the mistake of giving me a platform on Thanksgiving.

I love turkey.

I fell in love with my first turkey at age 10. Oh I’d eaten plenty of them before that, but that was the year I got to pull the wishbone and my pull ended up with the largest part, thus my wish would come true. If you don’t know the legend of the wishbone you can read it here. 

The next turkey I fell in love with I married. I got up at 3 am on Thanksgiving day to prepare our first Thanksgiving meal. I discovered the bird (20 pounds) only took 4 hours. (I went back to bed) All those years my mother got up in the middle of the night to prepare Thanksgiving dinner. To this day I am still confused.

Today I will have officially prepared …wait, I can’t tell you how many turkeys I’ve made, you’d do the math wouldn’t you?

Let’s just say more than forty and less than seventy.

That’s a lot of turkeys I have loved. All those turkey dinners were made from scratch: stuffing, potatoes, pies, breads, yada, yada, yada.

After all those turkeys the lightbulb has finally gone off. 

I’d rather be writing!

Here’s the plan for today:

Up at 8: Work on WIP (writer lingo for my work-in-progress) until ….

10 am: Throw the bird in oven. Take Marie Callender’s pie assortment out of freezer to thaw in fridge.

10:15 am -1:30:  Work on WIP.

1:30 pm: Microwave instant mashed potatoes (4 minutes),  Zap the Reser’s green bean casserole, and mashed sweet potatoes. Throw jars of gravy in saucepan (heat on low).  Prepare Stovetop stuffing. Keep family member’s busy making tossed salad and opening cans of black olives and jellied cranberries.

2 pm: Remove turkey and slice. Toss rolls in oven. Set table. Pour generous glass of very nice Washington State wine.

2:15: Eat with the family.

2:30: Throw dishes in dishwasher, leftovers in fridge. Insert DVD- Die Hard 17 for family to watch on the couch.

2:30 - 9 pm: Work on WIP

THE END

Happy Thanksgiving!

  Calling all bakers!!  Help!  

I love cherries!!  And most of all I love cherry pie.  I even write about pies in my books.  Where the Wind Blows, which released on Tuesday of this week, and is my Lonesome Dove meets Little House on the Prairie story, has a page or two devoted to Jessie at work baking an apple pie for a bent-out-of-shape, Chase.  And, Cassie, heroine of my wip, Sourdough Creek, also has her very own pie-baking scene where the hero saves the day-and the pie!!!  Love that guy!  So, you see, these delectable pastries have captivated not only my pallet, but also my muse.  Coincidentally, I’m very lucky because I have one of the best producing cherry trees this side of the Mississippi. 
 
Just look at the abundance.   It took me several days to clear its branches – or actually, until I quit from exhaustion.   The birds, nuisances that they are, were totally happy I got tired and finally gave up leaving them many juicy morsels that were too high for me to reach. 

After the hot sticky job of picking, I washed and then pitted.  I measured my bounty into four-cup portions and put them in freezer bags to keep for later.  It’s wonderful now that all the hard work is done.  All I have to do when the urge strikes is mix my flour, sugar, vanilla, and cornstarch together and pull out a sack of already measured, washed and pitted cherries.  It’s fast and easy. 

So, why the call for help you ask?  My problem is I don’t have a recipe that is consistent.  Sometimes my pies come out fabulous, a delight to any taste bud and at other times they are runny like water-and a huge disappointment.  Confused, I keep switching back and forth between recipes that use cornstarch, tapioca or flour for thickening.  I’ve heard several women swear by the tapioca, but I can’t seem to make that work.  I’m sure there must be a good number of bakers out there with a fabulous, fail-safe family recipe that you wouldn’t mind sharing.  I’d love to hear your ideas……

BTW: I always seem to have a pit or two hiding in every pie I bake no matter how diligent I work at extracting them all.  I have to warn everyone before they try a slice.   What is the best way of pitting?  Advice anyone?

In celebration of my debut novel I’m giving away a copy of, Where The Wind Blows, to a person who leaves me a comment.  Also, if you want to enter my Under The Western Sky Contest that’s running August 1^st  to December 1^st., all you need to do is watch my Book Preview on my website, and write your version of the last line of the story.  Anything goes so don’t be shy.  We’re looking to have fun.  Grand prize is a night stay in an ol’ western bunkhouse under the stars.  Check the details at www.carolinefyffe.com