Turkey and Treats

You must be asking yourseleves what does turkey have to do with baking?  You shall see....but first, let's talk about the treats.

Oh snap!! Lemon and ginger snaps I mean.  These were next in line in my cookie capers and because I love lemon as well as ginger, I had to make both.   I was also bringing some over to my sister's house for dinner Sunday night top celebrate my brother-in-law Gerry's birthday.  (Gerry is married to Ellen of the banana bread fame). 

I made the dough the night before, one for the lemon and the other for the ginger.  Sunday morning I go down stairs to bake and as I reach in to get out the ginger dough I remeber that I did not grate any ginger into the ginger snap dough.  I don't think you can call it a ginger snap if it does not have any ginger!  So I had to let the dough soften and then grate the ginger into it and re-refrigerate.  This is a typical Susan (in Lucy Ricardo mode) move.  You just gotta laugh!

Everyone seemed to like the cookies that I brought over, but I had forgotten to ask Chin to photograph them before we left for dinner.  I figured that he can just do it later when we got home with the ones that I kept for ourselves.  Except that the next morning all the lemon cookies were gone!  Who stole the cookies form the cookie jar?   Lilyan - that's who.  I should have been on guard when she kept saying how much she loved them!  So, no pictures of the lemon cookies.  Actually they look exaclty like the ginger snaps, only yellow.  So either use a highlighter or your imagination.

Another nice thing about these cookies is that you roll them into balls and then roll them in sugar before you bake them.  They spread out really nicely and since I used sanding sugar instead of table sugar, they had a nice sparkly finish on top.  Here they are:


Back to the turkey:
For those of you who don't know, it was Thanksgiving in Canada yesterday.  Because we were going to Ellen's on Sunday and then out for lunch with Chin's parents on monday, the only time for me to make a turkey was Saturday night.  And both Lily and Jim really wanted a turkey.  When we went grocery shopping, there were only really big turkeys left and we have trouble finishing a small one.  So instead I bought a bone-in Turkey breast and made stuffing, cranberry sauce  and of course gravy.  To be perfectly transparent...because this was last minute, I did not have the time to make my own stuffing or gravy, so I bought them.  (Good old Stove Top and Club House). Dinner was good.

There were of course  lots of leftovers, so I decided to make a turkey pot pie.  In the past, given my apprehensions about pastry and in particular pie dough, I would just buy the unbaked pie shells from the grovery store.  I was really tempted to do that, but then felt ashamed that I, who am working so hard to learn how to bake would use store-bought pie shells!  so I mustered up the courage to make my own. 

I am so glad that I did!  The pot pie was fabulous!  Not only beautiful to look at - but flaky and delicious as well.  Wow.  What has come over me?  The filling was really tasty with fresh vegetables (except the peas) and a creamy consistency. 

On top of all of that - I managed not to burn myself!!  It was a good long weekend.