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Thursday, November 27, 2008

Here a little there

When we were first married, I made Thanksgiving dinner from scratch. I don't remember all that we had, but I do know there were two pans of stuffing. Two 9x13 pans. And 10 pounds of smashed potatoes. And two pies, one fruit, one something else. And turkey. And ham. And some sort of broccoli bake and a salad.... For two people. When the husband tells this story, he says after he had eaten more than he had ever eaten at any Thanksgiving, it looked like we hadn't even touched the food. It was a lot of food, she says obviously.

This year, we ate with assorted friends, and all I made were mounds and mounds of sweet potatoes, green beans with bacon and onions, and pumpkin trifle. And we all ate our fill of many other fabulous foods and came home with all kinds of leftovers including mashed potatoes, stuffing, salad, and assorted cheesecakes. What a trade!

Well, okay, I also made a turkey. Because I love turkey and always want more leftovers and didn't want to be greedy with our friends and am obsessive about cooking like that. So, we have turkey, too, though there ended up being two turkeys at our shindig, one cooked in a bag (very tasty) and a deep fried turkey later, sort of a charcoal after dinner mint of sorts. It was good as well, but looked like the after shots of an arsonist attack.

And now for what you're all waiting for, the pumpkin trifle recipe. It's a Paula Dean recipe more or less, courtesy of a Food Network clip on Hulu.

1 30 ounce can pumpkin pie filling
1 5.1 ounce box vanilla pudding prepared
1/2 t. cinnamon
2 T. brown sugar
2 14 ounce boxes gingerbread prepared
2 8 ounce tubs whipped cream

Mix the pumpkin pie filling with the vanilla pudding, cinnamon and brown sugar. (Paula uses 1 T. cardamon and 1/2 C. brown sugar, but that seemed too much for me. She also uses slow cook as opposed to instant pudding, but I used instant and it turned out fine. Full disclosure, however: apparently Libby makes something called pumpkin pie "mix" as well as pumpkin pie filling, which I mistakenly picked up instead, so when this became clear to me, I mixed in a little extra whipped cream to compensate for the missing dairy the filling has. But this mistake also worked out just fine. Paula So.) Layer the gingerbread in your trifle dish (or glass bowl, but I finally got a trifle dish because I always want one and always talk myself out of it, which rarely happens to me with regard to kitchen items. And it was on sale!), then layer in the pumpkin mixture, then add a layer of whipped cream, and then repeat all three layers, ending with whipped cream. Sprinkle with crushed gingersnaps or gingerbread men or nothing at all. Chill as long as you have (particularly when you mess up the recipe with the pumpkin pie mix and use instant pudding, since it can be a tad runny). Reveal with a Ta Da!

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