Giving Thanks

 We are blessed here at The Acre, no doubt about it. As John Dutton says, "just give us a little rain and a little luck, and we'll do the rest." 

This week we celebrate our hard work with a feast. Thanks for the idiot in the governors mansion, we didn't celebrate with family, but we made the best out of it. But before we get to the food part, our lead off picture this week is "The Boy" setting up the Christmas tree. Tradition at The Acre is, the tree goes up Sunday after Thanksgiving when we get back from the Christmas parade. Once again, thanking the idiot in the governors mansion, there was no parade this year. But the tree went up as usual, Sunday after Thanksgiving.

We started this week with a bit of prep work. Monday, Lawman baked a pone of cornbread for stuffing. He likes to let is sit for a couple of days and let it get a little stale first. 

While the cornbread was baking, he made a pumpkin roll and home made sugar cookie dough.

Then Tuesday, the day Cupcake has waited for all year. Chocolate cake and boiled custard.

We had to use store bought eggs this year, because our slacker birds have not started laying yet. But we keep on feeding them. Our guess is they will start laying right after Christmas. Because we wont need eggs for custard after Christmas. But we made enough for us and the neighbor lady, who also got a pumpkin roll.

The day before Thanksgiving, Lawman boiled up a dozen store bought eggs and Cupcake made her soon to be world famous "half eggs."

Thursday morning rolled around, and we sprang in to action. Lawman fired up the wood smoker first thing.

The turkey went on first, since it takes the longest for get done.

Then all the sides came next. We split the side cooking between us, and have the routine down to a science. We are a well oiled machine when we cook dinner together.

Blueberry jello

Corn pudding

Sugar cookie pizza

Celery/Onions for stuffing

Stale Cornbread

Turkey heart and gizzards for stuffing flavor

Smashed Potatoes

Cornbread stuffing, after a little mouse had a taste

The Dudley Twins were very restless Thursday. They had no idea what was going on, but it sure smelled good to them.

Further tradition calls for a punchbowl full of punch. Even if it was just us.

Fruit punch

After we got everything cooked, we cut out a couple of plates for Pop.

And as is our annual tradition, we put the turkey bones on for a pot of turkey broth. We made a couple jars over four gallons this year, and pressure canned all but one gallon that we left out for dog food flavor.

Friday we were digging the leftovers out for dinner, and realized we had forgotten the second most important part of Thanksgiving. Oysters. Cupcake hated oysters when she first came to The Acre, because her father fixed them every year, and obviously had no clue how to properly prepare them. One taste of Lawman's oysters, and its a holiday tradition now. Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Lawman fried them up for Saturday night dinner, along with a pound of shrimp.

Plus, he dug up a fresh horseradish root and ground it up to make homemade cocktail sauce.

And it wouldn't be the holidays without our sausage balls. This year we tried using "Old Folks" hot sausage. It had very little grease in it and made a superior sausage ball, in our humble opinion.

Where has a food processor been our whole lives?

Last but no least, Lawman put down a little deer this week. He's been eyeing this one for a while, he loves a first year doe for smoker meat. This one blundered into the yard for a helping of chicken feed one morning, and ended up in the cooler. Now Cupcake gets backstrap gravy for breakfast every Sunday for a few weeks.

We ended the week with wings. And a nap.

K&K

All Food This Week

 Eating season is upon us and apparently, food is all we did this week. Starting off with "The Boy" and his new hobby. Duck hunting. He and a couple of his pals struck out for the lake this week and they all bagged their limit. He brought home his bounty and Lawman used a bit for Sunday gravy.

Lawman fried it up in butter. It's a keeper recipe.

Being fall of the year, it's soup season. We had a pack of chicken legs that were getting a little old, so we turned them into chicken noodle soup.

We added fresh kale for that vitamin A pop. And when we were finished, we used the soup blocks to freeze it. Quick lunches and no wasted canning lids. Because canning lids are hard to come by.

Cupcake requested this weeks cookie recipe be gingerbread. So gingerbread cookies is what she got.

And as always, we ended the week with wings. And a nap.

K&K