Baking Day!

Today I am running on not much sleep. It seemed last night that every time I fell asleep I was awakened due to coughing. I am ready for the cough to go away. I got up early as I figured that I might as well! I first did some cleaning and then got underway with my cooking. I started out with baking two pecan pies. I figured that heating up the oven would help heat up the kitchen so that rolls could rise. Everything that I did today seemed to take an extremely long time! I don't know how it is this time and I have no more done than I have! Sweet Abigail came over after lunch and offered to be my cooking assistant. She helped me shape the rolls and then make the pie crusts for the two pumpkin pies and stirred the pumpkin mixture as I added ingredients. After the pies were in the oven, she used the rest of the leftover pastry dough to make some tree and star pastry treats for her family to have after their supper. After those came out of the oven we put them on a pretty angel plate and I helped her carry them back to her house (it was dark by this time). I have put away a load of clothes and gotten the dish washer loaded and running and then washed the dishes that didn't fit in by hand as I need to get to the sink to let the turkey sit in a cold water "bath" to make sure that it is thawed the whole way for in the morning. I also still have the broccoli to prepare...I thought that it would be good not to have to cut up the broccoli tomorrow. Woody has worked on writing out Christmas letter today. He also went to the store to get more milk, butter, and eggs! It never ceases to amaze me how many eggs I use when making Thanksgiving dinner. And, this year we didn't count up as to how many we needed...I just put eggs on the grocery list and he got a dozen and I "thought" that would be sufficient with what we already had...well...not so! I often have a box of dry milk on hand, but don't at the moment so I have been going through the milk pretty fast too...especially with the pumpkin pies and the whole wheat rolls' liquid happens to be milk and we definitely need plenty of milk for the mashed potatoes tomorrow! By the end of the day we hardly have any left in the 1/2 gallon that we had so it was good that he went to the store. He helped with the pumpkin pies too...he opened up the evaporated milk when I went upstairs to help Kathy find some thread! He is still experiencing a lot of sciatica pain. So he sort of tries to stay put as much as he can. I came upstairs a little while ago to recoup. I sat in my recliner and dozed "slightly" so maybe it was a power nap?!? I surely hope so as I still have several things to do on my "to-do" list. I knew that today's list was going to be almost impossible to accomplish...but these tasks needed to be done today. My main problem today was remembering to start the timer! I would set it before the item went into the oven, but after I got it in the oven I forgot to start it! That happened with both sets of pies and the rolls...guess you could say I am on a roll. One batch of rolls got a bit overdone...and I just had to keep an eye on the pies. I have made these pies so many times that I know how they "shake" if they are done or not done! So nothing too drastic happened due to my forgetfulness...guess I was multitasking a bit too much! Well, off to see if I can accomplish another task or two or...I keep thinking that tomorrow at this time Thanksgiving festivities will probably be behind us for another year! It takes so long to prepare and is over in a blink of an eye! Time does fly when one is having fun!