every picture tells a story doughnut

It's time for a new feature on the blog, a feature special for the month of December. I call it "Picture of the Day," because each day I will post a picture. And there will be some accompanying text because what is a picture without text? Certainly not the Picture of the Day. Anyways.


Today's picture is the cranberry sauce that my family enjoyed for Thanksgiving on Thursday. As you can probably tell from the ridges on the side, it came from a can. But then my mom did a super-sweet cooking show move, which was slicing off the bottom of the cranberry sauce so that it would lay flat and not jiggle as much. Then I used that excess cranberry sauce bit to create some garnish. About the only thing I can draw is a heart, so hearts it was.

This was the first Thanksgiving that I felt like I helped in any sort of meaningful way. It was my third year making an apple pie, but this year I also tried my hand at green bean casserole, stuffing, and doing unnatural things to the turkey. And then the next day, I made a shoofly pie for my dad's birthday! In case you are unfamiliar, the only ingredient in shoofly pie is molasses, so we have long fought the presence of this pie in our home, because it didn't sound that great. It turned out better than expected, I guess. Dad said the consistency was a little off.

Anyways, can you believe I helped with all this cooking? If you've known me for any appreciable amount of time then I think you can agree that my contribution was fairly impressive, as I have made it a point to avoid kitchens whenever possible. My mom claimed that I had been hiding my kitchen skills for 26 years, but then my brother helpfully pointed out that it's fairly dangerous for babies, toddlers and young children to handle some things in the kitchen such as knives and mixers. So to be fair, I've only been hiding these skills for oh, 19 years. And I bet they're transitory, brought on by some sort of Thanksgiving magic. No one should go get any ideas about me and the kitchen.