Family Alive

Today’s been a nice relaxing day of celebrating this Day of Thanks with the Toone family. Brian got a short bike ride in this morning, while I cooked and Analise watched the Macy’s parade.  I made a tasty cheesy green bean casserole, scalloped corn, and instead of my traditional apple pie, I made a cheesecake from scratch. Homemade apple pie has been my treat to make – and eat – since my first Thanksgiving in Nicaragua 5 years ago, learning from the lovely Lori Thompson. I love making pie crust from scratch and creating a beautiful delicious pie, courtesy of Betty Crocker’s recipe. And I had been looking forward to it this year, but I stumbled across a cheesecake recipe, and just wanted to try something new. I feel like I’m failing my tradition! Maybe I’ll still make a pie later this weekend;)

Anyway, the cheesecake turned out pretty well. The recipe is from Allrecipes – Chocolate Chip Cheesecake. It was pretty easy, actually. I even baked it in a water bath, and it ended up without cracks. I topped it with melted chocolate chips, just because it looked a little boring. It’s a dense cheesecake, and I I think I might have overwhipped the filling. But it still tasted pretty good. I feel good enough about it that I’ll be more than willing to try other cheesecake recipes. And I don’t think anyone missed the apple pie today.

I also had decided that Analise and I were going to make leaf cookies with our fall cookie cutters (from premade dough sheets). Then I got a fun idea to make a family tree with our leaves. It turned out nice – and tasty!

So we had a relaxing meal, and then the guys helped get the Christmas decorations down from the attic. Analise didn’t get an afternoon nap, beccause she was too busy playing while everyone was working (and I was keeping Josiah happy), so she was overtired tonight. I’m getting the house put back together… well, mostly the kitchen. I’m looking forward to getting some Christmas decorations out and setting up our tree this weekend. Last year I was too tired being early pregnant, and so we just put up the mini-tree. This year, though, I’m excited to set up a real sized tree, in our real formal living room.

Enjoy the photos! I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving! We’re thankful for all of you!