Pumpkin Pie Practice Run

Thanksgiving prep

I know I've mentioned this before but the Starr Sisters aren't the best of cooks. Our Mom is hands down awesome in the kitchen. And she made several attempts of passing her skills down to her daughters, she can't say she didn't try. Each summer we had to master a meal. Yes, from start to finish an actual meal that you'd serve a group of people. When she decided it was "that time in the summer", she'd search for us in the barn. We'd either be hiding or able to convince her Dad left us a long list of chores that needed to be crossed off before he got home on Friday. It was miserable. Miserable as in crying, screaming, blood on the cutting board and burned skin. All in which resulted in eating burnt food, frozen pizza or running in town to the local Drive-In. Mom came to the conclusion that she was just going to have really clean and well-fed show heifers. Instead she decided to focus on our strengths and teach us things like helping a cow calve, the importance of calves getting colostrum (mother's first milk) and fixing fence. Because those things are best learned first-hand. A complicated recipe could be explained over the phone.
As we get closer to the holiday's (and the spike of pins to Pinterest board we'll never use increases) some of us get a bug to be the next Becky-Homecky, a term us Starr girls use when describing the domestic types. Last Sunday I dug out the rolling pin and pie pan for a practice run at Pumpkin pie. How hard can it be the recipe is on the back of the can, right? Well, in my family we have a crust recipe and it fails every time I attempt it. It's not my fault though, you see it's a temperamental recipe. All the ingredients have to be added in a certain order and you can't stop in the middle of crumbling to call your sister.
All was going well this go around, mom was in the background "really busy on her iPad"; pretending to not really be in the room. The crust was made and into the greased pie pan. The hardest part was done, smooth sailing from this point. The filling was made, even added INSERT FAMILY SECRET HERE, and before I knew it I was proudly pouring the filling into the crust. Then mom says calming while making the upward swiping motion to catch up on her latest Facebook gossip. "You did add sweetened condensed milk, right?" Me, "WHAT?? AUGHHH How did I miss that!" Add in a few swear words, foot stomping and slamming of the spatula on the counter. The good news is, a Starr sister can always figure out a solution, probably because we've had to get ourselves out of so many bad kitchen situations.


Forgot an ingredient? Just stir it in when it's in the pie pan. Who knew this doubled as a mixing bowl!

Then the wait. Would it turn out? I sure hoped so because it'd be a dirty shame to ruin the beautiful crust that I concentrated so hard on.

Of course it turned out!

So Sunday night (and maybe Monday night :) ), I splurged and enjoyed a slice without any guilt. But let's just say it's a good thing a practice run was involved and that I'm not hosting Thanksgiving!