Preparing for Thanksgiving

I have been busy all day baking dessert for tomorrow's big Thanksgiving dinner, a loaf of bread from http://www.artisanbreadinfive.com/ and while the oven was hot, roasting beets I purchased from a farm that's only about 15 minute walk from me and some chicken. And now I get to sit down for a little while.

This is an apple and cranberry crostada. A mix of Ina Garten's crostada and Joy of Baking's French Apple Tart. But I don't have a tart pan that the Joy of Baking recipe required, but I already made the pastry. And I used Ina Garten's crostada assembly and added cranberries.

And this is my pumpkin pie made with my homegrown pumpkin. I cut into it to see if it was done. The crack grew bigger as I tried to fix it by poking it again with the knife. And then tried again to fix it with my fingers....Sheesh!! But I have lots of whipping cream, and everybody knows that whipping cream fixes everything...

And my little one pound misshapen loaf. Next time I"ll just have to take a little more time when I shape it. All in all this five minute bread thing is super easy but I'll have to let you know how it tastes. The bread is cooling as I speak. But it smell delicious, it's crunchy, and it looks Artisan. I'm trying not to eat white flour but I wanted to start with this and then will graduate to whole wheat next week.

I will report on Monday how all this tasted and if it tastes any good I'll be happy to share the recipes but for now I'm still in the testing stages.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Margaret