Thanksgiving Sunday

I sit here in my uncle's living room. I'm looking after my young cousin, Fiona, which really just means lounging here as she reads. If she is reading (Beezus and Ramona by Beverly Cleary) I figure I should do some for school as well (Moments of Being by Virgina Woolf). I try not be be jealous of her novel, just concentrate on the transformative prose, remember that it is groundbreaking.

From the kitchen comes the heady scent of baked pumpkin and warm chocolate, a combination that is not in the least unpleasant. I'm surprised I can even smell it with my nose this stuffed up from allergies. (The culprit being a large German Shepard mutt sleeping in the corner, head titled adorably to one side). I sit here with a crumpled kleenex in one hand, the other is rubbing my cheek bones trying to chase way the pain that is quietly shooting across my face. I have to read with my mouth slightly open to breath, this makes me look slow.

I worry that the pumpkin pie is undercooked. Fi and I baked it earlier. It wasn't cooked in my oven, their's is unfamiliar. (Only slightly more unfamiliar than my own though, so this is a weak excuse). While my mom and Fiona's parents are out I had to bake two of the three Thanksgiving desserts. Fi and I started with brownies, from a box, my own addition to the festivities. My mom keeps saying that I am making the pumpkin pie from scratch, this is because she no longer bakes and the idea of actually making pastry is foreign to her. It is not store bought, but it is still factory made. Mixing pumpkin pie filling with an egg and milk before pouring into a frozen pie shell is not baking from scratch. But, even with this simplicity in baking, I may have screwed it up. I think it is undercooked.

If the pumpkin pie fails by falling apart or turning out to be raw and if the brownies all crumble when we try to take them out of the pan, dessert will still be saved. When my mom returns she is going to make apple crisp, truly from scratch. The recipe is not even written down and she has plans to add cranberries and apricots to it for something new. This could turn out badly, and from the sounds of it there is more likelihood of the crisp failing that the brownies or pie. But my mother has years of experience on her side.

I'm hungry. The adults won't be home for hours and it will be even longer before they have finished cooking. Fi and I licked the brownie batter from the bowl over 2 hours ago. Dinner can't come soon enough.