I hope you all had a nice holiday weekend. Mine was pretty relaxing once I got my Thanksgiving pies made, which I did on Wednesday. I even had to step away from a videoconference to take my pain-in-the-ass apple pie out of the oven. #priorities
My son and husband waiting to dig in!.
My Passion For Pie
I’ve always enjoyed baking, but don’t do it very often now that my kids are grown. From Thanksgiving to Christmas, though, I go all out. This week I kicked off the holiday baking season with my Thanksgiving pies. I’m not sure I’ll be doing my Christmas cookie bake-a-thon this year, but there will be cookie baking. My Mom always wants me to make this cranberry coffee cake and I usually have extras to use in other cranberry recipes. Then I wrap up the season with another round of pies for Christmas.
My passion for pie has evolved over the years. I used to make pumpkin pie with a ginger snap crust, but pumpkin pie has fallen out of favor with my family—replaced by my irresistible apple and pecan pies. I used to use pre-made crust, so making pies really was easy as pie, but my son developed gourmet tastes and goaded and guilted me into making homemade crust. I stumbled across this step-by-step all-butter pie crust recipe a few years ago, and have been making it ever since. This year was the first time the whole process went perfectly—including rolling out the crust to the correct thickness and size and getting it into the pie plate without breaking—three times—I was ecstatic!
I shared my pain-in-the-ass apple pie recipe last week, but am linking it again so I have all my pie recipes in one place. 😉
The random browning is a gold sugar wash that didn’t go as planned.
It took some digging on the Karo website to find, but this pecan lover’s pecan pie recipe made me a convert, Yes, it’s still too sweet, but it’s got twice as many pecans as the basic recipe, and they are sooo gooood!
Don’t tell my son, but I used pre-made crust for the cut-outs.
Weekly Run Down
Peloton dropped a ton of new workouts this week, some with a gratitude theme and some with a burn-off-the-calories theme. With all that pie, I’m glad I’m not trying to count calories these days. No matter how many workouts I did, the math would not end up in my favor. 😉
Monday: Lower Body Strength + 30 min Ride
I started the week with a long stack of short workouts—including Cliff’s first solo English ride.
Tuesday Full Body Strength + 5.15 Scooby Miles
Scooby spotted a deer pretty soon after we started out, which revved up his engine into a faster than usual pace. At least he didn’t try to chase after it!
Wednesday: Full Body Strength + 30 min Ride
Another long stack of short workouts. I’m not going to lie, the Elton John cool down ride was torture. I had to keep grabbing my hand back from ending the class. I just can’t do easy listening on the bike. 😀
Thursday: 6.7 Scooby Miles
I wanted to take Scooby out for a longish run before the 2 hour drive to my son’s place. We caught the end of a cotton candy sunrise that was so lovely! Definitely made me thankful to be out running!
Friday. ~rest day~
Friday was pretty much a rest day, with morning and evening walks with Scooby my only activity.
My son and his wife live in a cute little town on the C&D canal
with a big boating culture.
Saturday: 7.1 Scooby Miles
I tried to shorten my 8 mile loop into a 10K loop, but obviously still need to make it shorter! At least after yesterday’s rest day my legs didn’t mind the “extra” mile.
Sunday: 3.5 Treadmill Miles
I miscalculated how much time I needed for my planned workout, but managed to squeeze in a treadmill run with just enough time to shower, down a cup of coffee, and eat a biscuit with cranberry sauce before I had to leave for church–did you know today is the first Sunday of Advent?
This was my first full class with Jermaine–
he has a cool but motivating vibe.
It’s going to be nice enough for a bike ride later, but I think I’ll spend the afternoon putting up our Christmas tree instead
A huge thank you to Deborah and Kim for hosting the Weekly Run Down link up.
Join Deborah and me on Friday for the last Ultimate Coffee Date of 2022!
Would you have whipped cream or vanilla ice cream on your pie?
![The Ultimate Coffee Date](http://got2run4me.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Ultimate-Coffee-Date.png" "The Ultimate Coffee Date")
Oh your pies look so beautiful! This was the first year (in, like 30?) that I didn’t bake a pumpkin pie because my sister brought a store-bought one. I really missed that routine. I did the Turkey Burn Ride (with Robin) Friday morning, LOL.
I’ve only done the new outdoor runs — I’ve got some catching up to do this week!
Your pies all look fantastic! I definitely veered off of my usual eating plan this week too and I realize it doesn’t feel so good. Hope you had a fantastic Thanksgiving
My mom ordered a meal from where she lives. It was definitely meh, including the pie. Not such a bad thing really except there was a lot of pie left over! They had apple but I really just didn’t like it. 🙁
I used to bake a LOT when we were first married. Most everything from scratch — even tried my hand at croissants once. Now neither one of us needs that. I still do bake sometimes, in fact I want to bake a pumpkin bread soon.
All those Scooby photos are really gorgeous! Good thing he didn’t try to chase down the deer.
I definitely prefer homemade pies — store-bought one are usually too sweet for my tastes. Wow on homemade croissants. I think I tried that once for high school French class. I know we had to make Buche de Noel ….
I only tried the croissants once — too much work! But I baked bread from scratch regularly when we lived in VT. Which was a very long time ago. Almost 30 years!
Your pies are beautiful! I have never mastered the homemade crust, so yep, premade for me. I’ll bake cookies starting next week. It’s just Mike and me now, so no need to go crazy, right?
Your son’s town sounds so fun! Does he have a boat?
Pie crust can be frustrating when it doesn’t work.
Hah, no, he hasn’t expressed interest in boating. He’s found a local disc golf league for recreation that doesn’t require quite as much of an initial investment. 😉
Funny, I could have written parts of your post. I also was totally happy with pre-made crusts, until my son got gourmet and insisted upon homemade. It’s really hard to make pies come out perfectly when you only do it once or twice a year! I’m going to try your PITA apple pie recipe sometime around Christmas- my gourmet son will love it.
I think we should pick a weekend in December and have a virtual cookie bake-a-thon. Then we could all share pictures of what we made! I would love to get all my cookies made in one weekend like that.
I approve of skipping the bike ride to get the tree up- priorities!
Last year my baking group did our bake-a-thon over Facebook Live. It was fun and worked well — as long as people muted when they were using their mixers! Let me know when you try the pie — the steps are simple, there’s just a lot of them!
Your pies always look so amazing! I’m grateful that my husband has the patience for baking. He tweaked his pecan pumpkin pie recipe and it was dangerously good 😉
Lots of great Scooby miles! I chuckled about the Elton cool down ride. I’ll definitely take a pass on that one!
My husband is not a baker at all. He’s happy to be a tester though! 😉
I’m sort of wary of the Beatles rides for the same reason ….
Those are some gorgeous pies!! I clicked on the cookie link and now all I wanna do is bake cookies. Tis the season!
Your pies look and sound amazing! My favorite kind is apple, though we had a pumpkin at my sister’s this year and I didn’t say no 🙂
I need to check out some of the new Peloton classes! I wasn’t great about doing it over the weekend with my sister staying with me, particularly because her husband was often running on our treadmill so it just didn’t work. I’ll get back at it this week and look for your ideas!
Happy Thanksgiving Coco!
Happy to hear that you had a great Thanksgiving! Although the pies are very labor-intensive, they always look SO good! I take the easy way out and buy a Mrs Smith’s apple pie – I’m not a good baker so this is the best option, lol.
I loved all the Peloton drops this week – I swear it’s so hard to keep up with all of their content!
I runfess I’ve never had a slice of pecan pie. There I said it. Pecans are my favorite nut too. Your pies are magnificent. I think using pre-made crust for the cutouts is genius!
ha – I thought you were going to say the Elton John ride was too intense!! I can only imagine. It wouldn’t be my jam either. Such a pretty sunrise and cute doggie picture. You rock with those homemade pies. I’m really impressed!
Thanks for sharing your pie story!! They look amazing! I love how your son guilted you into making homemade crust and you rose beautifully to the challenge!
I love pie so much, but not pumpkin or pecan. I do make a mean chocolate whiskey pecan pie though. Just putting that out there.
Great week for you! I bet your tree looks gorgeous!