Thanksgiving Preparations

In light of the holiday (and my need to share my baking disaster), I'm doing a Wednesday update and sharing my story. Joe is at work and Nala is not much for responding to my kitchen frustrations so type I must. Let me preface my story by saying that for the first time in my life I put leftovers in the freezer. I have never been a leftover kind of person but in these hard economic times I'm trying to be more senseable. About a month ago I made some delicious pumpkin bread using just a small amount of pumpkin from a very large can. I knew that I would be needing some pumpkin again around Thanksgiving so I got myself a tupperware container (okay so it was a plastic container leftover from lunch meat-my first mistake), put the leftover pumpkin inside, and into the freezer it went. Fast forward to this past Sunday when I thought I was being really good taking the pumpkin out of the freezer to thaw. I noticed Monday night that there was some orange liquid at the bottom of the refrigerator but chalked it up to the peaches that Joe had opened that night for dinner. Tuesday comes and there is more orange liquid and no more peaches to blame it on. Joe thought it might be his grapefruit juice. I just kept wiping it up and didn't think much about it. This afternoon I decided that it was time to do the inevitable and tackle this chocolate chip pumpkin cookie recipe. I start to get everything together and pull out the pumpkin. As soon as I open the lid I see that something is not right. I'm not too familiar with pumpkin consistency but I'm pretty sure it's not supposed to be lumpy mush sitting in a pool of liquid. Upon further inspection I notice that there is a crack in the bottom of my makeshift tupperware. The culprit of the leaking orange liquid has been found! At first I just tell myself that the pumpkin will be fine once I start mixing it into the other ingredients. Joe comes out to inspect my project and makes a face. I ask him if he thinks my chunky pumpkin will make a difference and he kindly suggests that I make another trip to the store. After some whining (on my part) since I had just come from the store not two hours earlier, and it was not an experience I wanted to repeat, I headed into the grocery abiss. I don't like grocery shopping on a normal day so going to the store twice on the day before Thanksgiving was worth than a trip to the dentist. Back from my shopping escapade (it was tough but I survived the masses), I'm ready to start again. As I look at the recipe I can't help but wonder why so many recipes suggest combining some ingredients in one bowl and others in another bowl before combining it all? To me this just means more dishes and more time spent cleaning up so into one bowl everything goes. I'm going along well until I come to the lowercase "t." Does this mean teaspoon or tablespoon? I'm used to seeing another letter beside the "t" so I was a bit perplexed. Trying to think back to 7th grade Home Ec class didn't help much so I just took a guess and decided teaspoon it is! I'm almost to the end and notice that the recipe calls for salt. This spice (can you call salt a spice?) is something that we've been out of for quite sometime and just can't remember to get at the store. Luckily we have some seasalt in the cupboard so I decide this will be a good fill in for regular salt. Yes Betty Crocker may be shaking her head at me but at this point I just want to get out the kitchen! Last line of the recipe calls for chocolate chips. I just assume it means the whole bag until I look again and see that it says 1 cup. My 1 cup measuring cup is already dirty so after pouring the whole bag in I just take a handful out and assume the rest is a cup. Who says you need to stay on specifics when baking? (Actually that was probably Betty Crocker too.-oops) Cookies just came out of the oven and they look normal. I think I might have Joe test one for me before they make the trip to the cabin. Breathing a sigh of relief as my baking adventure is complete, I look at the contents of the salad I must create. That I can handle as it's really just throwing a bunch of vegetables together and making it look nice. I even bought the already chopped red onion so I don't have to touch them. All I can think of is all this hassle for some cookies in a salad, how would I ever handle a turkey?