Happy Thanksgiving Week!   I am feeling particularly jolly because Thanksgiving weekend is hands down my favorite 4 days of the year.  Christmas Eve is my favorite day of the year, but if we’re going for quantity, it is definitely Thanksgiving weekend.  First, there is the night before Thanksgiving, a day that is almost always spent with my  female cousins and my sister, over at my Nanny’s house.  We help her set up for Thanksgiving for 35 the next day, and then we spend the night at her house, just like we did when we were kids, but this time free of our own kids, and we talk and laugh and drink margaritas and eat horrible-for-you food until about 2am.  As we are winding down for bed,  I tell my famous joke about the ghost with the three red eyes (picture this, which about sets the scene perfectly, except with an obnoxious joke instead of a song) and then we all fall asleep until about 6am, when we get up to get that enormous bird into the oven.  Pure joy.

Then, we have Thanksgiving dinner with my big old wonderful extended family, before heading out for round 2, to eat some more with my husband’s big old wonderful extended family. The next morning, I cook a turkey and some stuffing solely so that we can enjoy leftover turkey sandwiches for weeks.  I skip Black Friday almost entirely, although sometimes I’ll set an alarm for midnight and buy something online.  My husband, on the other hand, braves the crowds and goes out and scores us things like $20 shop vacs and big screen TVs, while I’m sleeping soundly.

We spend the rest of the weekend hitching up the old four wheel drive sleigh to  head out into the wilderness to embrace the frosty majesty of the winter landscape to select and cut down our Christmas tree. We bring it home and have a merry time drinking eggnog and eating cookies and decorating it.  We listen to Christmas music.  We have an annual tradition that weekend where my mom takes us all out for lunch, and then to Wight’s Nursery Wonderland of Christmas to pick out a Christmas tree ornament.  We go and see Santa with my in-laws, and then we all go out for dinner.

It is glorious.

I am almost always charged with bringing dessert to Thanksgiving.  We are having round 1 with my husband’s immediate family today.  I’m bringing this yummy concoction, that I am calling Apple Slab Pie.   To put it in educational terms, If apple pie and apple crisp had a baby, it would surely come out looking like this.  Fancier and a little more time consuming than an apple crisp, but easier than a pie, and feeds a lot more people than a pie.

Homemade thick pie crust, spread generously all over and up the sides of a 9×13 inch pan.  Tart and sweet granny smith apple cinnamon-y deliciousness pie filling.  Buttery cinnamon-oat streusel topping.  Serve with ice cream.

Enjoy.  And Happy Thanksgiving!

A Rumbly in my Tumbly original

Ingredients:
One double crust pie crust recipe.  I use this one, which is Crisco’s Pie Crust Recipe.  You can use any recipe you like.  You could even use two refrigerated pie crusts and roll them together, if you’d like, but I warn you, it won’t be quite as good as homemade crust.

Apple pie filling:
9 cups of peeled and sliced Granny Smith apples (if you use different apples, you will probably want to cut the sugar a bit)
1 cup granulated sugar
1 tablespoon lemon juice
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1 teaspoon cornstarch

Streusel Topping:
6 tablespoons room temperature butter
3/4 cups all purpose flour
1/2 cup quick cooking oats
3/4 cups brown sugar, packed
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

Optional drizzle:
1/2 cup powdered sugar
1 tablespoon cream, milk, or half and half

Directions:
Preheat your oven to 400°.   Peel and slice your apples, and mix them with the cinnamon/sugar, and lemon juice.  Cook over medium heat for about 10 minutes until slices are soft.  Add the cornstarch and cook an additional 2 minutes or so until the liquid from the apples has thickened.  Set aside to cool.

Roll your pie crust out into a large rectangle (bigger than a 9×13 inch pan.)  Place the rectangle into the pan with the pie crust going about half way up the edges.  Now, unless your name is Martha Stewart or Ina Garten, the chances are that your rectangle will not me perfect, and you will have to pull some crust from other places and attach the pieces to other parts.  I call this “pie crust surgery” and nobody will ever know you had to do this, because you are about to fill it up with delicious apple pie filling.

So, of course the next step is to fill the crust up with your amazing apple filling.  Spread it evenly over the crust.

Using your hands, crumble up the streusel ingredients and spread them over the top of the apples.  Bake for about 25 minutes, until the edges of the pie crust and the streusel are a golden brown.

Remove from the oven, drizzle if desired, serve warm with ice cream.