Why I married my husband Reason #57; or Happy Thanksgiving!

I have recently discovered a love of making bread. I find it really exciting to literally make food. By combining things that, alone, do not really constitute food; you can create a yummy, healthy and versatile happy loaf of goodness. I think that's neat.

I'm making rolls for Thanksgiving dinner at my sister's house this year. Our babies' first Thanksgiving and her first Thanksgiving in her new home (a short walk away from mine). We're pretty jazzed and are enough past the new baby stage to be able to take on projects to make this holiday a little more fancy than it has to be. What good is being a SAHM if you don't take the time to make things special?

I'm also in charge of one of those dips where you pour a prepared jar of sauce on top of some cream cheese. I got some tasty pomegranate chipotle sauce that came from Fredricksburg (one of my husband's and my fave places), but that wasn't quite fancy enough, so my sister and I decided it would be cute if I molded the cheese to be a festive shape for the occasion (you know, like you do). With our powers combined we rustled up squirrel and acorn shaped cookie cutters and I had my task set. I had never molded cream cheese using a cookie cutter (or anything else for that matter), but nothing ventured, nothing gained, eh?

Upon cramming the gooey-ness into the shapes I realized that I would never get it to be nice and flat and perfect (like a jello jiggler), so I decided to push it out right away and sculpt them into presentability. They pushed out better than I'd hoped and sculpting went smoothly because I didn't lose sight of the fact that it was a dip to be eaten, not a work of art. I did have a little Stepford moment of zen when I was completely absorbed in the task though.

I was pretty happy with it, but couldn't decide if I wanted to leave the eye just sculpted, or if I wanted to put a little clove in the cheese for the squirrel eye. I decided I could be just a little insane at that point, so I brought it into my husband to ask him what he thought; prefacing the question by telling him that it was silly. His response was that I, of course, needed to put the clove in, that it wasn't a silly question and that he loved me.