Happy Thanksgiving, all!
I'm curled up in my usual spot on the orange sofa, snuggled up in one of Hubster's flannel bathrobes, drinking coffee laced with Coffeemate's Peppermint Mocha creamer (so glad they realized that this shouldn't be a seasonal product but a year round one -- all I have to do is buy it up each week before they're out).
There are two pumpkin pies in the oven. And therein lies Thing 1 for which I am thankful.
On the internet, it says that you absolutely cannot substitute sweetened condensed milk for evaporated milk in your recipe. They are not the same thing at all. I know that. One is chock full of sugar and thick, one is not.
But their packaging is similar and when you're glancing through your pantry and you see small red and white striped cans of that approximate shape way in the back, well, it's not that inconceivable that you might mistake one for the other. Especially if you're in a hurry because you've booked your one free day this week pretty tightly without leaving room for the absolute inevitability that you'll forget an essential ingredient for Thanksgiving dinner (or two: Kitchen Bouquet and Rhodes White Rolls) and you'll have to dash into the grocery store on the busiest stupid day of the year in there which you were so smug about avoiding by shopping on Monday.
Well, get this. You absolutely cannot substitute sweetened condensed milk for evaporated milk ... unless you are making pumpkin pie. Which needs condensed milk and sugar. Ding, ding, ding. We have a winner. And a one to one substitution. Thank you, there is a God! I don't have to go from Seven-Eleven to Quik Trip to wherever to find a can or two of evaporated milk on Thanksgiving morning at 6:30 a.m.
And this blunder of sorts leads me to Thing 2 for which I am thankful.
So, I fought the crowds at the grocery store through the baking aisle and the gravy aisle and the frozen food aisle and the dairy aisle (out of Coffeemate Peppermint Mocha creamer at home I remembered -- got the last three). I got in the twenty-item-or-less aisle which was full of folks grumbling about the three things they'd forgotten on Monday. I was among my people.
The cute 40-something checker guy was commiserating with each of us in turn. He gigged me about seeing me in there on Monday (isn't it fun to have shopped at a place for 20 years so that they all know you?) We laughed and he wondered what Kitchen Bouquet even was and I opined that he can't have worked in a grocery store for 15 years and not know what Kitchen Bouquet is and he said, "No seriously, what is it?" and I explained that I used it for darkening poultry gravy which can be a grayed out taupe color if you don't have time to brown the drippings. That got an appropriately blank stare in response.
He finished up and I wished him a happy Thanksgiving. Then he said, "Well, you too, babe," and handed me my receipt.
I haven't been called "babe" since sometime in the '80's. I chuckled all the way home. Babe. I told Hubster about it when I got home and now I've been called babe several more times. Tee hee.
So, to sum up, I'm thankful for what? Sweetened condensed milk and cheeky check-out guys?
No, silly, I'm thankful for good fortune, which I have in abundance, and for my place in this world. Sometime today I'll get a third thankful for to write about, I bet. Because thankses come in threes, too, don't you think?
Have a blessed day, my friends!
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