The sauce was perfect, especially because I didn’t make it. I did a little research online and discovered that many cooking sites consider Rao’s sauce to be one of the best jarred sauce available. It really was quite tasty.

And I had a lot of fun putting the dessert together. It was inspired by this post from hello!Lucky and featured sandwich cookies using Bakerella’s recipe.

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Fortunately for me, his favorite kind of cherry pie involves boxed pie crust and canned pie filling.

Sometimes after I pour the cherry pie filling out of the two Lucky Leaf cans, I’m feeling guilty about my lack of culinary skills.

I mean, if it was that easy, then I’m not making a quality dessert, right?

So, I pull out a cookie cutter.

I chose a snowflake since it’s been awfully cold here lately and I’ve been wishing for snow. I use the cookie cutter to decorate the pie. This makes it look more homemade, right?

While it may not look fabulous, Peter swears it tastes great, so that makes me happy.

I’ve made a few adjustments to my cooking game plan, and although it feels a little ambitious, I think I can do it! Here it is:

8:40 AM

Make Port Wine Sauce

9 AM

Prepare Acorn Squash Wedges

Microwave Sweet Potatoes, Mash and prepare for baking

9:25 AM

Bake Acorn Squash Wedges in a 350-degree oven for 20 minutes.

9:45 AM

Take Squash out of oven, cover with aluminum foil

9:45 AM

Pre-heat oven for Duck (275 degrees)

10:00 AM

Duck in oven at 275 degrees

11 AM

Prepare Stuffing

12 PM

Duck out of oven

12:15 PM

Stuffing in oven for 30 minutes at 350 degrees

Reheat Mashed Potatoes in oven for 20-30 minutes at 350 degrees

Reheat Sweet Potatoes in oven for 20-30 minutes at 350 degrees

Finish Acorn Squash wedges for 30 minutes at 350 degrees

1 PM Lunch

Peter and I will be joining my parents again this year for Thanksgiving. We used to have them come up to our house when I suddenly realized something very important….my Mom has a very nice kitchen. It is much bigger than mine. My Mom still likes to clean up after me since she likes her kitchen to be clean. I don’t like to clean. Therefore, I really should be cooking the dinner in her kitchen.

I’m not sure if she agreed with my logic, but she is graciously allowing us to do so for the second year in a row this Thursday.

I’ve decided to make a couple of items in advance this year to try and make the preparations on the day of easier. On Monday night I made the dessert – Caramel Pumpkin Pecan Gingersnap Cheesecake by the Pioneer Woman. It looks really tasty despite the major cracks in the top of my cheesecake. My cheesecakes (not that I make them all THAT often, but still) always have cracks. It didn’t look as obvious when I slathered a thick layer of Caramel sauce on the top. Yum.

A beautiful mountain scene complete with a bacon fence and French toast mountains.

I’m going back and forth between the Food Network and Martha Stewart websites looking for recipes and ideas and have been saving bookmarks to my Delcious account and copying the recipes into Evernote. I have Evernote on my mobile so I’d like to try using the synching feature to transfer my grocery lists from my laptop to my mobile. I’m going to try this for the first time tomorrow with our weekly list.  These are the recipes I’ve decided on for this year:

Claire Robinson’s Dark and Spooky 

This is supposed to be similar to Bermuda’s National Drink – the Dark and Stormy. I figure this will remind Peter of our anniversary trip there last June.

Little Smokies (I use my Mom’s recipe)

We love hot dogs. Enough said.

Bats & Cobwebs

Pasta – we are definitely pasta people! I don’t think I’ll be adding a salad though – we aren’t all that much into green things. Still trying to decide if I’ll do garlic bread or not.

Jack-o’-lantern Tarts

These are filled with pumpkin and look super easy to make. Now I have to track down mini tart tins with removable bottoms. They are a whopping $9.99 EACH on Amazon so I’m going to keep looking.