Thanksgiving in September

I promised I would share a surprise.  Well, here are all the details.  But first, we have to back up a couple weekends:

“Let’s go to the Cape for Thanksgiving this year,” I told David at dinner that Saturday.

“Why?” David knows that Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday right up there with Christmas.

“So we can get away, do something different.”

I told him my reasons: we aren’t going to get vacation time together until spring, we’ve been wanting to get away for a weekend anyway this fall.  Then I paused, thought, and said,

“And my sister won’t be here to celebrate, which means whatever dinner we have will just not feel right.”

David realized that this last comment was perhaps the most important reason: I just didn’t feel like celebrating Thanksgiving if I couldn’t do it the way we’d done it for the past five years.

“Why don’t we celebrate early this year when she comes for the conference next week?” he suggested.

It was brilliant.  Suddenly, I was excited about Thanksgiving again.  So we made a menu, planned, prepped, baked, moved furniture, and worked all weekend for her arrival Sunday evening.

And we had a delicious, festive dinner.  We ate so much food, and drank delicious apple martinis.  We had a great time, and it didn’t matter that it wasn’t November.

I tried something new for dessert: I call them Apple Pielets.  I hope you enjoy!

Apple Pielets

4-5 medium-sized apples
1 Tbsp butter, cut into small pieces
1/3 cup brown sugar
1/3 cup granulated sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp nutmeg
Pie crust

Preheat the oven to 350F.  Peel and dice apples, test to be sure you have enough by gently mounding them into four ramekins.  Add more apples if needed.  Pour apples into a medium-sized bowl and mix in butter, sugars, cinnamon, and nutmeg.  Stir until juices form, then gently mound back into ramekins.

Roll out pie crust and cut 4 circles the size of the ramekins (I used a large water glass).  Place one pie crust circle on each ramekin and carefully slice for holes into the top.  Sprinkle with cinnamon and sugar if you want.

Bake at 350F for half an hour, or until tops begin to brown.  As the pielets cool, they will deflate – just enough to put a dollop of vanilla ice cream on top!