Giving thanks

Happy Thanksgiving!  No new recipes for me today, just slight variations on some old ones.  For me, the best thing about food at Thanksgiving is the pie.  I don't make it all that often, because I'll want to eat it all, and I know how many calories there are in all-butter pie crust. =)  Okay, I'll want to eat it all if it's the right kind of pie.  The pie you see above, which is Caramel Pumpkin Pie, is not for me.  I don't actually like pumpkin pie.  But my husband loves it, so I make it for him.  You can read about my previous experiences with this Dorie recipe here.  What I did differently was to make mini pies this year.  I bought a couple of really cute 7" pie plates at Crate and Barrel a couple years ago, and I'm pretty sure this is the first time I've used them.  

I also made apple pie, since that's my favorite.  You can read some of my ramblings about apple pie here.  I started off making my usual recipe, which isn't really one recipe, but pieces from several recipes, all put together.  The crust is an all-butter one that originally belonged to a freeform fruit tart from Cook's Illustrated.  The filling comes from my Betty Crocker cookbook.  And I do a crumb topping--my current favorite is the one from this Epicurios recipe.  My only change this time around was to rub the seeds from a vanilla bean (I got a whole bunch at Costco recently) into the sugar that I used in the filling.  The result was quite tasty.  

The best part of my day was early this morning, though, when I found out that Gillian made me this: