Cherpeaple

 Do you know about the Turducken? Wikipedia describes it as a dish consisting of a de-boned chicken stuffed into a de-boned duck, which is in turn stuffed into a de-boned turkey. I'm not really sure what the point of that would be, I mean it's poultry stuffed poultry stuffed inside of poultry. Perhaps I've been following the Weight Watchers program so long that the idea of eating poultry doesn't sound overly exciting to me. And I suppose I could use the same argument for why the dessert version of the Turducken called the Cherpumple DID sound so exciting to me. 

Mr. ShowMe actually found it on the web back before Thanksgiving. (I usually steer clear of articles and posts on the web for food items, as they just make me hungry and almost NEVER for carrots, spinach, or brocoli!) I can't take any credit for creating this monster. Charles Phoenix is responsible for that. He describes the Cherpumple as a three-layer cake with a pie stuffed in each layer. 

To say he inspired us would be an understatement. We decided it would be a fun project for us to try at Christmas. We read through many of the successes and failures posted at his web site, watched his video carefully, gathered the ingredients and started the project wondering if we could actually pull it off. Mr. ShowMe doesn't like pumpkin pie, so we used peach in place of pumpkin, hence the name change for our version to Cherpeaple.

We decided that our cake pans weren't big enough so we purchased a spring form pan. We baked the pies two days before Christmas and on Christmas eve started in on the cakes. We baked them one at a time, and found that low temps and long times was the secret to getting them done. We actually baked each of the layers about an hour at about 275. We fiddled with the oven temp as they baked, if they seemed to be getting too "done" on the edges and still not "done" in the middle we turned it down. Eventually we had the three layers completed and decided to try to assemble the monster and transport it for an hour and half in the car was just asking for trouble, so we took it un-assembled to Mr. ShowMe's parents house on Christmas morning.

I cheated and used canned frosting.

It was a big hit!

I don't know if we'll ever make another one, but I'm glad we did it once. It was fun! 
Did you make any extravagant dishes over Christmas?

I'd love to hear about them, if you did.

Thanks for stopping by :)

Life Magazine - Time Machine

I love looking at old magazines. They are a fun step back in time. And while the articles can be fun to read, for me anyway, it's the ads that really tell the tale.

We went to an estate auction recently and one of the boxes of crap treasures we came home with had a 1954 Life Magazine in it. I'm going to reap a few blog posts from it, as it's a great issue all about fashion, but I'm going to start with one about the ads.

 Get a load at that price! $2.95 for the set. Do you know what complete sets of those Anchorglass Mixing Bowls sell for today? Ones in good condition bring over $100.00.. that's some appreciation rate!
 I love how the two women in this Briggs and Statton lawn mower ad are both mowing the grass in skirts. 

 What a fancy dress for admiring the new window air conditioner!

These just made me giggle. From the lady in the flamenco dancer dress who's constipation worries are over, the innovative step stool that lets housewives "work relaxed", and the woman who dreamed she flew a kite in her new Maidenform bra!

 Here's two more things we can all be thankful for. The invention of a better toilet bowl brush and the 10 key calculator!

Do you eat open face hot dogs with a knife and fork? I guess you'd have to! And how fun is this Libby's Pineapple juice ad?

 Never forget... if you want to win the boys, stay sweet as you are! And of course that starts with Listerine mouth wash! heheh

      
 I guess some things were lost in translation over the years. I'm not really sure how shrinking cotton causes you to be "swept away".. and besides.. when your waist is as small as your neck do you really need to worry about your clothes shrinking?

The "48 states" caught my attention. It wasn't for another five years after this magazine issue that Alaska and Hawaii joined the union and we became 50 states. 

 Due to my watch fetish I had to pay homage to this old Timex ad. I just don't know why the pups look so sad. They're advertising watches! What's there to be sad about?

And I guess after an evening of watching the little woman hang the wallpaper, she could go to the kitchen

where she could sit on her step stool and relax while she cooked dinner using her "pride and joy" Wear-Ever pots and pans! 

Thanks for stepping back in time with me. I hope you enjoyed the ride as much as I did. 

Have a great week :)

I'll be joining DebbieDoos and other fun parties this week, check out my Link Parties page for the complete list.

Thanksgiving Meal Tragedies

I'm ashamed to admit this. I realize that most people my age have become experts at preparing a Thanksgiving spread for their family, but the truth is, I've never had to prepare the entire meal, until last year. I'm an absolute master at some of the dishes. My sweet potato casserole is a must have! I've actually been told that if I don't arrive with my chocolate eclair cake, I won't be allowed through the door. Mr ShowMe can smoke a turkey that falls from the bone. Trust me, with Mr ShowMe's smoked turkey, you won't complain for one minute about left overs, you'll be sad when the last of it's gone. But then there was last year... My mother-in-law was too sick to have everyone over so we were on our own.

The one dish we had never prepared was the dressing. I can't tell you where it all went terribly wrong. I can only tell you that it was awful! And by awful, I mean it was not fit for consumption. That's not an exaggeration. The texture was horrible and the flavor was something like I'd never tasted before. I even tried smothering it in gravy and all that did was ruin the gravy!

Leap forward one year, and we find ourselves on our own again. Thankfully, Mom is better this year, but she and Dad are traveling to the west coast to spend Thanksgiving with their daughter and her family. I wanted to see about buying some dressing from a grocery store deli. You can get containers of it that just need to be reheated. I figure since we had the epic turkey dressing failure last year, we'd just concede defeat early this year and buy it from the experts, but Mr ShowMe isn't ready to give up so easy, he seems determined to conquer the dressing challenge.

So I'm off to find a recipe that includes at least the ingredients that I know were in my Grandmother's dressing. I don't have her recipe, but I know it included certain things. I'm going to find a recipe, and we're going to follow it to the letter! Wish me luck!

Have you had any Thanksgiving dinner tragedies? Surely we aren't the only ones!