And I hepped...

 

For those of you who don't speak Southern, that last word is "helped."  If you said, "Shake & Bake commercials from the 60s and on," you get 20 bonus points.

No, we weren't making fried chicken today.  The plan: Joan was going to do some cooking and baking for our Thanksgiving meal tomorrow; I would go for a ride on the Vespa and stay out of her way.  We'd get together again for a late lunch.  It almost worked out that way.

I got home before she was done making the pumpkin cheesecake deserts, and the "family recipe" ham dip.  The ham dip is made from "potted meat"... to me, that is rather non-specific... on the side of the can, it said chicken and pork... it looked to me like it was probably pulverized pig tongue and chicken feet.  Joan told me, "You need to learn to make this in case I ever become incapacitated."

Yeah, I'll order out.

Another family tradition: some kind of pumpkin dessert for Thanksgiving.  Yeah, I know: that's everyone's family tradition.  In our family, there is only one of us (and it isn't Stephanie or me) who likes pumpkin.  Steph and I try to heap enough whipped cream on it so you can't taste the pumpkin part.  Somehow, it always comes through.

Instead of making a pumpkin pie, Joan decided to make a pumpkin cheesecake single serving dessert cups.  Since I was back from my ride before she was done with this culinary stuff, she asked if I wanted to help... picture me saying, "Sure," while shaking my head no.

I got to lick the cheesecake bowl part of this, so I really couldn't say no...

 

If you look close at that tray above, the two desserts on the right side in the photo have significantly less pumpkin - those are mine.  ;-)  She put whipped cream and cream cheese in with the pumpkin - definitely makes it more palatable.

I was on for a late lunch.  Pasta from Russo's.  Not easy to order from them, because they seem to ignore their phone, but the food is tasty.

Speaking of all this food stuff, I visited with our neighbor Susan while out on my bike ride this morning.  I asked her about their Thanksgiving plans... "We decided to do something appropriate for 2020: we're going to make grilled Spam-burgers."  That was a good laugh.  She wasn't kidding.  Her plan is for all the fixin's, just no turkey.  Home-made burger buns.  Cranberries.  A green-bean casserole.  This is an unusual year; that makes sense to me.