Dad wanted me to come over today to test whether my cell phone works in his house by going around to various rooms upstairs and downstairs to call his land lines number. My phone worked just fine. Dad's is an older analog model. He uses Cingular, which apparently doesn't have great coverage in his area. Steve and I settled on Verizon about a year ago when we first got our cell phone service. The family plan pricing was similar among operators at the time, but Verizon had by far the best coverage--works fine pretty much anywhere in the U.S. but parts of Montana and the Dakotas. Since I don't do business there, it's a coverage area I don't really need to worry about.

Mom's birthday was Thursday, so I baked an apple pie for her this afternoon. The pie was still in the oven about the time I should have left for my parents' place, so I called to let them know I'd be a bit later than originally planned. Steve had gotten a 5 lb. bag of granny smith apples last weekend, and made apple crisp with a few of them. They were awfully tart, even for granny smiths, so I used an entire half a cup of sugar with the cinnamon, nutmeg, clove, and allspice. I don't normally use that much sugar, but these babies needed it. Actually, the only thing I really measured carefully was the shortening. I just eyeball everything else.

Mom sent me home with half the pie. Typical mom. I haven't had a piece yet, but I will later. She called to tell me how great it was. She really loves my apple pie. I made the pie crust with Crisco instead of butter. I never eat the crust anyway, so to me it doesn't matter whether it's butter, lard, shortening or even corn oil that's used (although oil can make the crust mealy instead of flaky). Crisco may become banned in NYC restaurants, because of some hare-brained law about banning man-made trans-fats. Under the proposed law, butter would not be banned, but margarine would, and so would shortening. I don't believe in legislating what people can and cannot eat, especially when it's hypocritical to not ban butter as a trans-fat.

It looks like Steve and I will be bringing them Thanksgiving dinner again this year. Steve likes the idea of taking over their kitchen and making it there. I'm not so sure about getting their oven all filthy. Last year, we made the turkey and fixings here, then brought them over in containers. I was terrified that the turkey would be dry since I'd never roasted one before (duck is my specialty, but we do that for New Year's). The turkey turned out just fine--nice and juicy. Mom hasn't been up to making holiday dinners since perhaps the 1980s, and now, with her MS acting up, she's not up to even going out for them, either. We don't mind catering for my parents. Even a 10 lb. turkey's way too much for two people and a cat! Why not share it?