I love to cook. Sadly, Jason and I are not often home long enough for me to do any serious cooking these days but I always insist on preparing a number of desserts for our Thanksgiving dinners whether time permits or not.

This year I made Mayan chocolate pecan pie, sweet potato praline pie with maple sauce, pineapple upside-down cake, and a host of from scratch toppings for banana splits, including marshmallow fluff. As you might have guessed from that long list, I was in the kitchen for 5 or 6 hours baking alongside my faithful assistant Jason. We didn’t finish until around 1:30 in the morning.

Despite our grogginess at the time of cooking completion, all of our food experiments turned out well. While everything tasted yummy, the marshmallow fluff was my favorite of our treats simply because crafting it was like creating a magical brew. It mystically transformed from a thin frothy concoction to shiny sticky stuff in a matter of minutes. Maximo Marshmallio Fluffius!

Thanksgiving was a little crazy for us this year, as always, with our dual family appearances but our pies disappeared quicker than we had to so yeah for that! Yes, not only did our goodies go fast but we were able to hang around long enough to catch a few rays at the park with my family, as is tradition, and chill with the Sabin clan until any and all spare abdominal compartments were overflowing.

I feel I cannot boast of culinary and familial holiday success though without confessing my secret shame: I didn’t make my piecrusts. How could a food scientist not make her own pastry dough? You don’t need to tell me what’s wrong with that. Next year I vow to create any and all crusts. I would have attempted that feat this time but easily-bungled gastronomic research is best left to when you’re not feeding company. (I have learned this lesson the hard way over Thanksgivings past.)

Being able to see both our families every year on Thanksgiving is a joy and a burden. We enjoy spending this holiday with every single one of our loved ones but it wears us out. We come home at the end of the day exhausted. I guess baking until the wee hours of the morning doesn’t help either but sometimes sacrifices must be made in the great cause for deliciousness. Even with my complaints about the fullness of our Thanksgiving, I must admit that between fluff and family I have much to be grateful for.