(Corey) I Just Want To Be Right By Your Side (Taylor) [22]

(Corey) I Just Want To Be Right By Your Side (Taylor) [14]

I dropped my bag on my bed and saw that there was some clean laundry laying on my bed as well. I hadn't been here recently so it looked like someone had been borrowing. I quickly put away my clothes and stored my bag in the bottom of my closet before heading back down the stairs.

I paused at the bottom of the stairs and grinned. There were Christmas carols playing in the living room and I could hear Nici humming along in the kitchen. I made my way back in and took a spot on the stool opposite Nici at the table. She already had a bowl and some spices and stuff spread out on the table.

"Ok, I was making two kinds of pies today, pumpkin and berry."

"Did that come from the bowl over there?" I asked nodding towards the dough on the table and the covered bowl on the counter.

"No that dough is rising for cinnamon rolls. This actually isn't even from scratch I ran out of time so this is the rollout kind from the can."

"Oh, so what do you do with that?"

"Well for the pumpkin pies you take the one square and fit it over the pan pressing it down and then once you have it fit to the pan you just tear or cut off the excess like this," I said carefully trimming the edges of the dough.

"Ok so crust is done now what?"

"Next we need the filling mixed together. So some people have their own recipes but when my grandmother taught me she used the one right here on the back of the pumpkin can with just one modification."

"Ok so we mix the sugar and the cloves and everything in here?" I asked pointing to the large bowl with the spout.

"That's right. The tsp stands for teaspoon."

I helped her mix all the dry ingredients and then she showed me how to crack the eggs carefully and not get the shell in the bowl.

"Ok, the one thing I don't see is evaporated milk," I said looking at everything that was on the table.

"Right. Remember that modification I mentioned?"

"Yeah?"

"We use whole milk instead of the evaporated milk," she said pulling the milk jug from the fridge.

"I don't know if I'm going to remember this next year," I commented absently.

"Well we can text your retention tomorrow."

"How by writing it out or something?"

"I was thinking more along the lines of having you mix up the pies tomorrow and I'll watch."

"We'll need more pies tomorrow?" I asked as she poured the milk into the bowl and placed the jug back in the fridge.

"I would imagine. Didn't your dad tell you we were hosting a Christmas Eve dinner for the Slipknot and Stonesour guys and their families?"

"No he didn't mention that detail."

"Ah well that's what I'm baking for now. It's really more like a lunch so that everyone can be with their families on Christmas Eve and I thought I'd do the baking for Christmas day then. Can you turn the oven on to 400 degrees please?"

"Sounds like a plan," I said as I slipped off the stool. I walked over to the oven and turned it on as she asked then moved over farther on the counter and eyed the jars of hard candy. I popped a blue one in my mouth.

"Mmm this is good, I wonder what flavor it is?" I said as I plopped ever so gracelessly on the stool.

"Which color?"

"Blue?"

"Cloves."

"Blue for cloves?"

I watched her shrug. "We always did red for cinnamon, blue for cloves, green for spearmint, and yellow for butter rum. If we did any other flavors we mixed them to create other colors but those were always the main flavors we made."