Family Thanksgiving Fun and Leftover Pie Recipes

This shop has been compensated by Collective Bias, Inc. and its advertiser. All opinions are mine alone. #ShareTheJoyOfPie#CollectiveBias

Thanksgiving is all about family and food with a whole host of traditions surrounding both. I love Thanksgiving because it includes my favorite foods – turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce, pumpkin pie, and more. Of course all of the food means lots of leftovers, including leftover pie. Unfortunately for my daughter, she’s often the only child at our Thanksgiving celebrations. This year, one of her cousins will be there for Thanksgiving, but at 8 months old she isn’t much of a playmate for my almost 10 year old. It was important for me to develop some family fun games that are fun for my daughter and the adults.

Jump Directly to the Recipes

Family Thanksgiving Fun

Are you looking for some family fun activities this Thanksgiving that are appropriate for all ages? I have developed two games that are great fun for our family and friends. In the games, I decided to highlight Thanksgiving and Pie.

Word Draw

A couple of years ago, I was inspired by the “Win, Lose, or Draw” television show to create a Word Draw Party Game for my daughter’s birthday party. I brought it into the 21st century using my iPad and our Apple TV. The game is very popular among my daughter’s friends and our family. Many of her friends ask if we’ll be playing it whenever we have a gathering. It is very adaptable to different topics since I can create a custom word list for each occasion.

You can play Word Draw as either a team game and keep score or as a fun party game where everyone just shouts out answers. We usually play it as a party game.

Pre-Party Preparation

• Download a drawing program to your iPad (I used Penultimate from Evernote which is free)
• Print your word list – You can download my Thanksgiving Word List or create your own
• Cut the word list into strips of one word, fold them, and place in an unused Pie Plate.

Starting the Game

• Use AirPlay to mirror your iPad onto the Apple TV (On your iPad swipe up and select AirPlay -> your Apple TV -> turn on the Mirroring option)
• Open Penultimate App on the iPad
• Select a Player to go first

Playing the Game

• Player selects a word from the word list
• Player draws picture on the iPad
• As they draw the picture the audience shouts out their guesses
• Move to the next player (we usually let whoever guessed the last one go next)

Chromecast and Fire TV Stick also offer the ability to project onto a television with select mobile devices. The game play would be the same on any device, however, I cannot provide specific setup instructions.

Fill in the Blank Stories

I remember Mad Libs® being very popular when I was in middle school. My daughter discovered them a couple of years ago and she really likes doing them. I was inspired to create several Fill in the Blank Stories in a Mad Libs style based on Thanksgiving and Pies.

My first story, So Much Pie was based on our very real incident of too much pie last year.

So Much Pie

One Christmas we were supposed to visit Grandma in Hawaii. We were supposed to bring 5 pies with us. Because of a tornado, we cancelled our trip and stayed home. We joined Mom who lives near us for dinner on Sunday. We brought our pies and our aunt had also brought 103 pies. In total we had 108 pies for 3 people. Amazingly all of the pies were different flavors. My favorite type of pie is strawberry. We also had ice cream for dessert. We were eating pie for 3 weeks.

Our second story was about making pie:

Making Pie

Making pie is tasty work. When we make pie, our first step is picking apples. In order to get the fruit I have to swim. When we get to CN Tower we wash the fruit in lemonade.

Then we make the crust. We mix flour and sugar together. We use our foot to press the crust into the pan. To make the filling we mix the fruit with Twix and cinnamon. Then we jump the filling over the crust. We top our pie with more crust, crumbs, or nothing. Then we bake the pie at 4444 degrees for 44 minutes. Let the pie cool and top with whipped cream before serving.

You can print your own copy of my Thanksgiving Fill-in the Blank Stories to share with your family.

Our Real Stories of Too Much Pie

Balancing our families dessert preference means that we frequently end up with an overabundance of dessert especially in a relatively small gathering. Last year it was particularly bad since a storm cancelled our plans at the last minute and we were bringing pies for our original gathering and ended up bringing them to an alternate gathering that already had dessert. We had a cake and 3 pies for 6 people.

Last Wednesday we were at Walmart looking for a snack for my daughter to bring to school on Thursday, when I found Marie Callender’s® Dessert Pies in the frozen aisle. I decided to buy a Dutch Apple Pie and a Pumpkin Pie to make for my husband and his friends for after their guys night barbecue dinner on Saturday. Of course I added a can of Reddi-Wip® Whipped topping to the cart. Pumpkin Pie just isn’t the same without the Reddi-Wip®!

The house smelled so good on Saturday afternoon as I baked the pies. I couldn’t wait to share these delicious pies with my husband’s friends.

Unfortunately Saturday’s record-breaking November snow in Ann Arbor caused the dinner to be cancelled and only 1 friend came over instead of 6. Needless to say, I needed to become creative with using our leftover pie this week. I love smoothies, so I decided to make a Dutch Apple Pie Cider Smoothie and a Pumpkin Pie Chai Latte Smoothie.

Leftover Pie Recipes

Have a Happy Thanksgiving!

Be sure to check out Marie Callender’s® Dessert Pies and Reddi-wip®. Which of their pies would you choose for your Thanksgiving gathering? For more information you can find Con Agra Foods on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest.

Featured Posts