Is there such a thing as too much turkey? Well this year in this household there was. I'd roasted a turkey breast for Friday-night dinner and although we had enjoyed it, my husband wasn't looking forward to a repeat turkey performance three days later on Monday, Thanksgiving Day. His very favourite pie, yes, yes, yes! Turkey, forget it.

He knew what he wanted to replace it, though. Corned beef. We had a corned beef brisket in the freezer which he'd bought several weeks earlier, and that's what he wanted for Thanksgiving dinner. Ugh. High in sodium content, high in cholesterol and it's produced with nitrates. Double, triple ugh. On the other hand, he considers it a treat and he doesn't have the opportunity to eat that kind of meal very often, so corned beef it was.

The pumpkin pie came first. It's nothing for me to prepare a pie crust, and the pumpkin pie filling, and bake that most favourite of all pies for the one whose gastronomical pleasure I'm responsible for and whom I wish, above all things, to please. It took just over an hour, including baking time, and it was done. A simple formula of flour, salt, shortening, lemon juice and cold water for the crust. And two cups of mashed pumpkin, a cup of brown sugar, dash of salt, teaspoon of cinnamon, one of allspice and much less of cloves, along with two eggs and 2/3 cup of light cream. And soon the aroma of the baking pie filled the house.

We went out for an early afternoon walk in the ravine. A cool, heavily overcast and windy day, we dressed for the weather, mindful it could rain again at any time as it did earlier in the day, and put little sweaters on Jackie and Jillie, tucking their little raincoats into our rain jacket pockets. And then set off. For a bit of an unusual hike through the forest trails. Since we fully expected on the basis of past experience and the numbers of people shifting through the trails this past weekend, that we would encounter many more yesterday, we decided to keep our two mischievous and noisy little dogs on leash yet again.

It does detract from their enjoyment of the traipse through the trails, and ours as well. We're tense about encounters because Jackie and Jillie are anything but laid back when others hove into sight. Their instinct is to challenge others whom they assume are presumptuous enough to venture out into their personal territory without their personal permission to do so.

There was an increased presence of strangers on the trails, but nowhere near as many as we'd come across in the previous days of the long weekend. Which failed to persuade us to allow our two to roam about unleashed, regardless. Despite which we all four of us did manage to enjoy our restrained Thanksgiving Monday roam-about in the forest, thinking perhaps it wasn't such a negative weather outlook after all, if the cold and the impending rain served to convince people there was nothing worthwhile seeing in the forest that made it attractive for a hike into its confines.

There was much worthwhile seeing. Although many of the deciduous trees are fast losing their foliage, particularly with the occasional nudge from windy gusts, there is ample colourful reason to appreciate what remains on the branches, and even more to marvel at the increasing piles of bright orange, yellow, red, pink and bronze leaves decorating the trails that we shuffled through.

When we returned home, I began cooking the corned beef, prepared potato and onion to bake separately shredded in olive oil, and broccoli to accompany the meal, figuring my husband wouldn't complain about the broccoli since everything else about his Thanksgiving meal this year suited his expectation. And he didn't.