I Think I Should Drink

when I cook or bake.  

I am making two pies today, one apple pie from the Silver Palate cookbook and one pumpkin pie from William Sonoma. I've used both recipes before, but only once a year and I tend to forget small details. Apparently.

So I ended up with two pre-baked pie shells. How I ended up with two is a long and confusing story, even to me, and I was here to witness it. Realistically I should have ended up with only one, but...never mind.

In my defense (have you noticed I ALWAYS have a defense; I should'a been a lawyer), the recipe for the pumpkin pie reads as follows:

The list of ingredients clearly calls for a pre-baked and cooled piecrust.  Right???

Right.  

So I work on, mixing all of the ingredients while letting the pre-baked  pie crust cool.

And then I get to the part about pouring the filling into the piecrust and I read this:

Do NOT pre-bake piecrust.  

What the #$%^&*()?

So anyway, I am currently baking a pie in an UN pre-baked pie crust.  And I am going to put a note on my copy of the recipe, so that I don't do this again next year.

I wish you a lovely Thanksgiving tomorrow, and I wish you a sober cook!

Unless, like me, the cook SHOULD drink.

A Perfect Pie, A Finished Object, and Something Else That is Finished

This is as close to a perfect apple pie as I have ever made. I even put leaves on it! (Not entirely talent on my part-they are made with punches from William-Sonoma, but who's telling?) Anyhow, the pie is from a Silver Palate recipe, and it always tastes great made with Granny Smith apples. Usually the crust totally splits open and lets the pie juices run all over the place, but this time it stayed together. Yay!

We have Thanksgiving dinner each year with other Georgia orphans (none of us has relatives in Georgia) and we all bring food. I always make the pies, and that has not always been a success. One year I brushed the top crust with beaten egg yolks, having read that this makes the top nice and brown. What I didn't read was the part of the directions that said to mix the yolks with water, and the top of my pie was a yucky yellow. Ooops. Then there was the year that I made the pumpkin pie with brandy or whiskey or some other liquor. I don't remember which, but it was not a hit.
Now for something completely different. This is my most recently finished project - a ribbed scarf made from three skeins of de.Ve Autunno, a wonderfully soft merino yarn. It's just a k4, p4 ribbing, made across 28 stitches. It's not entirely successful, however, since the ribbing does what ribbing is supposed to do, which is to pull together. This makes for a narrow scarf. I tried blocking it, but that made the fabric too thin. So I held a steam iron a few inches above the scarf, and the ribs pulled back together. It's a good thing the scarf is long - five feet long, so it can go around and around the neck in case of really cold weather.

Now for something really completely different:

Bravo, stick a fork in me. I'm done. With the Housewives. I don't know if I changed or the show changed or it's the constant bad news about the economy. Maybe it's remembering hearing Barack Obama say something like "We're a better country than this," referring to poverty, hunger, and the lack of health insurance for so many people in this country. I watched the first episode of the new season of The Real Housewives of Orange County last Wednesday night and was appalled by it. The women just want MORE. The excess was just so....excessive.

So that's one addiction gone. Now for knitting - just kidding. That one I'll keep!