The Pie Project

Post-holidays I feel like some kind of cave-dwelling creature just emerged into the sun, blinking and confused. It was worth it, though! The Guatemala trip was fabulous, alternately gritty and luxurious, and I ate my fill of homemade tortillas. M. was the best traveling companion ever. Not that I doubted she would be. The kitties are happy to have us back (our landlady, not so much) and I'm finally back in the gym and at the laptop. I hacked up the novel and now it awaits me, pitifully. Luckily I read Junot Diaz and Anne Enright while away and they fired me up. Now, to actually do it. The semester starts next week, too, with a new workshop and the Intro. to Drama class I'm teaching. That's right. The powers that be, in their infinite wisdom, switched my lit section on me. Really? Really. In six days I'm teaching Introduction To Drama. The last play I read was Hamlet. IN TENTH GRADE. I also started my new WITS teaching gig, which includes a bilingual classroom. That...

A little eye candy for a cold day (yes, even in Houston). This Cook's Illustrated gem was so good, I made it again for Thanksgiving with friends and family. The meal included potatoes from their garden and a turkey smoked at home. Love that real food. A meal like that makes me think, economic crisis, schmeconomic crisis; Wall Street can tumble but we'll be okay. Um, I hope so. Anyway, the apple-cranberry pie was a big hit with all, especially little Larkin here, who didn't want to leave the pie table for anything. "I like pie," he kept saying. A kid after my own heart! See earlier post for recipe. Note the cranberry mixed a bit more with the apple in this version - not sure why, but it's pretty, no?

This pie is seriously wonderful. I didn't know what to expect - I'm somewhat of an apple traditionalist, but as I've said, I'm always up for an experiment. And was this ever successful. The tangy cranberry layer takes the comforting, reliable apple to a whole new level. It's not tooth-achingly sweet, either, so you really taste the fruit. A regular autumn bounty. The original recipe is from Cook's Illustrated; I got it here. Only difference? I didn't make the famed vodka crust, which I do want to try someday, but for which I wasn't willing to drop some cash on a bottle of Stoli. I'm not much of a vodka drinker, anyway. One too many college party memories. Remember those syrupy, too-strong-for-a-human mixtures in plastic red cups? Oh, shudder. Mine were served up at the weird elite engineering/math college across the street from my lovely elite women's college. Okay, fine, I also had my fair share of drinks in Scripps' graceful (but not as pri...

Morgan's birthday was in July, so this post is late. But given our mutually hectic weeks, I thought I'd bring back the happy memory. She requested apple pie, nothing more, nothing less, for her midsummer b-day, and I promptly bought a dozen Granny Smiths even though I associate apple with colder months. Turns out apple pie is comfortingly delicious any time of year. This is a fairly standard recipe except for the crumble top experiment, which involved oats, brown sugar, butter, spices, and flour, much like a fruit crisp topping. It turned out pretty well, but I still prefer the flaky crust to the crunchy. We stuck whimsical little candles in it, sang, wished, sliced, and ate with friends. It'd be nice to do the same today, rather than rush around tense from the moment the second alarm goes off at 6:45. No, it's not that bad; it's just this morning our horrible bitch of a landlady left a nasty note r.e. our forgetting to pay rent. Now, we have never forgotten before....