Yesterday, for at least the first half of the day, Murphy and his law seemed to have taken us under his wing.
We went to the Farmer’s Market and that part was fine. We bought as much loot as we could carry including me buying a giant bag of peaches so I could make a peach pie.
Eden read about my latest pie crust disaster and offered to send me a fool-proof recipe.
[Aside: Long story short, I have a LiveJournal now. Too. Generally I just cross-post to both but my FTP was down so I just posted on LJ. I know it’s confusing. Don’t worry about keeping up.]
She has only known me since Jun 21 08 and doesn’t know that I have been having pie crust disasters for years. I should go back through those posts and make “pie crust disaster” one of my labels.
Here’s a great reason why it’s awesome to have science geeks for friends. From Eden:
But it’s neat: you mix butter and shortening so you get the flavor of butter but the consistency of using shortening (which has a higher melting point, thus it doesn’t release a bunch of water into the dough, making it tough and gluten-y) and you use vodka and water for the same reason (water + flour = tough pie crust). The alcohol is wet but not water, so it makes it light and flaky and the alcohol taste boils off in the oven! woo!
My result was nothing that would win a state fair, but a nice turn out from someone of my limited skills. (Photo in a minute.)
We didn’t have vodka so I put it on my list for Saturday morning. As I drove to the farmer’s market I remembered I used the last of the tapioca on the strawberry-rhubarb so I would have to stop at Safeway for that.
I’m skipping some of the Murphy things which weakens my thesis statement but whatever. We left the market to go the government operated liquor store (Because it’s still 1906 in Washington. Seriously, if I had time and money to kill I would make it my mission in life to get hard alcohol sold in regular stores like in California. This special store thing is stupid.), it wasn’t open until 11am. We arrived at 10:40am.
Since we had to go to Safeway too, we decided to drive up to Hazel Dell and by the time we purchased our tapioca the liquor store up there would be open. So now we’re at Safeway at almost 11am on a Saturday of a holiday weekend. I make a special point of not going to the grocery store (or leaving the house, even) on Saturday and this trip reminded me why. Too many carts. Blah blah. Plus, we couldn’t find the tapioca and wandered up and down the aisles. It’s near the pudding mixes. Long lines. Blah blah.
Then to the liquor store which was open. And while we were there we stocked up and brought home $75 worth of booze. I was already feeling better.
I really wanted to get some writing done and I’d already been distracted a couple of times but I thought I could whip out the pie real quick and then have the afternoon. All season I’ve had peaches where the peels fell off when you look at them. These did not.
So now I had to boil water and do that whole routine and it’s not like it was hard, it was just a whole additional step and a whole bunch more dishes and whine whine. All I wanted was to whip out one stupid pie.
I forgot to explain what that gadget is at the top. I just started subscribing to several podcasts: EscapePod, PodCastle and The New Yorker. I put the stories on my iPod and then listen to them on the bus or on this handy portable speaker thing that Bob gave me a couple of years ago. I feel bad that I don’t use it more. I listen to stories while I cook. The only drawback is that I can’t hear if the sink is running or if Bob arrives to tell me something. There’s probably some remote control gadget out there that would come in handy. I don’t understand why it’s so hard to pause on an iPod.
I dipped my peaches in boiling water, dunked them in an ice bath and peeled and sliced into a bowl. Halfway through I remembered that I gave two pies as gifts last week and I don’t have a pie plate at home.
Bob had just left for the store because we forgot something else. (argh!) But I really hate stuff taking up space in my house that I don’t use and 3 pie pans is a bit much.
So I used a pyrex brownie pan:
Pretty cool, huh? After all the setbacks and the grumpy, this was a fabulous deep dish peachy delicious wonder. I probably underbaked it by half-a-tad but still magically delicious. The recipe calls for lemon juice and lemon zest so it has a nice lemony taste. Yum. Totally worth it.
I forgot the mention the part about finding a dead cat in our yard. Part of me felt bad like this poor little beat up cat had to die alone in our yard. The other part of me felt like: ew! dead cat. Bob was a prince and dealt with it.
Moving on. Bob and I went to see Vicky Cristina Barcelona and if that’s not ringing a bell, it’s the movie where Penelope Cruz and Scarlett Johansson snog for about 11 seconds. I wouldn’t call us huge Woody Allen fans but we’re admirers and we both liked this film and talked about it a lot afterward. It also made me want to go to Barcelona. Stat.
Today I wrote for half the day (woohoo!) and tried unsuccessfully to do some yardwork. Everytime I go outside it starts pouring. It’s amazing to have so much power.
