As Easy As Apple Pie

Sometime around Thanksgiving I made the mistake of commenting that I didn't think making a pie would be that hard. A character on Parenthood (great show!) was whining about how she had messed up the pie, and I rolled my eyes. In the age of the internet, I feel it's almost impossible to fail at making something well the first time. Just read enough food blogs, use a trusted recipe and you'll be fine! Well EC did not let my arrogance slip by unnoticed. She challenged me to make my first pie (crust included) from scratch.

The challenge was not time sensitive. Between the lemon bars I made for her birthday and the constant creation of cake balls every weekend in December, I had a bit of culinary fatigue. But one night the other week I was supposed to babysit and the plans were expectantly canceled. I had an entire evening free to make a pie! So I went to HEB, gathered supplies and came home to get started.

This is the kitchen that awaited me. I love this picture because it says so much about our apartment. Exhibit 1, Olivia being a pain. I put rubber bands around the cabinet knobs to keep her from constantly batting open the doors. She thinks, "oo! Rubber bands to play with!" Exhibit 2, EC's coffee mug, that never gets put away because it is constantly in use. Exhibit 3, empty bottle of wine. Anyway, I couldn't start with a messy kitchen, so I got to work tidying.

Ahh, that is much better. 

Here are the ingredients I used, except I didn't actually use cornstarch. This was a mistake. 

I tried to find a pastry cutter at the store but after a good five minutes of searching the kitchen tools aisle I came up empty. I went with two knives, which worked...

...surprisingly well!

I peeled and cut a lot of apples. That peel ring was the longest I could manage. 

At this point I was very excited, because the crust really looked like pie. I had high hopes that this would pan out perfectly. I substituted my Sigg bottle for a rolling pin. Necessity and invention and what not.

Final result: Picture-perfect pie!

In the end, EC gave me full marks for presentation, the crust was definitely the strongest part. For my filling I went with the Better Homes New Cookbook recipe, which did not call for a combining agent like cornstarch or tapioca. And in the end, that was my one mistake. The filling, while tasty, was very watery and impaired my "perfect" pie. Overall, I'm proud of my attempt, but I suppose there is certain finesse that comes with experience in pastry making. 

Final grade: B+

'Tis the Season... for pumpkins!

Perfect Pumpkin

These are $2 tools from HEB. They are dead now.

EC: "I will caarrrrve this pumkin. I am a pirate."

Guts!

Yay TX pumpkin! (I am ignoring that it might be from NM.)

I am very intent on my masterpiece. Later I joked
that we could always pretend a 3rd grader helped us.

And here is the third grader's school portrait.

I couldn't tell you why I am making this face. I just am.

Happy Halloween, everyone.

Rumpelstiltskin/Rapunzel

Whenever I'm on vacation (weird to think a trip to Houston is now "vacation") I like to take time to do my hair a little differently. Mostly because I'm staying with Sarah and can use her hair straightener. So behold the various stages of taming my hair.

 Post shower, post blow dryer. Typically I wouldn't comb out my hair, but here it is. A giant lion's mane.

 Right side: straightened! It's amazing how much less volume there is after it's straightened. I would say that doing half of my hair took about 15-20 minutes.

 All done! This took probably about an hour from start to finish. It's so weird to see my hair this way, and it's impossible to not want to feel how smooth it is.

As silly as it seems, after all that work, I had Sarah add waves back into my hair with the Chi. It's fun and not something I can do on my own. Though looking at this picture, my hair looks very similar to what it is without the 1+ hour it took to accomplish this. I wore this style to the Homecoming Tailgate... and pull my hair back for the wedding.

I'm scheduled for a haircut next Monday! It's pretty overdue.

October!

 This month has been pretty overwhelming. Behold the contents of my refrigerator as of this morning:

 

ACL two weekends ago, and a wedding in Houston last weekend has kept me busy. But I have a success to report! I'm employed again. It's a job in my field and I'm sure to learn a lot from it. And be really busy. I have lots of pictures to share from ACL and from the wedding, and I'll try to fit those in soon. 

P.S. I went grocery shopping so I now have more than lemons, tomato sauce, yogurt, and tofu. Just FYI.

On the Market

Oh blog, how you languish.

Things around here have been busy and stressful, and when that happens my stomach clenches and all "frivolous" activities fall to the wayside. Except not really, because I still find time to read blogs and watch TV, but authoring a blog article myself? Such a waste of time!

My recent stressor is that my employment situation will be ending the middle of this month, sooner than I'd expected. The family now needs a full-time childcare situation, which I can't provide while going to school. We're all a little sad, since things had been grooving so well of late.

So now I'm trying to apply for jobs in my field. Nannying has always been a great way for me to earn money while in school, but I don't see it as my life's work. The problem with going to a great grad program with challenging classes and a good reputation is that my competition for said jobs is stiff! There are many lovely people at the iSchool, some with prior professional library experience.

Things will work out, hopefully for the best. If not I guess I can look forward to free time for: Netflixing, sleeping in, baking, oh and maybe extra studying.

No Middle Ground

I feel a bit like Goldilocks. My apartment is too quiet and comfortable for studying (see last Friday afternoon's TWO HOUR nap*). Right now I'm at a Starbucks and everyone here is so loud I am blaring Best Coast into my earbuds to drown out the chatter. I guess loud music isn't good for my concentration, because I have read roughly four pages in 30 minutes. Now I am here, blogging, because you know, why not? I thought I'd try a picture-less post. Blasphemy for this photo-bloated blog, I know.

Grad school involves a lot of reading. I suppose undergrad (and high school) did too, but who can remember that far back? So far I've been able to stay on top of my assignments, but not without significant grumbling. Now that I've been to all of my classes multiple times (the Labor Day holiday canceled two of my classes, which only meet once a week), I feel like I'm slowly developing a rhythm. Monday and Tuesday is for class Wednesday-Friday is work (nannying), weekend is a mixture of homework and fun. It's nice that I can kind of shift from mode to mode.

In a few weeks I'll get to add another activity to my schedule. I'm volunteering at the local public library for a weekend shift. My first training is tonight, and I'll start actually helping people (hopefully) in October. It's exciting because unlike my previous library volunteering gigs I'll get to work with patrons and not just shelve books. Like any true library nerd, however, shelving books is pretty therapeutic, and I kind of miss it!

So it seems like 3:00-4:30 was the rush at Starbucks, and things have thankfully quieted down. I guess this is my cue to try to do some more reading. Maybe.



*I am, historically, opposed to napping, at least for myself. I like to get 8 consistent hours of sleep every night and limit my sleeping to nighttime. In college (and high school) this was almost unheard of, given most students' night owl habits and afternoon naps. I just find that sleeping during the day makes me feel worse. I like being up late at night, but would rather keep a reasonable schedule.

Playing Catch Up

So my devoted (and only?) blog reader, Sofia, expressed worry that I hadn't posted anything new in a while. Basically I have been accumlating blog material and failing to upload anything. So what is before you is a bit of an overload of photos and anecdotes. I'll get the hang of this blogging thing eventually. My biggest problem is that I am bad at time management and grad school is making that blatantly clear. I feel too "busy" to blog since I should be reading/writing/learning. However, I just spend massive amounts of time procrastinating anyway, and in reality would have had plenty of time to blog, which is arguably a more constructive use of my time.

Over Labor Day weekend, I had the pleasure of attending Mary Jo and Keith's wedding. Mary Jo is one of my sister Amy's oldest friends and a close friend to our family. It was wonderful to see her glowing with all the bliss of matrimony.

Amy was one of the bridesmaids and has had a full year of weddings. When the year is over she will have attended 10 weddings total.

There was also time to visit my old house in Barrington, which was rather bittersweet. Due to unfortunate circumstances the house is currently unoccupied and falling into disrepair.

The grass is terribly overgrown and all the beautiful landscaping my parents spent time on is pretty much a lost cause. It was nice to drive around and see how things in the area have evolved and feel nostalgic about my childhood.

This was my first trip back to IL in over two years and I was lucky to be in the same place as Amanda and Amy at the same time. We had a delicious vegetarian dinner at an Indian restaurant and tried to get caught up on each others' lives in one evening.

Back in Austin, EC and I spent Friday afternoon at the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center. The admission price is a little steep (even with a student discount) but the mission of the center is admirable and it was a beautiful space.

There's a tower that gives a 360° view of the grounds.

EC wanted to do some empirical research on the tastiness/poison content of beautyberries, but I talked her out of it. According to Wikipedia they are a natural insect repellent and have been used to make wine. So I'm going to go with not poisonous.


More Random Wildflower Center Photos....

It's Sunday afternoon, which means it's Time to Actually Do My Homework.