NaNoBlogMo 24 - Pie Vignettes

Happy thanksgiving everyone! Although I wasn't the best at keeping up my blog before this crazy challenge, I did keep taking pictures of every pie I made. So for my thanksgiving entry I figured I would write a few mini-entries in one about three times earlier this year I made pie, with lots of lovely pictures to go along with them.

Cooking With Cori

The weekend of the New Year, my good friend Cori came over and asked me to teach her how to cook a few things. We took a bunch of pictures (partially because I figured I was going to be writing a blog entry about it at the time). For dinner, I showed her how to make my stuffed chicken breast. Or at least one variation of it. It pretty much always involves a mixture of cream cheese, spinach, shredded cheddar and bacon rolled up in flattened chicken breasts. Yum!

The main event was the pie, though. Cori peeled and I sliced, like a well-oiled (if giggly) machine made to create tastiness. Our aim was to make three pies. One for Cori to bring home, one for my parents and one for me to bring to improv rehearsal.

There was enough crust and filing leftover to make one more tiny pie in a little dish. It was until later that my father pointed out to us that we had in fact, made pi pies, which had me dying with geeky laughter. You can see our creations (pre-baked) below. Cori's pie is on the left and for someone doing a lattice-work pie top for the first time I think she did AMAZING.

Fakes-giving Dinners

In March of this year, my mother invited some coworkers over to have a sort of faux-thanksgiving. We tried to go for some good traditional foods to show American culture and all that jazz. I made some creamed spinach that came out mighty tasty. I also made two pies (there was an ungodly amount of food for the 5 of us, so I guess we also showed off good ole' American excessiveness).

I wanted to try making something a little different from my usual apple pie recipe so I made Grandma Ople's Apple Pie from Allrecipes.com. It was ok, but nothing spectacular. I think the weird hardness that the sugar/syrup creates over the top of the pie wasn't really worth it. I might experiment with other apple pie recipes in the future, but I'll probably just keep coming back to the more traditional recipes.

I also made a pecan pie for the first time. I was warned multiple times to make sure to not cook it until the middle hardened unless I wanted to make a brick. I was surprised that everyone preferred the pecan pie over the apple, if for no other reason than that the pecan pie was easier to make (I guess I believe that effort should add tastiness?).

Sea Tea Falfün Day

My last and most recent pie vignette is from when I hosted the members of the improv group I am in over for dinner and pie after a "fall full day" (which later turned into our own made-up holiday called Falfün day). It was decided that Falfün is celebrated with many liquids as dinner included soup and stew and we had 5+ options for types of drinks.

I made two pies again (although this time we had 10 people, so it made sense to have a lot of food). I made pumpkin pie, and decided to give myself a break and just use canned pumpkin. I have gone all out and made fresh pumpkin puree before (using a toaster oven even), but I figured since I was making pies and dinner, I could take it easy.

Even though I did used canned pie, I did make the crusts from scratch, as I pretty much always do now that I have a crust recipe I really like. I decided to fancy up the top of the pie with some leaves since I had a good bit of crust leftover.

I also made pecan pie again, though this time using a completely different recipe (and I have forgotten which one, just use the one I linked above, its good). I DO remember that most of Sea Tea preferred one pie over the other, but I really can't remember which one. I THINK it was the pumpkin one.

I'll be making apple pie this Thanksgiving too. I am writing this entry ahead of time so its possible I am in the middle of baking a pie as this post publishes! Trippy! One last thing for all of you, I took this picture when I bought the apples for my Thanksgiving pie because it made me laugh. You can easily tell which apples are the most popular for making pies.

Hope you all have a lovely thanksgiving if you celebrate it, and a lovely fourth thursday in November if you don't!

Carving Pumpkins, Toasting Seeds

I really like Halloween. Although I don't get excited about it as I used to, I still really like a lot of stuff about it. I think part of the reasons I like Halloween is that (at least in my eyes) it is a very creative holiday. When I was a child, we NEVER bought my costume. I, and to a much larger extent my mother, would make my costume every year. We would also go overboard and turn the entire front yard into a graveyard including having Death (with scythe in hand) hanging from the attic window. Although those may not be things we really do anymore, this year we still carved jack o'lanterns.

I can't remember the last time I carved a pumpkin, but this time I wanted to choose a design that was geeky and would require some effort and patience. I went to the interwebs for inspiration and found some pretty interesting stuff. Without meaning to, I found a picture that inspired my mother to carve the pumpkin you see on the left here. Pretty awesome. That pumpkin just makes me smile when I look at it. The pumpkin on the right my dad carved...with a CHISEL. It's pretty hardcore and creepy. I think it's safe to say I have the coolest parents ever.


It took me a while to pick a design. I saw a ton of geektastic pumpkins out there, my favorite probably being a Deathstar jacko'lantern that was intense. If you search for "geeky pumpkins", it's one of the first things that comes up. Everything I found seemed to require way more carving talent than I had faith I have, or was overdone. For example, I love the idea of pumpkin pi, but it feels like everyone and their cousin has made a jack o'lantern with the pi symbol on it.

Anyway, this is what I ended up making. If you recognize it, I give you so many geekpoints. It is the white tree from Lord of the Rings, the crest of Gondor....or at least one interpretation of it. The hardcore Ringers out there will probably point out I did not include the seven stars, but to you I say....I ran out of room at the top. I really like how it came out.


After sticking a candle in mine and mom's, I put them on the front steps. (Dad's is even creepier when it is half lit from the porch light.)

Today I heard a weird noise out front and realized it was a kid getting dropped off by a bus. I happened to catch the kid staring at our front porch and grinning. I am going to assume it was because of the pumpkins. The big question now is, was he laughing because he is a LOTR dork, he is amused by a pumpkin cyclops, or because it's really just polite to smile at a jack o'lantern that is smiling that big at you?


One of the best parts about carving pumpkins, though, is nomming the seeds. From all those pumpkin guts, my mother patiently separated the seeds (while I was still carving). We left them out to dry last night. Today I tossed them with some oil and seasoning before baking them for about 20 minutes or so. Instead of just doing plain salt, I sprinkled them with an herb seasoning mix that is meant for popcorn. I figured if it's good enough for popcorn, it's good enough for pumpkin seeds. I think they came out pretty tasty.


And the picture above amuses me because when I first uploaded it, it was upside down and looked like a delicious pumpkin seed stalactite. Mmm...

Until next time.