NaNoBlogMo 30 - In Summary

Welp, I did it. This entry marks 30 entry for the 30 days in November (not counting the short entry about the name of my project). After this post, my self-imposed NaNoBlogMo challenge is complete.

I couldn't decide what I wanted my last entry to be about. I thought about doing some leftover bits that I had to talk about that didn't seem worth a full entry. I thought about talking about projects that I am currently working on. I thought about talking about upcoming stuff. So, in summary, I think I am going to do a little bit of all of that. Coherence be damned.

Here is a picture showing all my current knitting projects. Or at least all the ones that I could think of/find. Going clockwise starting from the top left we have the back of the body for my first attempt at knitted chainmail, a lengthwise knit scarf in a pattern called Henry made with a lovely baby camel blend yarn, my Pippin scarf (which I am thinking might be a bit too bright, but I'm ignoring that voice and keeping on with the knititng), and a simple garter stitch scarf with Homespun on my lightup needles that I started while watching a movie with friends and continued knitting since the lightup needles were helpful during the power outage.

For Thanksgiving, I made an apple pie. I wanted to try something a little bit different. I did my usual crust, tossed the apples in my usual dry mix (sugar/cornstarch/spices), but then before I did my lattice top I poured a bit of caramel sauce over the filling. Not sure how much of a difference it made, but the results were tasty.

On the improv front, Sea Tea is doing great. My teammates won the most recent improv cagematch, we have another monthly show at City Steam Brewery on December 11th (hosted by the fabulous Kate), we got our cast picture framed and hung on the wall of the comedy club (which we've been looking forward to forever), we just started some more long form classes with a pretty talented comedian/writer/actress as our teacher, and I will be making my City Steam hosting debut in January. Keep you eyes on THIS page for news about upcoming shows!

My friend Emily sent me these lovely pictures a few days ago. This scarf is one of the first 5 I ever made. I remember picking out yarn in the tiny yarn shop near my college before I even knew how to knit, planning out my first projects. I thought this warm orange color would be perfect for Emily and her sunny smile. Its been so long since I knit this that I can't really remember much, other than that this was made back when I used to wear each scarf I knitted out once when it was done, because I was so excited it was done.

So there are my leftover bits and bobs. I suppose I should be all reflective on this last month or something. Honestly, a huge part of me is going to be glad its done. I don't have too much free time to begin with, so giving myself a daily assignment was a bit much. I think my fledgling gym habit might have suffered a bit this month. And posting has given me another excuse to hide from my very sad (and full) inbox.

On the whole, though, I'm glad I did it. I set a goal for myself and I met it. It has been a great opportunity for me to collect pictures and stories from projects as recent as this weekend and as old as seven years ago. As for the reason I even started this project, to revamp my blogging mojo, whether or not it has worked remains to be seen. I did mention to a friend that I was slightly worried I would be so sick of blogging after this that it would have the opposite effect, but I don't think that will happen. I am again finding myself phrasing in my head the blog post to go with a project while I am still physically working on it. That's probably a good sign. It will probably be most effective if I give myself a new assignment, such as making sure to post at least once a week. I think that might be a schedule I can keep, as long as I keep busy enough with projects to write about. What do you think?

Thank you to everyone that helped, everyone that sent me pictures of old projects, everyone that suggested topics, everyone that has been commenting and reading. I really appreciate it. It helps a lot to know that I'm not just sending these posts out into nothing but that people are reading them. Thanks for coming along for the ride. I hope you'll stick around.

-S

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!

Unemployment Leads to Fancy Pie

So a while back I wrote about an apple pie I
had made with apples from the tree in the yard. I didn't get around to writing about it yet, but shortly afterward I made another apple pie, this time with a mixture of apples from the yard and apples from the store (braeburn I think...) just because. Also just because, I decided to make this the fanciest pie I had ever made. There is a picture of it on the right pre-eggwash and pre-baking. That's right...I made a lattice top pie out of leaves. And I would like to mention that I did not have a cookie cutter or anything of the sort (although I did try to make one out of various materials, but that is another hilariously bad and embarassing story). I hand cut each leaf, which explains the asymmetry and varying sizes. I blame the fact that I am currently unemployed entirely for this far too fancy pie.

Better than being fancy, though, it adhered to my "pie should not be stew" rule. Look how nicely it held it's shape after being cut. Better still, the general opinion was that this pie was better than the last one because the first was a bit on the dry side, whereas this one was moist and tasty without becoming runny.

Mmmm...baking success. Maybe this season I will try making pumpkin or pecan pie.


Tomorrow I am going to be having one heck of a cook-a-thon to make some yummy things for an Oktoberfest style party, and then I have to throw together the rest of my self-made costume for Sea Tea's costumed Halloween Show (which everyone should come to this Sunday), so I should have some interesting posts up soon-ish about those.

Apple Pie = Love

I have lived in the same house since I was four years old (minus the years I spent at college and in China). One of my favorite things about this house is the outside. There is a pretty sizable yard in which we often see some fun wildlife. And I love the two apple trees. One is in the backyard (which I used to climb, badly, when I was younger and there were three huge branches for balance), and the one in the side yard right outside my bedroom window (pictured left). Every year they produce apples but 9 years out of 10 they only get eaten by deer, the dogs, random people who ask if they can take some for their family/animals, and the lawnmower. This year the side tree actually produced some pretty decent apples and my dad gave me the challenge/assignment to bake a pie using apples from our tree.


I collected a good amount from the tree, peeled and sliced them, constantly spritzing the bowl of slices with some lemon juice to try and prevent them from turning. I had to cut out a few bad spots, but by and large the apples were lovely. I used my absolute favorite pie crust recipe, and I think this will be the pie crust recipe I use forever. I used to have such trouble with crusts but this one is wonderful. I usually add a bit of nutmeg and cinnamon just for a little extra flavor. I had a lot of fun with the crust, doing lattice work, which I think I am getting quite good at! It's so much fun to do and actually not that hard. It's weaving...with food! How cool is that?

I was sure to get a nice before and after baking picture. I brushed the crust with some egg and butter for the nice shine, then a sprinkle of sugar and cinnamon. If you are wondering what the whitish-yellow lumps are right under the surface of the lattice work, it's butter. I used a recipe one time for pie that said to put some little chunks of butter right on top under the top layer and I've done it ever since. I'm not sure what it's supposed to do, but it's just habit now.
















How pretty does that look? I honestly think a big reason I started this blog is so I finally have a place to put the pictures of the food I cook... The smell of this pie baking on the first official Saturday of fall was heavenly (oh no! I just revealed that this post took a while to post!). I just wish I had thought ahead and gotten some vanilla bean ice cream to go with it.

The apple slices were tossed with a mixture of sugar, flour, ground cloves and cinnamon. I can't remember the exact recipe I used and I really wish I could. Although I have the perfect pie crust dialed in now, often when I bake pie the filling is rather soupish. Delicious, yes, but in my mind a pie when cut should for the most part hold it's shape. Which is what this pie did! I was so excited I took a picture of the cross-section. Hopefully I can find this Goldilocks recipe balance again the next time I make pie. Sometimes being an impulsive cook has it's drawbacks. Magic is hard to recreate.

P.S. It was delicious. Apples that go from tree to finished pie in less that 2 hours is pretty spectacular.