white apples . a blog

rotund kinship and pumpkin love

I love pumpkins, in all their orange rotund glory - which is why our stop at a pumpkin patch was one of the highlights of our trip this weekend - at least for myself and my own not-so-orange rotund glory.  After passing several sad little piles of faded gourds piled up in various parking lots, an actual pumpkin patch was a welcome sight. 

It's time to leave this town, It's time to steal away

Charlie and I had a great little road trip up to Santa Barbara this weekend.  After a big brunch of maple, bacon, cheddar pancakes (for me) and chorizo scramble (for Charlie) at our favorite cafe in Solana Beach, we meandered our way up the Pacific Coast Highway with several leisurely stops for dipping toes in the ocean and eating ice cream on old, rickety piers.  

Eat thy Bread with Joy

Have you heard?  I passed my three hour glucose tolerance test for gestational diabetes.  Yay for my ability to metabolize sugar!  To celebrate, I made that most satisfyingly carb-filled, indulgently custardy, yet disappointingly un-photogenic of desserts - bread pudding.  Chocolate bread pudding to be precise.  I'm not quite sure who I pilfered this recipe from, though I suspect it's Paula Deen (despite the obvious lack of butter as a starring ingredient).  Next time I would ease up on the almond extract a bit.  The pudding definitely has a powerful almond extracty flavor that I would temper in favor of deeper chocolatety-ness.  I also made this with semi-sweet chocolate chips instead of chocolate shavings (because I have pounds and pounds of chocolate chips littering my pantry).  This was actually a nice adjustment, since it resulted in little pockets of melty chocolate scattered throughout the dish.  Fun!  I also skipped the usual heavy cream-bourbon-vanilla sauce that I I like to make in favor of plain vanilla ice cream.  I can be a little good.  A little.

This weekend Charlie and I are taking a bit of a drive up the coast to Santa Barbara for a few days.  Hopefully there will be much rest and relaxation.  And pie.  Hopefully there will be pie.  Regardless, I will have photos and trip updates next week.

The "Metabolize This" Chocolate Bread Pudding Recipe

1 (1 lb) loaf French or Italian bread, cubed
3 cup milk
1/4 cup heavy cream
1/2 cup coffee flavored liqueur
1 cup sugar
1 cup packed light brown sugar
1/4 cup cocoa powder
1 Tbsp vanilla extract
2 tsp almond extract
1 1/2 tsp cinnamon
6 eggs, lightly beaten
8 oz semisweet chocolate, grated
Preheat oven to 325° F.

Lightly grease a 13 by 9-inch baking dish and place the bread in the dish. In a large bowl, whisk together the milk, cream, and liqueur. Using another bowl, combine the sugar, brown sugar, and cocoa powder and mix well. Add the sugar mixture to the milk mixture and mix well. Add the vanilla and almond extract, and cinnamon to the beaten eggs. Combine the egg mixture to the milk mixture and mix well

Stir the grated chocolate into the mixture. Pour the mixture over the cubed bread in the pan. Let the mixture stand, stirring occasionally for approximately 20 minutes or until bread absorbs most of the milk mixture. Bake pudding for 1 hour or until set. Check pudding by inserting a knife through the middle and it should come out clean.

Serve the pudding warm, or refrigerate and serve chilled with whipped cream if desired.

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

 
Happy Third Anniversary to Us!  Thank you, Charlie, for three wonderful years.  Through times both joyful and scary, peaceful and crazy, we’ve made a wonderful life for ourselves full of laughter, passion, creativity, silliness, comfort, strength, and support.  Our love has been this breathtaking process of creating something beautiful where once there was nothing at all.  And now, after three years, we’re becoming three!  What fullness and life and grace!

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
                                    i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

- ee cummings

Obama Mama '08

My favorite pre-election t-shirt

Makin' Whoopie... Pies, that is.

The weather this weekend was cool and crispy and almost Fall-like.  Cool October days are my favorite kind of days.  We may not have rust-colored leaves crunching underfoot or hot apple cider around every corner, but even here in SoCal, I do get to thinkin' about all things pumpkin.  The adorable little guys above are Mini Pumpkin Whoopie Pies with Maple Cream Cheese Filling, inspired by Peabody's always delectable food blog.  These tasty little pillows of pumpkiny perfection were fun to make and even more fun to assemble.  Now I have a mini-army of whoopie pies occupying my kitchen counter.  Charlie and I have launched the offensive; we pick off at least two or three with each kitchen reconnaissance.  Their numbers are dwindling rapidly.  Their cause is not helped by the fact that they are the perfect accompaniment for an afternoon coffee.

It's not all military/baked goods metaphors this weekend.  We're making progress on the baby preparation front as well.  Soon-to-be Grandpa X and Lorraine sent us this nifty little stroller.  Between batches of whoopie pies, I assembled it and played with all its attachments and gizmos.  Apparently strollers (and other gear that babies are attached to, I assume) come with some sort of NASA engineered five-point harness system that is completely baffling me.  The rig has multiple straps, buckles, D-rings, clips, adjusters, and pads all designed to somehow secure baby to said device.  I guess some things we will learn by doing.  In other baby news, Charlie is currently painting the nursery, so we'll have photos soon.

29 weeks, butternut squash, and puppy kisses

Here's The Syd, hanging out with the 29-week belly.  According to Babycenter, our little bug is about the size of a butternut squash right now.  I love butternut squash.  In fact, I had plans to make this Winter Squash Soup with Gruyere Croutons a few days ago (with leftover gruyere from the pie crust... how thrifty am I?).  However, while I may have six pounds of Ghirardelli chocolate chips, eight Scharffen Berger chocolate bars, seven Dagoba chocolate bars, twelve cups of Valrhona cocoa, five pounds of sugar, and a box of exquisite raw chocolate cacao nibs in my pantry right now, I have no chicken broth.  So no soup. 

Trimesters one and two were pretty easy and uneventful - the occasional teensy bout of nausea, a strange and distressing aversion to pizza, a previously-unheard-of dependence on Tums.  Now that I am firmly ensconced in the Third Trimester, various new and sneaky pregnancy ailments are creeping up on me.  It seems that a full eight+ hours of endless project meetings and sundry lab experiments/mini-science-disasters leaves me a bit ouchy at the end of the work day - lower back pains, achiness around the hip areas, assorted muscle soreness.  Waddling to and from the kitchen for ice cream feels like a marathon endeavor (though worth it... definitely worth it).  Oh yes, and the feet swell to (even more) gargantuan proportions.  This last development is truly appalling.  Truly.  But despite creaking around like a large, roly-poly wimp for most of the day, I'm feeling healthy and peaceful and centered and excited to meet our little baby girl in eleven-ish weeks.

Here is Sydney giving belly kisses, completely unaware of how much worrying she will face once the baby arrives... she thinks worrying about us and the kitties is an exhausting job...

Saturday Morning Zen

Only this
Nothing more
No need to dust
No need to sit.

- Feng Kan (7th Century)

(Steel-cut oatmeal and tea for breakfast; Puffy dough balls rising)

To make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe. - Carl Sagan

In honor of me failing my one hour glucose tolerance test for gestational diabetes, I baked a pie this weekend (I have a three hour glucose diagnostic test on Thursday).  This particular pie was inspired by Wednesday's season premiere of my favorite show on TV - Pushing Daisies.  This quirky Amelie Poulain meets Tim Burton dramedy is exactly all the things that I would want in a TV show, including storybook-esque set design, enviable costumes, strange and macabre storylines, offbeat dialogue, and the prominent role of pie.  One of the main characters, Charlotte Charles, bakes an apple pie with Gruyère cheese grated into the crust for her Aunts.  She spikes it with a homeopathic anti-depressant potion to lift their spirits and get them out of the house. 

I recreated this pie (minus the potion) as part of my ongoing denial about the lack of a true Autumn season here in San Diego (yes, pumpkin recipes will be forthcoming).  I've tried the traditional combination of cheddar cheese and apple pie, which ended up being bland and disappointing (thanks a lot, Emeril).  Cheddar becomes leathery and oily and decidedly untasty.  But Gruyère... ahhhhhh, Gruyère melts seamlessly into the flaky pie crust, adding a deep, cheesy, slightly salty flavor that is perfect with apple pie filling.  Trust me.  It's as quirky as the TV show, but it works.

Charlotte Charles' Mood-Lifting Apple Pie with Gruyère Crust

3 lb organic baking apples
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1 Tbsp lemon juice
5 tsp cornstarch
1 egg, lightly beaten
1 Gruyère Pie Crust (see below)

Preheat oven to 375°F. 

Peel, core and slice apples.  Mix with other ingredients (except for the egg... and the pie crust).  Mix with your hands.  It's fun.

Roll one disk of dough into a circle about fourteen inches in diameter.  Flop the dough circle into a glass pie plate and gently ease the dough into plate.

Pile the apple mixture into pie plate, adding any juices. Roll a slightly smaller piece of dough into a circle twelve inches in diameter.  Place it, like a cozy little blanket, on top of the apples. Seal the two crusts together (mine never looks pretty...), brush with the beaten egg, and make some combination of slits in the top crust to allow steam to free itself.

Place pie on a cookie sheet to catch any drips (I didn't do this and now I and my oven floor regret it), put in oven and bake for 50 minutes to an hour, or until the filling bubbles and the top becomes perfectly golden brown and delicious. Cool for least 20 minutes before serving, or the tasty pie juices will gush all over the place.

Gruyère Pie Crust

2 1/2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
1 Tbsp sugar
1 tsp salt
2 sticks (16 Tbsp) cold, unsalted butter (hmmm... I actually used 20 Tbsp...)
2 oz Gruyère, grated with a microplane rasp grater
7 Tbsp ice water

Makes one double-crusted pie.

Cut the butter into cubic inches and put it back in the refrigerator to chill again.

Mix flour, sugar, salt, and Gruyere in a large mixing bowl. Using a pastry blender (not your warm, sweaty fingers) cut in the butter until the largest chunks of butter remaining are pea-sized.

Sprinkle ice water over flour in one tablespoon increments, lightly tossing with fork after each addition. (Don't knead, mix, press, etc... be gentle).  When the dough clumps together when lightly squeezed, form two disks, one a bit larger than the other.  Wrap them in plastic and refrigerate overnight.

Notes from the Pie Maker:

• I like to use tart red apples for pies, such as Cortlands, Northern Spy, Romes, Empires.  However, since I do not live in the Northern part of the country (and it's not really Autumn here, remember?), I was relegated to whatever my local mega-mart had to offer, which unfortunately consisted of the ubiquitous and baffling "Delicious" variety as well as some sad little Granny Smith affairs.  I used the Granny Smith.  These make mediocre pie fillers since they are very tart and not very juicy and hold their slice just a little too much.  If, like me, you are not surrounded by the bounty of various Autumnal apple lineages, I would recommend using half Granny Smith, half Golden Delicious.
• Organic?  I'm such a free-range hippie.  But, apples are one of the dirty dozen, so unless you like the idea of pesticides bubbling around in your pie, you should buy organic.
  
• The crust recipe uses butter.  This makes a tasty, flaky crust.  However, if you want a perfectly tender, tasty, flaky crust, you should substitute some of that butter with lard (yes, I just said that).  However, since lard is apparently a dirty word in the state of California, I went with all butter.  What?  Shortening?  White, soap-flavored trans-fattiness?  Never.
  
• You should get one of those rotating, hand cranking apple corer, peeler, slicer things.  Aside from being quick and convenient, they make these fun little apple spirals.  One slice down the middle and you have perfect apple slices.
  

A Pie-ku from me to you:

Flaky, cheesy crust.
Sweet-tart slices, Fall spices.
The texture of love

28 weeks and a cat

28 weeks already?  Time feels like it's flying by.  This puts the little bug at about two and a quarter pounds and almost 15 inches long.  My doctor's appointments are getting more frequent and so are my naps.  Shoes and wedding rings are getting more snug.  And a disappointingly significant percentage of my maternity clothes do not seem like they will be able to go the distance (eg. the shirt in the above photo - not much more belly room there).

Still plenty of room for Georgia to stake her claim though.  "Mine," says Georgia Cat.