I made another header! It’s for the lovely Liisa over at Fit for a Kid:
And that is all.
Author: Lynn
Story teller. Web designer. Party planner. Pie maker.
Mom’s Apple Pie
I had Easter dinner at my mother’s house this past weekend. It was a particularly auspicious occasion since all three of my sisters were there with their families, and it’s fairly rare these days for all four of us to be in one place at the same time.
So of course, my mom had made pie. Four pies, actually.
Much like Luke Skywalker in The Empire Strikes Back, believing he was ready to face Darth Vader even though incomplete was his training, I swaggered into my mom’s house ready to taste test. I thought, hey, I’ve been making pies for four months now, I’ve got it. I’m ready to see how I stack up against the real thing.
And I got served. Pun intended. I was lucky to emerge without being frozen in carbonite.
My mother’s pie is way, way, way, way better than mine. Sir Monkeypants and I both were like, OH RIGHT, this is how pie is supposed to be! How silly of us.
On Sunday, I talked my mom into making yet another pie with me and I learned about a thousand things I have been doing wrong. She makes her pastry with milk, not water; she bakes her pies at 400 degrees, not 375; she greases the pie plate before loading in the pastry (doh, that seems so obvious now!).
The biggest difference, though, is that she uses much more liquid in her pastry mix than I have been. She freaked me out by dumping at least a half cup of milk in there all at once, and then mixing it up to a nice soft lump like PlayDoh. I’ve been under the impression that the least amount of liquid, the better, and I painstakingly measure out two scant tablespoons of water each time and sprinkle the water ever-so-delicately over the entire thing, until it barely clings together. Apparently, wrong. At least, according to Yoda.
Also my rolling methods leave a lot to be desired, not a surprise. And I don’t use enough sugar in my apple pie filling. And I should use water to seal the edges of the pie, and my mom’s style of crimping is way more effective and faster, and I need to work on my vent cutting technique.
GAH.
So I made an apple pie with my mom, and it was thisclose to being as good as hers, with her close supervision, of course. Here it is (with leftover cherry and apple pie in the background from the previous night’s dinner):
I like it that my mom cuts a 9-inch pie into only six pieces. Because that’s the way pie should clearly be served. Testify!
So my mother remains the master, and I’m back in basic training. I’m smarting, but I’ll be making another pie this week anyway and we’ll see how it turns out.
In Which, We Are Revealed As Cheapskates
Just to wrap up yesterday’s discussion of babysitter fees, it would seem that those of us who are paying $7 are indeed getting away with the bare minimum. Parents who have found a sitter that they really like and want to keep fork out the (gulp) $10.
I’m resigned to paying the higher rate because we really like our three babysitters, they are all nice, responsible girls who live on our street. I really want to make it worth their while to come over here instead of taking a shift at McDonalds or going out with their friends.
But jeez, that sure does up the cost of date night, doesn’t it? A simple night out at the movies, with coffee and dessert after, is going to cost us over $100, with nearly half of that going to the sitter. At that rate, we’ll order in and get a rental instead!
Best Babysitter Employers Ever
What do you pay your babysitters? I’m talking the teenaged version, the kind you have in for a few hours on a Saturday night so you and the missus can see a movie, or have dinner at a friend’s house.
It’s very important to me that we be the best babysitter employers ever, because I want all the teenaged girls in a ten-block radius to want desperately to babysit for us. I want to be fending them off with a stick. I want us to be legendary in the babysitting world – those amazing parents who provide easy work (all the kids in bed and asleep by the time you arrive!), leave the best snacks (chips, popcorn, pop, AND candy!), and who have full satellite access to MTV.
We’re always home on time, we never go farther than a few blocks away, and we pay very well.
OR SO WE THOUGHT.
I did some research when we first ventured into the world of teen babysitters a couple of years ago, and it seemed that $7 per hour was the going rate. So we pay basically that, upping it to $8 per hour if we go past midnight. Plus, I always round up, so if we are out for 4 hours we pay $30 instead of just $28.
Then this week, we got an email from a 16-year-old girl on our street, sent to our street’s distribution list. She advertised her services as a sitter – she’s taken courses and is all legit and everything – for $10 an hour.
TEN DOLLARS.
Now I’m freaking out. How will we attract the best in child care if we are underpaying our sitters? Do you think this is standard for babysitting these days? Have we been cheaping out all this time? I AM MORTIFIED.
On the other hand, did she mean $10 for more like daycare-type babysitting? During the waking hours, games and entertainments and cooking dinner and diaper changes type babysitting? Our kids are almost always all in bed and asleep by the time the babysitter arrives, and she doesn’t need to do anything except sit on the couch watching The Real World and eating candy. Maybe have the odd listen for the smoke alarm. It seems like a very, very easy job for $10 an hour.
What do you think we should be paying?
Life According to Little Miss Sunshine
10 a.m. “Where’s Daddy? I want Daddy!”
3 p.m. “Bad Mommy! I want my Daddy!”
5:30 p.m. “Daddy! Daddy! Daddy! You’re the best Daddy EVER.”
6:30 p.m. “I want DADDY to read my story.”
3 a.m. “MOMMY!!!!”
Yeah, who’s your Daddy NOW, HUH?
Kids in the Capital
Three of my online gal pals have started a new blog! It’s called Kids in the Capital, and it’s the brainchild of Lara of Gliding Through Motherhood, Brie of Capital Mom, and Vicky of Some Kind of Wondermom.
It’s all about activities and outings for kids in Ottawa. So if you’ve got a kid, check it out. Whether you need a day trip, a morning out, or just something to fill the two hours between school and dinner, they’ve got ideas.
I’ll be contributing from time to time as well. My first entry, on our recent trip to the Agriculture Museum, is already up.
They’re also looking for more contributors, and I think they’re planning on taking entries for the revolving photo that appears at the top of the blog. So if you’ve got some cuties to showcase, or a great idea for an Ottawa-area trip, craft, or activity, then hop on board!
Miniature Apple and Strawberry Pies
I didn’t make a pie post last week, because I remade a pie I’d made before — this Peach Blueberry Pie. It turned out better this time around, I think, although there were the usual issues. I made sure to completely thaw the peaches this time, so they’d cook through, but it turned out that thawing them made a LOT of extra liquid in the filling mix. I was afraid it wouldn’t set up, so I ended up scooping out the peaches and blueberries and putting them in with a minimum of liquid. It worked, in that the pie cooked and the filling wasn’t running all over the place, but it also wasn’t as sweet as last time, so not quite as tasty in my book.
Also, while I was working on the lattice top, Little Miss Sunshine was upstairs decidedly NOT napping. So I was putting down a strip of lattice, then going to the bottom of the stairs to tell the Little Miss to get back in bed, then doing two more strips of lattice, then going upstairs to put her back in the bed, then doing another strip of lattice, then yelling at her to just come down already, and as a result, I put the pie in the oven when the lattice was only half done. OOPS. I know this is a minor thing and really not a big deal at all but for some reason I was kind of upset about it so I didn’t even take a photo. PMS, I’m thinking.
So, on to this week! This week I am trying something new – miniature pies. This is a throwback to my youth, when my mother would make enough pastry dough for three or four pies at a time, and use the leftovers to make a small pie, the size of a meat pie. My sisters and I used to fight over the mini-pie, so eventually my mom started to make one miniature pie for each of us. Then she’d put the pie in our school lunch bag for the next day, and all the kids and teachers would drool as we ate a whole pie.
Oh, man, GOOD TIMES.
I started with the pastry. I had no idea how much to make. I ended up making enough for four single crusts (4 cups cake and pastry flour, 1 1/3 cups shortening, 1 teaspoon salt, just less than 8 tablespoons water), but that was more than enough for the five pies I was planning on. I could easily have made at least seven, maybe eight if I rolled the pastry out thin.
Anyway, I rolled it out and cut circles for the tops and bottoms using a bowl as a pattern and a sharp knife. I put the bottom halves into five meat pie plates:
Although the pastry rolled out well, working it into the cups was very fiddly, and round about now I was cursing this idea and thinking this had no chance of working. Plus I kind of wrecked my knee doing Wii Fit Rhythm Kung Fu (I rock, I challenge YOU ALL), and I was getting annoyed at how long it I had to stand there trying to whip the pastry into submission.
Tip, if you’re going to make these: don’t bother to preheat the oven until the pastry is rolled and cut. Otherwise, your oven will be twiddling its thumbs and wondering why you never did buy it that iPhone you promised so it could text all its other oven friends while waiting FOREVER for your stupid pies. Trust me.
Then I made up some fillings. I cannot believe how casual I was with these fillings, people. I am the ultimate in follow the recipe, I must know the exact amounts of everything. Don’t be giving me no recipes where you throw in a little of this and a blob of that. NO. I need numbers, and details, and hand-holding all the way.
But for these, I just kind of threw some things in a bowl. I KNOW. I went nuts!
Three pies are apple – I used one apple per mini-pie. Then I added around 1/4 cup sugar (to the three apples, peeled and cut into very small cubes), a couple teaspoon-sized scoops of flour, and a generous sprinkle of cinnamon. The other two pies are strawberry – I used around 2 cups of chopped up strawberries with 1/4 cup sugar, a heaping tablespoon of flour, and a very small sprinkle of cinnamon.
Then the fillings went in and the tops went on:
By this time my hair was grey, I’d lost all my teeth, and had two hip replacements. FIDDLY.
I baked them at 375 for 40 minutes, although I could have taken them out five minutes earlier, I think. Very important to rotate the pies around in the oven a few times, and also to bake them on a cookie sheet for your own sanity.
They came out looking pretty good, actually. I took two pictures because in the first one, they just look like a bunch of normal sized pies, don’t you think? So I stuck my hand in there for sizing.
And then we ate them.
OH BOY OH BOY OH BOY.
Here’s Sir Monkeypants enjoying his apple pie:
They are so good. Amazing. The best pies I’ve ever made. I can’t even decide which I like better. The strawberry is like a giant candy. The apple is exactly like the ones I had in my lunches as a child.
I’m so very, very happy right now.
This weekend I’ll be seeing my mom and she’ll be making pies. Hopefully I can learn something, but at the very least I think I can stand beside her in the kitchen and maybe even (gasp!) help.
The piemaker dream lives! It’s ALIVE!!
Reality TV Roundup
Sir Monkeypants and I are regular watchers of The Amazing Race, but we’re thinking about ditching it after this season because we get so mad when the locals don’t judge the detours with equal and appropriate criteria. Last week, the teams had to build a tower of 15 levels of wine glasses, using a total of 640 glasses (I think, or maybe it was 670, and I’m too lazy to do the math to check — left as an exercise to the reader!).
When the host, Phil, was outlining the task, he talked about how the challenge lay in “doing the math” to make the tower. Sir Monkeypants and I love that sort of thing, so we immediately paused the TV so we could figure it out. Our calculations showed that a square-based tower, like the Egyptian pyramids, would not work — you would not have enough glasses. The total number of glasses only worked with a triangle-shaped tower.
So, we got all excited when all the teams who chose that task started in on a square-based tower, thinking they were totally screwed, and feeling all mathematics-superior. But know what happened? When they got to the 12th level and discovered they were out of glasses, they just pulled few from the 12th level and placed one inside the other, making three more “levels” with one glass each.
And apparently, that was good enough, because they got their clue, even though MATH VIOLATION. Man, were we pissed.
In general we hate it on that show when some judges are all, oh, you half-heartedly coloured in that picture or half-assed building that wall, so, good enough, when other teams are being super careful about it because they don’t know how tough the judging is going to be and then they get screwed.
Also, we hate MATH VIOLATIONS.
Man, I can NOT believe I had a rant in me so long and involved over THE AMAZING RACE. I need to get out more.
In other news, I am totally back in with Survivor. I know, I know, we broke up years ago and I was over it, really, I was! But then they brought back Boston Rob, who is powerfully good television, and I had to check out the first episode, you know, kind of like looking up an old boyfriend on Facebook just out of curiousity.
But whoa hey! The first episode was amazing! And the second! And the third! Surprises! Backstabbing! Injuries! Actual executions of complex strategies! Amazing. So of course, now I’m totally back in. I think I’ll be able to get back out, though, after this season.
Also eating up three hours of my week: American Idol. This year’s singers are awful, terrible, I could do better. Almost everyone I actually cared about has already been voted out through the MORAL LACKING of the American people. And yet, I must watch it. After this season, though, we are done. Through. I’m moving on! I deserve better! It’s not me, it’s you!
Whew. I feel better.
Smash and Grab
The library opens at 10 a.m.
I have to pick up Gal Smiley from kindergarten at 10:25 a.m.
It takes about 12 minutes to drive from the library to the school, plus a few extra minutes to buckle Little Miss Sunshine into and out of her car seat.
Thus, the Little Miss and I have perfected what I like to call, the Library Smash And Grab.
First, we arrive a minute or two before 10, and linger outside the locked doors. The second the librarian shows up with the keys — usually a minute or two late, I might add, like, lady, we are ON A SCHEDULE HERE — we rush in.
First stop, the holds shelf, where I pick up whatever is waiting for me. Elapsed time: one minute.
Second stop, the kids’ section. I pick one picture-book shelf and sit in front of it. I pull out several interesting titles and try to quickly identify two or three books with minimal words, for the Little Miss, and two or three with more words for Gal Smiley. Bonus if we can find anything involving sheep, ballerinas, bicycles, airplanes, or pirates. Elapsed time: four minutes.
Third stop, bigger kids area. This is a big section so I head straight for the P section, to pick up anything that is in by Dav Pilkey (the Captain is, somewhat appropriately, on a Captain Underpants kick). If I have an extra moment or two, I’ll pop over to S to see what’s in by Louis Sachar. Elapsed time: three minutes.
Fourth stop, Little Miss extraction. While I’ve been speed-browsing, the Little Miss has usually pulled out at least four or five board books from the baby bin and is settled into a table with 90% of her clothing removed. I have one minute to dress her and talk her out of taking home any titles that we already own at home (she’s drawn to the books she recognizes, and it’s hard to convince her that her own copy is still waiting in her bedroom). Usually we end up with at least one board book that she refuses to part with. Elapsed time: one minute. If I’m lucky.
Fifth stop, checkout. The library staff are amazingly quick. Usually the slowest part of the process is finding my library card. Then it’s bleep bleep bloop, and we’re done. Elapsed time: one minute.
Total library visit: 10 minutes. Off to pick up the Gal!
Miracles and Chocolate
The sassy and sparkly Julie over at Thoughts of a Smother Mother sent me this lovely virtual Easter Basket:
Mmmm…chocolate. Although, I have to say, my Parts Behind don’t really need any more. Right now I have a big bin of those little chocolate eggies on my kitchen counter as treats for the Little Miss and her potty training, and every time I check my email (which is about 1000 times a day) I get a goodly whiff of chocolate, and then of COURSE I have to eat one, and thus, BIG BUTT.
So, thank heavens the stuff above is only digitally fattening.
Anyway! By mentioning this Easter Basket on my blog, I’m helping get Hershey’s to contribute a total of $5000 — $10 per blog post — to the Children’s Miracle Network.
If you’re interested in sending a virtual Easter Basket and getting in on the philanthropical goodness, here are the rules:
- Copy and paste these rules to your blog post.
- Create a blog post giving a virtual Easter Basket to another blogger – you can give as many Virtual Baskets as you want.
- Link back to person who gave you an Easter Basket.
- Let each person you are giving a Virtual Easter Basket know you have given them a Basket.
- Leave your link at BetterBasket.info/BlogHop comment section. You can also find the official rules of this #betterbasket blog hop, and more information about Better Basket with Hershey’s there.
- Hershey’s is donating $10 per each blog participating to the Better Basket Blog Hop to Children’s Miracle Network (up to total of $5,000 by blog posts written by April 4th, 2010).
- Please note that only one blog post by each blog url will count towards the donation.
And there you have it. I’d like to send this non-fattening treat to Brie at Capital Mom, because her wee girl isn’t feeling too well and they could both use a pick-me-up. It’s not quite cupcakes but the love is the same.
TurtleHead 