This Day

'Leftover pumpkin pie for breakfast, 63° outside, Stuffed is curled up in the sun-slants along the floor, and I have the day off work.  'Time to read with Stuffed snuggled into the afghan on my lap, time to cook a proper dinner this afternoon, time to catch up on email to dear Lisa later, and time to get laundry and other chores crossed off my list for the day and rest of this week.  It's all so much of a juggling act lately--I much preferred the work-schedule I had with my previous job, it turns out--that I feel like everything I do gets done at the last minute in a rush of "Whew!" and "'Pulled it off again!" so days like this when I can catch my breath and sit awhile in late fall sunshine with pie and a good book and a cuddly cat are truly, more than ever, the sweetest days of them all. 

A Few Days Late

Thanksgiving was last night here, and a sweet one it was.  Best wishes to you all.  ♥

Stars and Stripes

I baked a couple days early since I work Sunday and Monday.  

♥

Return of the Three-Eye Pie

Until last night, it had been twenty years since I first made a cranberry-apple pie, and if Mom and Aunt Laurie could be beside you as you read this, they would fall over themselves laughing as they explained why.  Their memories of my first attempt have grown more exaggerated with each retelling, and now, my poor 1996 effort is simply referred to as "Val's Three-Eye Pie." 

I had saved this recipe from a Good Housekeeping magazine and told Mom I wanted to try it while Aunt Laurie was visiting that fall.  I'd been baking alone since I was ten--and I was nineteen at the time--but this pie foiled me.  And I didn't make the beautiful leaf-crust pictured below.  (How gorgeous is this!) 

For me, it was the pie filling that went awry.  The pie filling!  In the words of Paul Simon, "there were incidents and accidents."  And for someone who hadn't yet made many pies, I learned the hard way how not to make this particular one.  The recipe now strikes me as straightforward, and surely, if I had actually followed it, the pie would have turned out.  It called for the juice of "1 large lemon," but I (apparently hadn't bought or asked for the groceries I needed to make this pie?!  Ah, nineteen-year-old Val!) didn't have any lemons so decided I would instead throw in some lemon extract from the back of Mom's baking cupboard.  When I use the word "throw" to describe how I "measured" the lemon extract. . .yessssssss.  Not knowing anything about the extract-to-real-thing ratio/conversion, I must have used the whole bottle.  And I have still never in my life seen Mom use lemon extract for anything, so who knows where the extract had even come from, let alone how very old it was.  Only two teaspoons of vanilla extract are mentioned in the recipe, and that I had on-hand, but I am now-infamous for assuming that if a little vanilla-flavor is good, a lot must be great!  (That logic became part of my defense soon enough.)  Who knows how much of that went into this pie, as well, then.  Raisins, I see are in the recipe too, but I highly doubt I used any, since I've never liked them.  The pie that went into the oven that afternoon was mostly apples, cranberries, and a huge amount of alcohol-filled extracts.  Alcohol bakes-off, it is said, but when probably a bottle and a half of two different flavors are in one pie and that pie is likely already missing one of its called-for fruits, the baker must be prepared for whatever reaction comes. 

And reaction was swift, but the stories have been exaggerated, I tell you!  Mom still likes to imitate how my cousin Amy mysteriously began hiccuping after soldiering through her slice of the finished pie.  She always includes the part about how "poor Amy" soon thereafter bid us all an early goodnight and elaborated that she didn't feel so good.  Aunt Laurie's favorite part of the Three-Eye Pie story--besides the fact that "Three-Eye Pie" immediately became the name for her niece's dessert--is how Uncle Warren's eyebrows instantly shot way up onto the top of his forehead upon tasting his first bite.  On and on the stories go.  We all laughed so much during that visit over that pie.  ("Of course we did," Mom would point out if she were reading over your shoulder right now.  "Val's pie got us all drunk.")  In 2011, a full fifteen years after I had made the pie, Mom included the note and drawing below in a recipe book she gave me for Christmas.  She has drawn that three-eyed girl a few other times over the years too, I should add.  Oh, the hilarity.  :) 

And just last month when I unwrapped my Christmas presents from Aunt Laurie, I oohed and ahhed over a tiny green bag inside which my name was peeking out on a slip of paper.  I tugged out a box of bottled vanilla, momentarily--and naively--thinking she had simply sent me vanilla as a baking supply, since she tends to give me muffin papers, pot holders, and other baking-related gifts at Christmas, but then I read the note that accompanied it.  And notice the three-eyed snowman underneath!  Comediennes, these two.  :) 

I've baked enough now to have a better idea of what I can and can't substitute and how much of what I can add or take away from a pie, and last night's was just fine, thank you, and I even added snowflake-shaped pie crust pieces to the edge and to the streusel topping, so there.  ;)  There is no point telling my mom or aunt, though.  The Three-Eye Pie story has become one of their favorite family classics, and they're still just having waaaaay too much with it. 

Nut Roll

'Not the most appetizing picture, I'm thinking, but since I didn't think to take one after the nut roll was baked, this is the only shot I have of it.  Mom loves nut rolls but hadn't had one in a few years since going gluten-free in 2011 for various health issues, so I decided I'd bake her a gluten-free one and "Priority Mail" it to her for her birthday this week.  It reached her about twenty-two hours after I'd taken it out of the oven, which was the best I could have hoped for, and she loved it, but may I just say what a messy process this was!  I used this recipe but with a different gluten-free flour mixture, and while it did taste quite good, it seemed like surely, this was twice the amount of filling needed?!  I was smart enough, at least, to have decided from the start the other day to divide the dough and filling into three nut rolls, considering the first my trial one and whichever was the best of the other two the one I'd send Mom.  'So glad I did it that way--three cheers for thinking ahead, yes--because the filling I added to the first roll seeped through the dough and stuck to the baking pan I used.  The nut roll I ended up mailing with Mom's other birthday gifts was not messy-looking, but even though I'd spread a little less filling into that one and tried to wrap it more tightly than the first, and even though I'd rolled the dough between sheets of parchment paper too, the dough remained so sticky (as gluten-free dough always seems to be), it just didn't roll up into the beautiful log I'd envisioned.  (And by the time I baked the third roll, I hardly cared, since Mike doesn't eat many sweets and still had Christmas morning cinnamon rolls here anyway and I'm not a fanatic about these the way Mom is.)  Mom loved it, regardless, and was tickled with the tea pot address labels and stickers I'd included with it, as well, so all's well that ends well, and happy birthday, Mom.  :)  Of course, a few days after I'd made and mailed it, I found a magazine article that suggested using ready-made gluten-free pie crust and the same walnut filling to make gluten-free rugelach, which tastes--to me, at least--just like this nut roll did anyway, and yesssss, that will likely be the way I do this next time.  Given the large amount of dough that this recipe makes and the cost of the gluten-free flour mixture, and since it's a just-at-Christmas treat for (really) just one person anyway, going the easier route may be the way to do it next time.

Valen-Christmas 2014, or Kindness Toward Self and Others, or Issues: I Have a Few

After Mike and I exchanged cards and gifts Valentine's Day morning, he left to spend the weekend with his family.  Since he hadn't been able to visit them in December, the weekend became a combined Valentine's Day-Christmas (that I deemed "Valen-Christmas") for them.  I had packed a couple gift bags for Mike's family into his rental car, enjoying the opportunity to mix and match Christmas wrapping paper and handpainted Christmas ornaments with Valentine's Day flowers, heart-printed tissue paper, and heart-shaped cherry pies.  Two of my favorite holidays rolled into one this Friday.  

Mike returned Sunday evening with a car full of our Christmas presents from his family, and while our Christmas-in-February was fun, I was more grateful for the gift of his having made it home safely after a few hours of driving on slippery roads.  We usually take advantage of our once-or-twice-a-year car-rentals by heading to a local shopping plaza and stocking up on some things that are easier to bring home with a car, and we had planned both to do that and to enjoy a belated Valentine's dinner out, but when he called to let me know he was back and temporarily parked across the street, his first words were "I hope you're not disappointed, but the roads are awful. . . ."  No, I was not disappointed.  I was relieved, not really feeling like being out on them, or even away from home at all.  He returned the car, ordered a pizza--extra cheese with mushrooms, my favorite--we opened our presents, and we called it a day.  With his being gone and our plans abruptly changed, Valentine's Day didn't feel like it usually does here anyway.  I had sent the Valentine's Day bib to my niece but had mailed only a few cards.  I didn't even bake a cake, having expected us to eat out.  Due to my work schedule and energy level, this past Thanksgiving had the same play-it-by-ear feel.  Sometimes it's just like this. 

When I was younger, even a couple years younger, I would have beaten myself up a bit about these things--I should have made a cake and cookies, I should have knocked his socks off with some beautifully-creative impromptu dinner for us, I should have gotten more mail out, what happened to the homemade heart-shaped gluten-free cookies I was going to send to Mom--but ohhh noooooo.  One of my wishes for my thirty-sixth birthday was to be kinder not only to others, but to myself, as well.  It wasn't just words randomly typed into the text-box here; It's something I always need to work on.  I'll eat junk food in my packed lunches for a few days and spend my lunch money on a gift for someone instead.  I'll skip an extra couple hours of sleep in order to catch up on emails or get a long letter written.  I'll treat Mike to a book or cd he's mentioned but will rarely do the same for myself.  I go through phases and sometime long stretches of taking the time to watch movies and go for my beloved long walks, but spending this time on myself usually takes a backseat to looking out for my loved ones.  (I always make the time for journal-writing and that kind of reflective and prayerful quiet time, so that's in my favor here, at least.)  There is always more (and more and more) I want to be doing for people--and I love doing it--and I'm better at taking care of them than of myself.  It's just one of my issues.  When I mentioned this to my mom years ago, she seemed almost puzzled by the fact that I didn't "get it" and just said, "Well, Vally, there's always more that it would be nice to be able to do for people"--with an implied "???" clearly heard at the end of her statement.  And she's right, but I can be hard on myself and this runs deep with me. 

Almost a year after declaring that I wanted to do better in this regard, though, I can say that I'm getting somewhere.  I'm more likely to allow myself to sleep when I need it.   If I send ten Valentines instead of twenty, life goes on.  My loved ones know I love them even if their cards arrive a day late.  I am finally, in my late thirties, becoming gentler with myself.  I splurged last month and treated myself to a bottle of long-wished-for L'Air Du Temps perfume.  I recently bought myself a couple nightgowns.  I've been watching more movies.  Owning a camera now that can take good pictures outdoors should help me stay on-track with my daily walks.  Slowly, I am finding ways to balance showing love toward others with showing love toward self.   (Why is it just sooooo fun to give to others, though, and such work to take care of myself?!)  When I say that I like growing older, this kind of learning is one of the reasons why.  It is fascinating to me to see how issues that were so big to me ten years ago are no longer things I even think about, let alone "get hung up on," and how characteristics I accept as simply being my personality end up, given enough time, having been just quirks or the way I was during certain stages of my life.  Finding these patterns and putting these sorts of puzzle pieces together:  That's so much of the beauty and benefit and fun of aging. 

After all that, it will likely not surprise you to hear that while I nestled a number of mini heart-shaped pies into tissue paper for Mike's parents on Friday, I also set aside a few for myself.  And that a Valentine's Day that began with wrapping presents for others ended with curling up in a granny square afghan watching movies with Stuffed on my lap. This balance, even if it needs to be re-calibrated from time to time, has been one of the great gifts and lessons of my thirties, and I am most thankful for it.  ♥

Memorial Day 2012

'A pie for Mike's parents this morning.  I talked with my parents last night and know they are visiting cemeteries today, as they faithfully do this weekend every year, to plant flowers around loved ones' graves. That my own dad was welcomed home from the service in 1969 with a family party and a cake in his honor and not with a graveside American flag and red, white, and blue Petunias is something I am more grateful for the older I get. And that Memorial Day seems to have become appreciated more for stores' sales and a three-day weekend than for the sacrifices of those in our military is something that disturbs me more each year. Thank you to those who have served and who are serving now, and a thank you to their families, as well.

Love your friends. Give them dignity and richness, and help make their time alive abundant. --Alexandra Stoddard

our first Thanksgiving together  ♥