Archive for March, 2010

How To Make a Pie

Today, I was having over some impromptu company. Pulled pork in the crock pot and figured I’d make a quick pie using ready-made crust and canned filling. So, after I got home from a run to the grocery store, I realized . . . I forgot the crust.

Now, I am not a bad cook. But pie crust from scratch is my kitchen nemesis. I have just never been able to get it right. Yes, I considered a second trip to the grocery store, but laziness won out and I pulled out the recipe card box. I have six different recipes for pie crust. Not different pies. Just different ways to make pie crust. (You see, I have tried this before.)

This time, things appear to have turned out okay. So, I thought I’d share a how-to on pie making.

Step 1. Clear and clean some counter space in tiny kitchen and set out ingredients in neat rows (milk, flour, oil, salt, pie pan, bowl, measuring cups and spoons).

Step 2. Dig rolling pin and fancy (bought it cause I thought maybe that would help) pie-crust rolling mat out of kitchen drawer.

Step 3. Call mom to ask, “Does this recipe I got from you make 1 crust or 2?

Step 4. Mix 1-1/3 C flour and tsp. of salt in mixing bowl.

Step 5. Put 1/3 C oil and 3 Tbs. milk in measuring cup. Do not stir.

Step 6. Realize you will not have enough oil to make the second crust. Pick up measuring cup and run to neighbor’s house.

Step 7. As you leave the house, pull door shut tight behind you. As it clicks, realize that you have just locked yourself out of your house.

Step 8. Climb in through kitchen window, unlock front door, and leave house again to get oil from very kind neighbor.  

Step 9. Put all the ingredients together and stir using the big fancy whisk that has the neat little whisk ball inside of it.

Step 10. Dig dough bits out of whisk. Bend outer whisk to remove stupid ball thingie and dig dough bits out of that with a fork.

Step 11. Throw fancy whisk into sink and finish mixing with hands.

Step 12. Layout fancy Tupperware rolling mat, sprinkle mat, rolling pin, self, floor, and counter top liberally with flour.

Step 13. Make more counter space in tiny kitchen so you have room to actually use a rolling pin properly.

Step 14. Roll dough out, aiming for the perfect 9” circle that is imprinted on fancy rolling mat.

Step 15. Steal chunks of amoeba-shaped dough and add to spots where there is no dough.

Step 16. Look at dough. Look at pie pan. After some thought, place pie pan upside-down on dough. Flip over entire mat. When cloud of flour clears, see that this worked just fine.

Step 17. Steal more bits of dough to Frankestein a somewhat circular, somewhat full-coverage bottom layer.

Step 18. Remove everything that you cleared from counter from out of the cupboard where you store the can opener. Open pie filling can. Dump into bottom crust. 

Step 19. Make second crust, repeating most of the steps above. And crimp edges.

Step 20. Poke in some pie holes with a fork.

Step 21. Cover pie in wax paper and foil. Place on a dinner plate. And slide into refrigerator.

Step 22. Call Mom to ask, “Hey, what temp and how long do you bake a pie?” and “Oh, so I should bake it now instead of waiting til dinner time?

Step 23. Preheat over to 425 degrees and remove pie from refrigerator. Remove foil. Remove wax paper. Place pie in oven.

Step 24. Remove pie from oven and take it off of the dinner plate. Put pie back in oven.

Step 25. Bake at 425 for 15 minutes. Use that piece of foil to cover crust edges to keep them from burning. Then, bake at 350 degrees for half an hour.

Step 26. Remove from oven and place on cooling rack to cool for at least 2 hours to “let filling settle” (according to recipes.com).

Step 27. Enjoy! (I hope.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Have any tips for making pie crust? Please do share them with me in the comments box.

March 28, 2010 at 7:11 am 10 comments

Thanks Mom

What is it about these curlers?

They look funny and they never hold all the hair you want them to. They sometimes even hurt a bit and they are surely an awkward item to store, but, I admit here to you today that I love my curlers. I don’t use them very often. On a normal day, I barely have time to camouflage a cowlick with the curling iron or a strategically placed barrette.

But. Every once in a while, when I have all the time in the world, I put the curlers in. And I get such a big kick out of them. I walk around. I jiggle my head. I look in the mirror and I giggle.

Today, with a jiggle and a giggle, I pondered this odd thrill. And I found myself back in time.

I am sitting in the kitchen at 312 Pennsylvania with my Mom and my sister. Curlers and pin curls in my hair. A great big balloon of a hat, puffing heat and slipping down my forehead. That balloon-hat of course was part of an old-fashioned hair dryer. For those who have only grown up with the hand-held variety, picture an over-sized shower cap made of vinyl. And picture a big tube connected to that cap, connected to a box-contraption with buttons, connected to an electrical cord, plugged into the wall. And imagine sitting, connected to all this for half an hour or longer.

Sounds awful doesn’t it? So why oh why does the memory make me smile?

Because it is something uniquely girlish – or, more specifically, uniquely mother-daugther-rite-of-passage-ish.

It belongs to a collection of moments in life when you discover the things that are (feminists be damned) distinctly female. How to bake a batch of cookies. How to set the table. How to iron, do laundry, sew on a button. Can you remember when these things were not chores? When they were exciting and new and, yes, fun.

Better yet think of the moments when your Mom let you go through her jewelry, revealing hidden treasures in velvet cases, little pouches, old boxes. Beads and gems and sparkly items. This was my mother’s. This was a gift from your Dad when we were dating. Go ahead, you can try it on.

Entrance to the inner sanctum!

Didn’t every girl, at some point in time, fall in love—and, yes, covet!—her mother’s Pretty Things? My Mom had a pair of patent-leather, ankle-high, kitten-heel boots that, to this day, I think were the most smashing pair of shoes I have ever seen.

There was a kind of magical osmosis that occurred when you witnessed her excitement when getting dressed up. In a pretty dress, wearing the special jewelry, and a bit of makeup. This was not everyday Mom who made you clean your room, stand in the corner, and finish your dinner. To trail after her as she got ready and then watch her put on her good coat and go out the front door with Dad with a big smile on her face, looking even more beautiful than ever. These were real-life Cinderella moments.

That is why, I believe, we women still, years and years and years removed from those front-door moments, get a little inexplicably giddy about things like the perfect shade of lipstick, a pretty perfume bottle, a sexy dress, a new pair of shoes. And yes, even curlers.

Curlers look silly and feel weird, but they also look and feel like a treat because they remind me of having my Mom do my hair; of being allowed to use Her Things; of feeling loved, pampered, and joyfully girlie.

That joy is not, as some may see it—or as today’s advertising and movies may portray it—a symbol of vanity or veneer. I believe these things are symbols of something to be cherished. Pretty Things are a connection to the child we were and the women we adore. Amidst the run-down monotony of work and responsibility, we remember fairy tales. Despite a few extra pounds, gray hairs, or worry lines, we may yet carry a few secret bits and baubles that reveal our true identity, our inner princess.

So, I may be spending a rainy Sunday, wearing sweats and ratty slippers, doing laundry, scooping cat pooh, and putting out the garbage, but my hair looks fabulous.

What’s one of your favorite items from your Mom’s closet, jewelry box, or dress-up routine?

March 14, 2010 at 7:51 am 3 comments

Cheers to the Girls

­­­­­This post is for a particular group of girlfriends who are life preservers cut from the highest quality cloth that you could ever find (in the irregulars bin).

On the way into work today, I heard a new song by Martin Sexton, Livin’ the Life. He asks:

     Are you livin’ the life that you’ve always dreamed of?
     Giving your time to the ones who make you smile?

And, although the first line had me thinking “Oh, no . . . ,” the second brought me back with a “Hell yeah.”

This past Saturday night I enjoyed a night out with a group of women who’ve been making me smile for a lot of years. We’ve known each other our entire adult lives, which is between 20 and 30 years depending on who met who at which point in time (and depending of course on how you define adult).  But, however you figure it, we’ve been friends a long time.

They are my confidantes and co-conspirators. They’ve been my concert buddies since before there was a StarLake. We have been teammates—the (original and only true) Ms. Fits—cheering as champions, empathizing as losers, or, way more often than either of those, laughing our collective butts off at something-other-than-win-or-lose. (Like that tournament when we spent the three- or four-hour delay between pool play and the championship drinking beer and a bit of schnapps.)

Yeah. We lost. But we were entertaining.

In addition to Ms. Fits, we’ve called ourselves Pikers, Mustang Sisters, and, more recently, the Mutant Middle-Age Ninja Toilet-Paperers. We’ve driven each other’s cars. We’ve slept on each other’s couches. We have painted each other’s houses (and one garage). We sit on the bride’s side. And then go after the bouquet wearing baseball gloves. We’ve watched the Civic Arena roof open up. We’ve watched the Candle Glo close down. We’ve spent many a fine night talking (and a hilarious couple of hours hiding) on each other’s porches. These ladies make it okay to be yourself, whether yourself is happy, sad, successful, poor, dressed up, dressed down, good hair day, bad hair day, half-naked, drunk, smart, stupid, or just an a-hole. We have enjoyed infamous vacations and crazy long weekends. Couple of us even lived together for a bit in a lovely (ahem) duplex down in Sharpsburg. We’ve skied, played, dined, and stayed. We’ve been campfire dancing, inter-tubing, skinny-dipping, moon-bathing, conga-lining, bowling, and practical joking for years. And all of it in (mostly) good (mostly) clean (mostly) legal fun.

I never laugh as hard as when I am with these chicks. These are humans in the rarest of categories who have a tremendous capacity to laugh-with but who may (and do) laugh-at with immunity. If we’re together, for twenty minutes or eight hours, there is a constant whir of giggling, tittering, chuckling, cackling, squealing, guffawing, belly laughing—and, yes, the occasional buck-snort, which only starts us laughing all over again. It’s the kind of hilarity when you can barely catch your breath before the next zinger, one-liner, or remember-when has you gasping. Going out with this group is like going to a very small comedy club to see headliners with great comedic timing and superb material.

The material comes from a distinct familiarity, a simpatico, a frame of reference constructed over years and years and years of shared experiences. And through that history, we gained the other key to friendship:  Trust. They trust me around their children. I trust them to guard a port-a-john door. I trust them with my purse (even tho I know they’ll fill it up with sugar packets or silverware). I trust them to watch my beer (even tho I know they’ll pass it around and drink it all before I return). We know each other’s secrets. We walk in without knocking. I would trust them with a pin number, a winning lottery ticket, or a date. Whether we cross paths daily or annually, I trust they’ll be there when needed.

Yeah, maybe this is not the life I always dreamed of, but it’s been a life that’s brought me life-long friendships. And if laughter truly is the best medicine, that’ll be long enough to raise some hell and a few eyebrows at the old folks home.

(Oh, and when the time comes, I’m trusting you guys with some of my ashes.)

March 8, 2010 at 1:37 pm 4 comments