Gingered Lemon Pie for Pi Day

Shadow Puppet Pie Theatre!

Welcome to the Pi Day Post! Working with engineers and following Gesine's blog made me very excited about the possibilities for this day which honors... an irrational number.

Happily, Pi Day this year coincided with a Green-themed Potluck at work, so I wasn't forced to eat the whole pie myself. (Wouldn't that have been awful?)

What's so green about a lemon pie, you ask? Well, lemons are in season in winter, and ginger is easily frozen, making both of these organic choices great ones for this March (even though this winter has hardly earned its stripes). Add in the fact that I was using crushed Ikea ginger cookie leftovers and the final sweetened condensed milk can from a Costco raid a couple years ago, and it becomes also a thrifty and economical use of my pantry ingredients! Ah, happiness found. :-)

I was excited to use such a great recipe from Leah at So How's It Taste?, whom I met through the Food Bloggers' Cookie Swap last Christmas. She has crafted a pie with many layers of both lemon and ginger flavor, for a fantastic result! Her recipe follows, with my adaptive tweaks.

Gingered Lemon Icebox Pie
makes 8 servings 12 modest slices

Ingredients:

Crust
1 1/2 cups Trader Joe’s Triple Ikea ginger cookie crumbs (or gingersnap cookie crumbs)
1 tbsp. crystallized ginger
3 tbsp. sugar
1/2 tsp. ground ginger
6 tbsp. melted butter (could've done with 5 tbsp, I think)
Filling
1/2 cup 1/3 cup was fine fresh lemon juice (from 2 lemons, mailed from the backyard tree at home in California!)
2-inch piece fresh ginger, minced
3 egg yolks
1 (14 oz.) can sweetened condensed milk
zest from 1 lemon

1. For the crust, preheat oven to 350°F. Blend the cookie crumbs and the crystallized ginger in a food processor until well blended and no unappetizing chunks of the ginger remain. Transfer crumb mixture to a medium bowl and add the sugar and ground ginger; mix well. Add the melted butter and combine. Press into the bottom and up sides of a 9-inch pie pan. Bake 10 minutes. Let cool.

Down to the bottom after baking, cooling

Up the sides before baking...

2. For the filling, in a small saucepan add the lemon juice and minced ginger. Bring to a boil over medium heat. Remove from heat and let steep for 10 minutes.

3. Meanwhile, add the egg yolks to a medium bowl and whisk. Add the sweetened condensed milk and the lemon zest. Strain the ginger lemon juice mixture over the same bowl, pressing on the ginger to release its flavor (save to flavor tea). Whisk all ingredients until well combined.
4. Pour lemon mixture into baked pie crust. Bake at 325°F for 30-35 minutes, until filling is set. Cool at room temperature for 1 hour. Place pie in refrigerator and let set for at least 3 hours (I made mine 2 days in advance and it wasn't adversely affected). Serve chilled with a dollop of whipped cream, if desired.

The behind the scenes shots show my battle array:

From window to wall...

From wall to window!

And from this you can understand why each and every baking effort of mine results in a sinkful of dishes! From Left to Right: egg yolks being whisked, sink starting to fill, open can of sweetened, condensed milk, ginger-lemon juice mixture steeping on a burner, pie crust awaiting filling, zesting accomplished. Phew!

Lots of steps and utensils, but sooo worth it!

Did you make a pie for Pi Day??
Do you have advice about how to stop a cookie-crumb-crust from sliding down while baking?
Are you laughing at the size of my kitchen?

Let me know in the comments so I can laugh along. :-)

And make this pie. You won't be sorry.

Creative Endeavor Year

 What a delicious last couple of days.

Beet greens rescued from limpness, crisped up with bacon goodness

With New Year's Eve on a Saturday and New Year's Day on a Sunday this year, some may have groused about losing days off work, but I made the most of the celebrations not being smooshed into a few tired late-night hours, only to be confronted with the office coffeemaker the next morning. Ha!

I successfully kick-started my Creative Endeavor Year! I've stated lately what I'm interested in, and how differently I want to orient myself, so you maybe have an idea what I'm talking about. No? Ok, then I'll go first with activities from the last few days, and then would you please chime in?

Lists. Yes, I made lists, in different places, on different-sized scraps of paper, and with overlapping topics. Maybe a little overzealous, but now I get to synthesize! Places I want to travel, places I might want to move, key areas of focus for my new work, my annual review, and goals. Totally exciting, right? Well it is for an introverted organizer.

Slowly Scrambled Eggs (you're allowed to zone out while scrambling!)

Writing. Yep- as the new tagline indicates, I'm going to let writing take up a lot more space in my life this year. The focus will be on this blog, as I navigate the transition, and on the novel, which will give me a product and some experience in creative process (little out of practice).

Outdoors. A long run, several moderate-length walks in the cool air- clearing the clutter that tends to clump onto my brain if I spend too much time inside. You know what I mean: meant-to-do's, errands, shoulda-coulda-woulda's. Unless these get out and on a list, they just hover over my shoulder and make me unproductive or regretful. For me, moving at some speed outdoors tends to banish these thoughts. I return refreshed, like my brain had been through a permanent press and spin-cycle!

Apple, cinnamon-sugar, and perhaps a little butter was involved

Back-to-Basics. Return-to-Roots. (I like alliteration, OK?) On NYE, I made my first loaf of bread in the bread machine I received for Christmas, and have been finding ways to appreciate the simple white slice since then. Today, I tried out my first batch of plain yogurt in the new yogurt-maker, and await the results tomorrow morning. While there are a lot of blogging cooks out there who know how to combine many beautiful exotic ingredients for amazing dishes, I like to take the more minimalist approach. Because really, life is what you make of it. So if you don't have pimenton de vera or spelt flour or fresh cilantro when the urge to create in the kitchen strikes, don't fret. Take what you've got, and figure out how to honor that. In fact, I think that'll be the philosophy for this Creative Endeavor Year.

Stale croissant, melted chocolate = uncomplicated souffle

I've been cooking pretty simply in the past month, both because of the desire for wintry comfort food and the need for something simply being enough. Call it an overworked metaphor if you like, but here are a few photos to inspire you to take a stab at this philosophy. Whatever you've got, honor that.

You may see several of the items listed in my Favorites List, which is no accident. What's on your List?

Many Good Things

I am still working on that list of favorites for the Repertoire, so don't worry, any of you who were hanging in suspense from the last post-- it will come soon! For today though, I have something very special to report.

Cookie-Mas has arrived!

In the form of the First Annual Food Bloggers' Cookie Swap- yay!

The Cookie Swap combined many good things that I like: boxes in the mail, surprises, pen pals, new food blogs to explore, and of course, COOKIES!

For my end of the bargain, I made a double batch of a favorite recipe from iPoL, and tweaked it just a smidge:

1 3/4 c. flour

2 c. old fashioned oats
1 c. brown sugar
1/2 c. white sugar
1 ts. baking soda
pinch salt
3 tsp. instant espresso powder
2 cubes (1 cup) unsalted butter, melted and cooled
1 egg and 1 egg yolk
1 ts. vanilla
1/2 bag semisweet chocolate chips (Can add more if you want)
1 c. coarsely chopped dried apricots anything you can get your hands on, in this case, prunes, apricots, and raisins

Preheat oven to 350. In medium bowl, combine flour, oatmeal,sugars, salt,baking soda, and espresso powder. Add egg, egg yolk, melted butter, and vanilla, stir once or twice, then add chocolate chips and dried apricots. REFRIGERATE DOUGH for at least 30 minutes to firm it up. Place balls of cookie dough on cookie sheets lined with parchment paper, and bake for 9-10 minutes. Take them out while they still the tiniest bit underdone. Once they sit for 15 minutes, they’ll be just right.

I packed up the pretty, plump ones and shipped them out the day after I made them. I ate the evidence that there were any that were not uniformly plump. (Again, here's a butter-spreading-related question- what did I do wrong in the first photo? Both batches were refrigerated for the same time, and rolled out approximately the same size.)

The double bacth yielded enough for the 3 dozen I sent out to Madeline of Munching in the Mitten, Karen of SoupAddict, and Leah of So, How's It Taste?, plus plenty to satisfy my sweet tooth (more on that later) while I awaited the other end of the bargain- 3 different dozens coming to ME!... The first box I received was from My Life as a Mrs, which were delicious: Soft Frosted Cookies, recipe here. Soft, moist, cakey, and vanilla-sweet. Kept very well, and such cute presentation!

My next mystery box was from Kiss My Whisk: Salty Sweet Cookies, which came with a cute recipe card (which is how I did mine too!) and wrapped like a present-- recipe here. It was hard to keep to my self-imposed rule of 'eat two, and pass on the rest' here, but I did, and my coworkers raved about these.

My last box was the most elaborate, presentation-wise (glass jar! I know how heavy-therefore-expensive those are to ship! Thanks, Girly Obsessions!), and the cause of my abandoning my self-imposed rule. But really, it was for practical reasons, since despite the wax paper, the glass jar, and the bubble wrap, a good third of the cookies crumbled when I tried to take them out of the bag. At which point someone may have started scooping up these Dark Chocolate Wafers with Almonds and Sea Salt with her bare hands and popping them into her mouth. When I- mean The Someone- regained consciousness, there were 6 mostly whole cookies left, and some crumbs, which I used the next day as a dessert topping. So I couldn't have brought in six cookies to offer my twelve coworkers, could I? That would have been just mean.

In conclusion, this was a great idea. Many good recipes, many good people. Thank you to the Amazing Organizers, and if you want to participate next year, sign up here for notifications! Happy Cookie-Mas, everyone.

Truth in Advertising, Installment #4

When I first started blogging here, I had a few examples of cooking recipes that turned out looking amazingly similar to the pictures in the books (I like cookbooks with color photos!). I called these "Truth in Advertising" installments, and it was just a fun way of documenting that I could actually achieve what looked like it took 3 photographers, a stylist, and one of those special light umbrella thingies to achieve. Go, me!

A similar thing happened on the trip to Scotland. I had been researching, pining, yearning... you get the picture-- to escape to Scotland since I bought my plane ticket back in March. This left considerable time to browse photos, think about what I wanted to visit with my limited time, etc. Many of those photos ended up as desktop backgrounds (what can I say, I'm a daydreamer!), such as the one to the above- beautiful, non?

Well, it's a picture of Glen Affric. Sorry to the person who took it whom I am not crediting right now- let's just say I did substantial Google Image browsing, which I don't need to repeat.

Anyway, the image must have sunk deeper in my consciousness than I realized, because I went and took the same photo!

The light was very different, we had different-shaped fog hiding the full mountain, and I was a bit further back, but there is that same stand of trees, jutting out into the water. Truth in advertising- it was gorgeous, and I'd go back to explore more in a heartbeat.

The Peaty Bog

Here's another peek from the vacation in Scotland:

Where I Found a Bog, Or a Peat, and almost Lost my Shoe!

I had a million+one ideas about what to spend my time on, but a lot of the decisions came down to travel time. I decided against a long-and-involved train day in favor of a morning outing to Glen Affric (where the above video was taken). And against a day trip to the west coast in favor of going inland to see Stirling Castle and the Wallace Monument. I don't regret either decision.Glen Affric was my favorite part of the trip, and Stirling gave me some good history about the only castle I visited while there!
The peaty bog, as I've taken to calling it, was brilliantly colored in reds and yellows and greens and held a whole lot of moisture. At one point I strayed from the path for a different vantage point and delighted in stepping carefully to see how much water I could push out of the moss with my weight. It was pretty fantastic.

De - Tension

I had never thought of the root or origin of the word detention before this morning. It was a hated word, not worthy of being examined. It represented a feared and loathsome experience in grade school, and so I conveniently forgot it when I left high school.
But I woke up this morning thinking about my exposure to Judaism growing up. It started with the U.S. Open, which 2 people I knew were attending this weekend, who were both Jewish. Then I thought of my first memory of meeting a Jewish person (at a Catholic school in a small California town, this was an event). Then I thought of a friend in high school whose family was Jewish, and what I most remember about her, besides that we shared a penchant for wearing bell-bottoms, was that we got in trouble in Biology for dropping a piece of paper. The ensuing detention was a traumatic event for me, as a goody-two-shoes at the time.
This is usually how my thoughts work, but if you're lost already already, it's ok. My trains of thought often go off-track, and I'm lucky if I can preserve the links before I forget how I got to the end!
Anyway, I started thinking about the word detention, and liked that it sounded like 'De - tension.' I could use some of that right now!
Since I got back from Scotland, it has been a rough two weeks for me. I had to right away take the reins for a big work project from a coworker, we DC-ites had an earthquake, then I got a bad cold (from the air travel I suppose), then we had to prepare for a hurricane, which meant I had to leave on Saturday morning for a Sun-Tues work retreat (in order to make sure my flight would not be cancelled), leaving me with no weekend break, then I had to struggle to stay present with the cold and the altitude, ...
it's all been a bit much. So I am very content to have a 3-day weekend to recover.
I have been able to edit down my Scotland photos, but my first foray into online photo management was disappointing: Flickr is made by Yahoo, but not part of Yahoo, like Google and Gmail are, so there are more hoops to go through. Plus, it segments its accounts into 'free version' and 'paid version,' thus limiting the photos you can put in a 'set,' and send to people. I almost made it- 10 photos and 10 videos did not make the cut. So I'll include a couple of those here, with some explanation. :-)

This first clip was filmed at a free music concert housed in the National Museum of Scotland, located in Edinburgh. There was a pair of talented musicians in to perform some traditional and some contemporary music. Here the lad is enjoying the breakdown of a certain song- I recorded a part right between two choruses, so it may be hard to tell, but can anyone guess the tune?

Glimpse

I just got back from Scotland, folks, and I had a marvelous time. Lots of historical places, new art, intriguing new foods, and most of all, I enjoyed the temperatures! Ok, ok, not just the coolness in August, but also the ability to be out in the country. This is Exhibit A- heather heaven.

More to come as I narrow down 700-odd photos from my 8 days abroad. Slainte!

Camaraderie, born on the Fourth of July

Hey, y'all!

It is still the 4th of July as I post this, and that means I had so much fun I couldn't wait to share it! (Or that I know if I wait, I'll forget to share it)
There was some covert nudging and elbowing going on in June that produced an invitation to a grill-out for the Fourth at my friends' house in Maryland, just outside DC-- but importantly, still accessible on the Metro. Kim and Juan have recently bought a house, and so we predict there will be many more such occasions to gather at. 

First rule of a happy marriage- be able to put up a badminton net together without anyone losing an eye: Check. (Note instructions booklet on the lawn)

First rule of a Fourth of July party- someone has to bring some mini firecrackers. These were the kind that could go on a fancy birthday cake, i.e. just my speed. Thanks to Doug!

First rule of a potluck grill-out- bring plenty of food. Luckily our hosts had a lot of spoons to go with. And the secret to drop-dead easy watermelon juice: a blender!

Oh, and side note: Juan was kept busy because he was very concerned about the flies. Here he is armed with a badminton raquet near the buffet table, awaiting the challenge.
We left in time to escape the drops of rain that threatened (but turned into nothing- just that juicy DC summer air), and as I exited at my metro stop, I could hear the fireworks on the Mall, a 20-minute walk away. As I climbed my infamous stairs, I had my own view of the fireworks- not anything to invite anyone over for, but it was enough for the fireworks gremlin to be sated:

Ah, home. And ready for my 4-day week.

I was in a rush to get to Maryland, but I made quickie versions (and severe alterations) of this, this, and this. Oh and by the way I made some pretty good chocolate chip cookies and Sin Bars for my weekend escapades- more on those later. :) Thanks to Kim and Juan for hosting!
And a bonus thank you for Mom sending me the Off-tastic battery-operated repellent fan. It worked- only 4 bites all evening!

No Charm

Apparently I have no charm, because I do not have a third post in me on this third day back in the swing. I am full up with preparing to host family in my apartment for 10 days, and planning what seems like a dozen trips for myself. In terms of numbers of trips, the work jaunts (4) far outnumber the vacation trips (1), but in terms of effort going into planning them? A little heavy on the vacation end... :-)

Here, then, are two quotations which have jumped out at me in the search for the Scotland itinerary and inspired me to make it through another work day...

#1: Scotland exudes "a liberating feeling of seclusion" from Time Out Scotland.

---that's what I'm looking for!

#2: H.V. Morton writes: "Scotland is the best place in the world to take an appetite."

Yes!

Girl at Work

Here is a short post about food at work. Well, food is always at work while we're noshing on it, but I mean food which I consume at work. Here is Case #1:

Le Grilled Cheese avec Cornichons

'But how,' I can hear you saying, 'does she manage this gourmet fare at the office, with neither grill pan nor George Foreman at the ready?'
Well, dear Reader, I will tell you, I have never used a George Foreman grill, and my grill pan has only been used to spectacular disappointment thus far. We have a toaster over at work, which I bribed into both melting the cheese and crisping the bread slices. And the cornichons were carried in a jar from home to give the meal a 'je ne sais quoi' of specialness. Ah, les francais...

Case #2: Ye Ol' Irish-American Celebration Midday Dinner
As I get older, I am forced to reflect on many things. One of them is how much effort and of which type I feel like putting forth for certain celebrations. This year, while I had planned to trot down to the Dubliner, a fine neighborhood-in-a-stretch establishment, to partake in Irish music and food and frolic for that day when the Irish Snake-Charmer went out of business, I came home and decided that what was really calling my name was the corned beef stewing in my pot for 3 1/2 hours. So I went with that instead. :)
But at least here's the proof that the next day at work I did honor the ancestors. With corned beef, potato, and kale salad.
More to come on butt bread, chocolate fudge espresso cookies, the secret to delicious instant polenta, and springtime. Stay tuned!

And special note for Ginny: thank you soooo much! You turned around my evening :)

A Strange and Wonder-full Place

I have been wonderfully taken up with fun activities and thus not as committed to this 'do whatever, however, whenever, in any order' to get my backed-up entries onto the blog. I have also been up and down with work being crazy-busy then crazy-boring (the occasional lull). I take advantage of the lulls to recover.
Which is to say that I don't use that free time sorting through photos, organizing them in folders, loading them in groups of 5 to the site, and piecing together formatting and text to make the entries work. It can get a wee bit tedious. I have been outdoors! The weather has turned beautiful in the past couple of weeks, and I am enjoying pretending I am back in my home region (yes, once a spoiled Californian, always a spoiled Californian).
I still remember you're here though!

Digging out the Car and Celebrating Chinese New Year with Ting and friends!

My car after Snowpocolypse and the tool with which I intended to dig it out, slowly and with breaks.

What? You can't see the tool? It's a hand dustpan, blue, and most of it is under the snow.

Here was the view once I got inside the car-- cool, huh? Defroster did a fat lot o' nothin.

Thankfully, these guys happened along after only 20 minutes or so. They were coming to fix the building opposite my car in the historical alley-- unfortunately, it had not survived the storm structurally sound, so the city hired a crew to knock down the parts that were hazardous. It still looks like that today.

After that bit of luck, I went out to Costco with a friend, and was invited to a Chinese New Year party that night!

...at which we were enlisted to stuff as many dumplings as our little hands could manage! The traditions of Korean dumpling-making were compared with Chinese, family recipes were traded, and various methods of pinching the wonton wrapper around the filling were analyzed. It was a mostly SAIS-and-spouse crowd, after all.
Oh, and I tried Ting's Szechuan Hot Pot. Bad idea.

New Year's O-SE-CHI dinner

Hmm... I wonder why everything seems to revolve around food here...
This is the story of my New Year's Eve, when I ushered in 2010 to my life.
My friend Jess invited me along to a dinner party at her, and our, friend Eric's apartment. (This is Eric)
They had dreamt up the idea of having an osechi dinner, which means a lot of little Japanese dishes (I think). I tried to think of something to bring, but only came up with some Japanese candy that I found at Borders, of all places. "MADE IN JAPAN" it said, leaping out at me. "Perfect!" I thought.
But I soon discovered that nothing I could have brought would really have countered the awesomeness of the food I was going to consume this night. Jess and Eric both showed their true gourmet skillz.
There was some sort of sea creature, dried out and in strips, to soften and wind around another sea creature... well, I'm still not sure what I was eating, but I know it was really good. Here's the appetizer I helped with:
The entire exercise was made more intimate and exciting by the size of the range in Eric's apartment:
Cozy! :-)

Christmas in Sacramento, Part IV

Before therewere meringues, but now I felt like I needed to show off..... galettes! They go by many times, and it seems that galette is just the one least heard of in my circle of acquaintances. Ah well. It's the country French version, so I like it. A galette is basically pie dough that is tweaked a little bit, topped with a creamy liquid to seal the bottom since there is no pan, and a filled with any combination of savory or sweet fillings you can imagine. Then you fold the dough up the sides to contain the goodness. Here's where I found out about these and got the courage to make the dough from scratch. She's a pro.

(But by the way, this recipe for dough is what I used for this galette, but it wasn't as easy to work with as the all-butter one above. It was still delicious though!)

Here's the second concocion: a fritatta with sundried tomatoes and feta and 'whatever else,' courtesy of ... I don't remember. I thought it was in my Google Reader queue, but apparently not. I riffed on someone else's idea anyway.

Seriously.