30 weeks!! Can you believe it?! It has flown by so fast and I can't believe there are only 10 weeks to go.

The little guy is about 15.5 inches long now, and weighs almost 3 pounds. He has been kicking up a storm and has started to wake his mommy up at night with some well placed jabs to the ribs. With all the moving around its been much easier for other people to catch him in action. He put on quite a little performance for Aunt Anna on monday as well as his great grandma.

The nursery is finally coming together and I can't help myself from just sitting in there sometimes and imagining what it will be like to see the baby sleeping in his crib. Speaking of which, we put up the crib last week and now I'm working on hanging art on the walls. I also got a couple shipments of Amy Butler fabric last week so the sewing projects are also in full swing.

You may have noticed that the belly photos have been neglected as of late (yikes its been 6 weeks!). There are lots of excuses I could give, but mostly we've just been so wrapped up in other things and keep forgetting. However, Tim did manage to get some fun shots of the belly on our apple and peach picking trip over the weekend. I love the close up of my favorite red striped dress and the box of peaches.

We visited Arthur's Orchard which specialises in apples and maple syrup. Arthur's has a "U-pik" area in between maple trees and corn fields where you can pick your own apples in a quiet country environment. The rows of trees are all labelled with the different varieties of apples that are offered by Arthur's Orchard.

Then you can visit the cafe and shop, pick up a homemade soup or a sandwich and then take a slice of great freshly made pie. When we were there,  three soups and two kinds of sandwiches were available. Of course, as the sandwiches are freshly made, you can choose what you'd like on them.

The huge lawn is a wonderful place to sit and relax in beautiful surroundings whilst the kids play in the play area.  There is a pretty pond with a small covered walkway from the ample car park to the cafe and lawn. All in all it's a great afternoon out on the Route de la Pomme and a very child-friendly one too!

Vergers Arthur's Orchard

2157 Route 202

Rockburn

J0S 1A0

Arthur's Orchard will welcome you from the beginning of September through till the end of August.

Here's a quick note to share some happy news. My sister got engaged Sunday! Her new fiance, Cole took her out to dinner at the Forest Park Boathouse and proposed in a row boat near the Grand Basin. She said everything about his proposal was perfect and they are both very excited and happy.

We got to celebrate with they newly engaged couple Monday on a road trip out to a local apple orchard. Tim took the opportunity to snap some shots of that gorgeous ring and the happy pair.

Congrats Anna and Cole!

Unlike poetry, though, cooking is an investment.  I could be inspired and rip a poem draft in a few minutes, put it in my book and save it for further investigation later. You can't do that with cooking. This is where the term half-baked comes from: you have to start, and see it through to the last dish in the sink that needs to be washed otherwise, disaster. This is customarily nothing shorter than an hour, if it's something simple. And for me, it's hardly ever something simple. I'm not sure I know the meaning of something simple.

So when I finally find the time to cook, I not only don't do something simple, I tend to pile on the extravagance. This resulted in more homemade goat cheese from Ali Oop, no sugar added cinnamon apple sauce, and an apple fucking pie. All in one night.

So, as you know from my other post, the apartment has been in disarray. The leakage issue lasted until this past Thursday when the final patchwork and repainting was done. During the leakage clean-up phase (about one and a half weeks) we weren't able to clean, I was living off of the chair and drying rack where all my worldly belongings rest, and the electrician and painter were making paint and spackle and sanding dust. Needless to say , the place was a wreck and we were getting depressed about it. We just moved in two months ago and still haven't been able to feel at home. Between the two of us we barely had time to hang out with one another, never mind hang our pictures and settle in.

So I decided, once they were done, I would not only put my stuff back in the closet, but I would also clean the house top to bottom and cook. Because what better to make you feel at home than filling the house with apple pie smell? Nothing really (it still smells like pie, too). And I had a lot of apples since L and I went apple picking last Sunday.

So, starting at about 6:45 when I returned from feeding the animals and milking the goat up at the farm, I:

• Did the laundry
• Vacuumed the floors
• Dusted the blinds
• Cleaned the litter
• Put my crap back in the closet
• Cleaned the kitchen
• Cleaned the bathroom

Then, and only then, did I feel comfortable enough to start cooking (it's a sickness). By now it was already 9 pm. So, I got my laptop and the next disc of the Smallville Season 2 DVD box set and while it was playing I got started with the goat cheese. While that was heating to the pasteurizing 185 magrees, I pulled up a chair and started peeling apples. I like Tom Welling. By about 10pm, I had that pie in the oven and the house started singing with the homey sensations of Christmas and Thanksgiving.

L came home and joined me in the kitchen while the things cooked. I left the sugar out of the applesauce so L could eat it, but I certainly didn't leave it out of the pie! I used Macintosh apples because I am an East Coast girl, and while this made the pie extra tasty, Macs without sugar in applesauce are not as delicious as when you use Gravensteins. It was good, but the big G's which are ubiquitous in Northern Calif are a super sweet apple that makes an especially great no-sugar added sauce.

So, to keep our happy happy joy joy feelings about our apartment going, we went to IKEA to get some things. of course, the two key items we wanted were oversold, but unlike most of my IKEA experiences we did come away with some things! For one, a sofa table and a cute little round orange rug which is allowing us rethink the living room arrangement to maximize comfort. It's not quite right yet, but it is definitely closer.

Now, to hang pictures!!!

Needless to say, we are excited. So, instead of just heading out in the car without a destination, which can cause hunger and irritability, I went to Google to find mini destinations - stops, if you will - along our looping route through the beautiful Napa and Sonoma counties. And what I found when I got to Google is that they have altered their Google maps so that now, you can enter a string of directions, a continuous route and it will keep mapping it for you! I am so in love with it I can hardly speak. So here are our desination points:

Dean and Deluca in St. Helena. I know it's a chain, but it's still a loverly specialty store that has delicious deli snacks we'll pack up and take along on our drive. Plus, driving there is gorgeous. Wineries (fields of grapes), even if you don't drink, truly are a thing of beauty.

Then we'll head to the Matos Cheese Factory in Sebastopol to pick up some homemade local St. George and see the cows.

After that, it's apple pickin' also in Sebastopol if the weather's not too hot. Our apples are all ready here in California. In Sebastopol, it is mostly Gravensteins. Up at the farm, we have a grafted apple tree with five varieties on the same tree. The galas are crisp an delicious. I'll be eating two today! But there's not enough on that tree for pie and sauce, and of course, you can't climb it!

Then we'll go to Bodega Bay and sit down and stare at the icy waters! You totally can't swim - it's about 50 magrees - but you can touch your toes in it and feel happy!

Finally, we'll head to Target in San Raphael to get plastic storage bins for all my belongings. Why you ask? Because the upstairs neighbor (who moved out yesterday) decided to take a shower in her claw foot tub and allow about four gallons of shower water to run on the floor, which gravity then pulled down through her floor - my ceiling - and deposited on top of every piece of clothing I own. I am now afeared of putting anything in that closet should an upstairs neighbor be dumb enough to put the shower curtain on the OUTSIDE of the claw foot tub, rather than in (think about it) and ruin my shit yet again.

Also in that closet: sleeping bag, photos, suitcases, 70% of all worldly possessions. The photos, thank God, made it out unscathed. The suitcase, called "Star Fifty" was dead anyway and this helped me throw it out, so that was also good. Bad was: $90 dry cleaning bill for clothes, $12 laundering bill, and a week of a rickety fan blowing at the wall to dry it out before they repaint. Good again: landlord paying dry cleaning bill and idiotproofing resealing upstairs floor/base board. Extra good: I'm getting a light in the hallway, which did not have a light before, which made it difficult to get my clothes out of the dark closet (and also made the closet feel creepy). Bonus!

We deserve a day trip! Don't you think?

Montclair Honeybee Fest
Originally uploaded by bloomfieldguy

Last night, we were suprised to hear the sound of jazz music coming through our front window, at first thinking our neighbor might be having a party, then realizing it was LIVE music from a concert going on in Watsessing Park. According to the Essex County website, it was the Carrie Jackson Quartet, performing as part of the 2008 Essex County Free SummerMusic Concert Series, which I only know because I Googled it this morning out of curiosity.

Last month's Dionne Warwick concert in Brookdale Park, which I first heard about the night of while having dinner at Vinnie's, was part of the same series and while I wouldn't have attended that one, it was a little disappointing to find out about last night's as it was happening because we would have probably shaken the Sandy Hook sand out of our Neat Sheet, grabbed a couple of chairs and walked over to check it out. I don't recall seeing any promotion for the concert series in The Star-Ledger (which I pick up sporadically), or Bloomfield Life (which I pick up weekly), or Baristanet (which I check daily), or even a flyer stapled to a telephone pole somewhere between the Park and the train station, but maybe I just missed it?

Thanks to Baristanet, I did find out about the Honeybee Fest this past weekend in Montclair and we swung by on our way out to Alstede Farm to check it out as a result. A nice random diversion -- the Honeybee Fest, that is; other than the nice weather, Alstede Farm was a bust, paling in comparison to Maskers and Lawrence Farm Orchards -- we got a glimpse of Walnut Street and the Farmer's Market (much bigger than Bloomfield's effort), as well as random areas of Montclair and West Orange.

Sadly, there doesn't seem to be much going on in Bloomfield beyond free movies at the Library, the weekly Cruise Night on Broad Street, and some random events at Piano's that dominate the "events" section of Bloomfield Life. I took a walk through the Center after work one day last week, after grabbing a margarita and some chorizo at Señorita's (yum!), and was left feeling a little depressed about the area. Though I'd seen it a dozen times, it hadn't really registered that Heartbreakers was go-go club situated so prominently on Bloomfield Avenue, and that half the storefronts on Broad Street were either empty or occupied by businesses whose long-term prospects seem shaky at best.

The area closest to the train station is even worse, with the majority of storefronts empty and abandoned, leaving Steven Mohn Furniture and Señorita's looking like random roses blooming in the middle of a ghost town.

The new comic book store, The Comic Book Market, on Washington looks nice but the first time I went in there I was extremely disappointed in their rather limited and somewhat random selection of books. That they close at 7pm doesn't help much, either, and has delayed my decision to switch from Midtown Comics which is no longer convenient for me, despite my preference to support a local business.

I've been intrigued for a while now by the Multi-Media Arts Center, but despite plans to open in the Spring, their website still says "Coming Soon" and, walking or driving by, it's a bit of a sore thumb on a broken hand at the moment.

Hopefully the latest development plan for the Center comes together quickly and is successful.

Outside of Bloomfield, there's a couple of exciting events tonight and tomorrow, in Montclair and Newark, as two very talented friends of mine will be performing their work at Cha Ma Gu Dao (featured recently in NJ Monthly) and NJPAC, respectively. Rich Villar will be performing his excellent, thought-provoking and often humorous poetry at the former, while songstress Maya Azucena will be dazzling the outdoor crowd with a set at the latter. Both are highly recommended.

We both work a lot of jobs to pay bills because 1) there are a lot of folks depending on us and 2) we are afraid of not being able to keep up. This all started coming up because, while we are working these jobs and all these hours, life is passing us by, the things we love and want to do are whipping by while we're inside, working. And it wears on you, and makes you feel bad, and you want to get out of the cycle and change, but how? How do you make that leap and what if, God, what if something happens and you end up broke and lose everything and are on the street???

So you end up slumped over at your desk again, just feeling sad about the whole thing. Fear is very debilitating. It really messes with your psyche. So, in order to allay some of those fears of being left "out on the street", you open a savings account, and ferret away as much as humanly possible for "the big one."

And then you open another "secret" savings account, separate from the other one, just in case the other one ends up not being enough. So there you are, saving the savings for the "what if" the "in case" the "you never know" but then, there's never a big enough "what if" to get us to use it because when the "what if" comes, we always say "but what if there's some bigger, worse what if!" So now you have two savings accounts you never use, that are just sitting there becoming less and less valuable as the US dollar dives into the abyss.

And you know what, that's just not living life. Because the biggest what if of all is: will we still be here tomorrow? No one ever really knows. And that's not to say we should go around acting like heathens and ruffians because what the fuck there's no tomorrow. But it does mean we should seize the day. These "what ifs" are all a creation of modern day society. Sure, planning is important, but there is a fine line - a very, very fine line - between planning and plain old stockpiling.

Our society instills great fears in us, and promises to never take care of us if we are sick, or old, or want an education, and so, we stockpile until such time as we are sick, or old, or want and education. If you think about it, this very stockpiling mentality (working like a dog for too many hours in too many days) is the very thing that makes us old, and makes us sick. Yet we stay stuck in that cycle, so hard to get out; we need to eat, after all.

And it is so true. Life is expensive and getting ever more expensive. Society isn't going to change so how can we?

So when you finally hit this moment, the top of the circle where the bicycle rests just before peeling down the side again and back up to the top in all it viciousness, just think of apples. This is what I said to my friend yesterday and it is what I will say now: whenever you feel afraid, just think of apples.

Walking out to the orchard through the thick fall grass; the sweet smell of rotted apple flesh and greenery; the cool air as crisp as that first bite of apple; the pop of your teeth through the tight skin and the cracking off of the first piece; suck the sour through to sweet; let your taste buds ease into the unfamiliar flavor, but not so unfamiliar - there, just like last year and yet, different. Maybe it was more rain, or more sun, or better bees...climbing halfway up the tree and reaching your arm farther than you thought it could reach - for one second you think you'll fall, or throw out your back but you are so close - so close, your fingers brushing the shiny rosy apple bottom, then the lurch and - got it. Deep breath, joy breath. Toss it down to the bag and while you're up there, one more to eat, the crunch and crunch until your swollen belly aches with sugar. Two fat bushels home for cider, for pies; two fat bushels just to have them in bowls around the house; two fat bushels of apples, apples, reminding you of the harvest of apples. One cycle that is never, ever vicious.

John, Marc, Lauren and I went apple picking last Fall. I canned a bunch of apple sauce and we still had a ton left over. Thankfully apples keep forever!

DSC01157, originally uploaded by moresnow82.

One of my absolute favorite things to do in the fall is go apple picking with my lady. We've been going to Hicks Orchard (www.hicksorchard.com) in Granville NY for the past couple years now and it's really the place to go.

Nothing like picking apples and looking over to the see the beautiful Green Mountains of Vermont smiling back at you.

Enjoy the fall before it's gone.

Apple picking is a fun thing to do during fall season. It's a great time for families to spend quality time together. Going to the orchard gives a wonderful experience of harvesting fresh apples, learning the varieties of apples, and enjoying the beautiful autumn landscape. Oh, there are some orchards that offer different activities and free tasting of yummy apple pies, apple cider and apple sauce.

It's been three years since I went apple picking in Hollis, NH with my friend A (not her real initial), and I haven't picked any apples since then. The academic year is a busy time, and fall semester is my busy season, time for me to teach extra classes to replenish the savings I spent over an under-employed summer. Just as the agricultural year follows its own ebb and flow, so does the academic one: fall is harvest time for farmers and paper-grading time for professors. If you're a farmer, professor, or friend of a farmer or professor, you quickly learn to beware the busy season.

While I was at the Providence Zen Center on Saturday, I took a quick stroll through their apple orchard. It's been years since anyone's tended the trees there, and nobody picks them come October. Instead, the apples are worm-eaten and grow increasingly wizened and frost-bitten as they hang and then drop in benign neglect.

A conscientious farmer would be saddened to see fruitful food going to waste, as Zen Master Soeng Hyang (aka Bobbie Rhodes) was when I ran into her after picking pictures, not apples, from these trees. Bobbie has been a nurse since 1969, the year I was born; she has more than a lifetime's worth of lessons gleaned from her years as a hospice nurse tending souls facing their own bittersweet harvest. If you've spent a lifetime helping people at the end of theirs, you grow accustomed, I assume, to the sight of wasted promise. It's never easy, I think, to see death, decay, and denied dreams. How many of the patients Bobbie has cared for over the years have felt too late the regret of their own neglected orchards?

In my three-years-ago post, I wrote of the weary, guilt-tinged sorrow voiced in "After Apple Picking," one of my favorite Robert Frost poems. "Frost’s speaker describes apple picking as work, not leisure," I noted, "and there’s more than a hint of guilt tinging his words as he describes the apples he’s failed to pick and bushels he’s failed to fill." When Zen Master Soeng Hyang lamented the apples that are going to waste in the Providence Zen Center's long-neglected orchard, she was echoing the sentiment of Frost's speaker, as I was when I wrote about the poem three years ago. It's a shame, I thought then, to leave things undone: surely if I or others were more in control of our lives, our schedules, or our days, we wouldn't let a single apple, a single opportunity, or a single second go to waste. Given the abundance of nature and the seeming fecundity of time, we'd squeeze every drop of succulence from sweet-soaked days.

And yet... Can anything go to waste in a world where worms live, too? I've never seen deer nibbling apples from these human-neglected trees--perhaps the apples themselves are bitter, not sweet--but then again there aren't years' worth of apples piled beneath them. Some sentient creatures--not humans, for sure, but an invisible band of someones--are eating these apples, or perhaps they're only contributing to the health of their parent trees through their own demise and decay. These apples aren't, in a word, being wasted even if human hands aren't picking, eating, or preserving them, savoring their sweetness in the form of pies, applesauce, or cider.

These days I'm considering the merit of letting an occasional apple drop. Worms are hungry, too, as are deer and other foragers; even microbes, mites, and other agents of decay deserve an occasional taste of tart. When you're an overworked farmer or paper-plagued professor, you ultimately realize you can't do everything. There are too many apples to pick, too many bushels to fill, too many papers to grade, and too many patients looking for patience. The secret to surviving an overloaded semester, I'm learning, is to give up on catching up. Once you realize there are more apples in the Universe than you have the hands and energy to pick, you concentrate all your attention on the apple in your hand.

Tonight, I have a half-dozen paper piles, all of them demanding attention, but the realist in me knows losing sleep over paper is the most wasteful choice of all. Instead of apple picking, these days I'm doing all I can to tend to classes, students, and my own fragile soul. What benefit are brimming bushels if you reach harvest's end with a life that's been wasted?

This past Sunday, J., our friend R. and I woke up at seven in the morning to have possibly the most wholesome day of all time — we went apple picking and antique hunting in upstate New York with our friend G.

We rode the train to 168th and Broadway, where G. picked us up in her car. We didn't stop until we reached the farm, which was about an hour's drive from Upper Manhattan.

What this photo of a rusty bus doesn't show is that there is were millions of children running around. It was like a tots' New Year's Eve in Times Square, except out in the country with daylight and apple trees and not a Sbarro in sight. So many littl'uns! If you've ever thought slapstick was dead, watch a bunch of five- and unders in an apple orchard. The form is alive and well, from dropped bushels to kids — literally — eating it.

Here's some apple porn. Green and red: take your pick.

When us young people pick apples, we get rowdy. Totally delinquent. By that I mean we shot several small films — R. with his 8mm camera, pictured above — of apple jugglin', apple kickin' and of R., the tallest of us, eatin' apples straight off of the tree like a giraffe. None of those will be posted here. What I will post is a picture of G. holding an apple.

Doesn't she have beautiful hands? She should. (She moonlights as a hand model.)

When the bushel above was full, we left the farm and drove to the Rhinebeck Fairgrounds, where we picnicked and gawped at unaffordable antiques. Then we drove to a barn sale, where scythes were on sale for five dollars apiece. I wanted one, but I have a policy about buying objects that are taller than me and not furniture — I don't buy them.

G bought these adorable vintage Ravensburger trucks:

That evening, we made applesauce using a recipe in this month's Martha Stewart Living. It calls for roasting the apples before pureeing them, a step that brings every flavor imaginable in a fresh apple to richly textured heights.

It took me a few weeks to track down a hard copy of the recipe so I could transcribe it, but here it is, from the October issue of Martha Stewart Living:

Roasted Applesauce
Ingredients
1/4 cup water
6 tablespoons packed light-brown sugar
1 teaspoon fresh lemon juice
Pinch of coarse salt
2 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into small pieces
3 pounds small assorted apples, such as Gala, McIntosh, or Fuji (about 10)
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
Pinch of freshly grated nutmeg
Pinch of ground cloves

Directions
Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Combine water, sugar, lemon juice, and salt in a 9-by-13-inch baking dish. Scatter butter pieces over mixture, and top with apples. Roast until apples are very soft, 30 to 40 minutes. Working in batches, pass apple mixture through the medium disk of a food mill and into a bowl. Stir in spices. Serve warm, at room temperature, or chilled. Applesauce can be refrigerated in an airtight container for up to 5 days. Makes 4 cups.

We then decided to spend the evening at Julius Meinl sipping tea and eating crepes. This was our second visit. You see, my honey has an infatuation with tea and after I told him that we should try this place out (with the recommendation of my good friend BLOWESHA) I have not been able to keep him away from it. I just love that place, or is it just because I’m with the guy I care about?

Yesterday, I was speaking to Blowesha on the phone and she was telling me about what a great time she had in Wisconsin!

(Ok, let me rewind a bit. My honey and I made plans with Blowesha and her honey to go apple picking in Wisconsin. The entire drive it was pouring down rain and seemed like terrible conditions to be in an orchard picking apples in the MUD. So, my honey and I decided to cancel and spend the day at Gurnee Mills.)

She was telling me how great it was and everything they did. I then told her about the great time I had spending with my honey to which Blowesha replied, “I guess it doesn’t matter what you are doing as long as you are doing it with the person you love.” That’s so true. I always have such a great time with him no matter what we do. I had almost forgotten how great this feeling is until he came into my life. Sigh--

Best Shot Monday

Johnson's Orchard, Hancock County, Maine

I'm back! What a great week we had in Maine and Vermont, with wonderful visits with friends and family, mostly wonderful weather, unbelievably perfect foliage and almost perfectly wonderful boys. Oh, and I had more than enough fleece. And I LOVED my guest bloggers, weren't they wonderful? I have some rereading and commenting to do for sure. Thank you, wonderful blogsitters!

But Internets, I missed you so! Can't wait to check in on all of you, I see blog entry after blog entry popping up in my Google reader, and I need to spend some time chasing you like wayward chickens. While doing laundry and catching up at work and going to parent-teacher conferences and figuring out what we will eat for dinner and other decidedly NON-VACATION-LIKE activities. Sigh.

So, the stories and photos will have to wait for another day, but I will leave you with a question.

Are Frog & Toad actually supposed to be a gay couple in the way that Ernie and Bert expand the Sesame Street definition of diversity with their oft-discussed sexual orientation? Or did I just spend way too much time in the car last week listening to kids-books-on-tape narrative like this: "Frog and Toad are friends. They spend lots of time together doing things that make them happy. They like to bake cookies, keep a clean house and walk in the woods together."

Just wondering. And Internet, I figured you would know.

Click here for more Best Shot Monday photos!

Also- I got my and Jessie's blogger bingo buttons in the mail! YAY! Here's an action shot:

Before those things happened Ben and I had a great day apple picking in New Hampshire and going to a Harvest Festival in York, Maine. It was so much fun! I also talked to some fellow knitters in Maine. Most of them were York locals. There were tons of gorgeous sweaters there! I made this fun orange hat a few years back, and it always resurfaces in October. Actually, it always seems to come apple picking with me.

It's sooo orange and sooo comfortable. It was the second hat I ever made, and it's all irish moss stitch with a 2 x 2 rib on the rim. It is peruvian wool in pumpkin I think.

GO RED SOX!

We got the farm and I hopped in my wagon to go off into the apple orchard.

Of course we picked a few apples...

and I couldn't help but eat some along the way!  I also couldn't resist feeding some to Dad too.

I wandered around the orchard a little.

And stumbled into a pumpkin patch!

There were sooo many pumpkins at the farm that they put them in a huge pile!

Mom and I posed for a picture on the stone steps...

Here are more apple picking listings on About.com, as well as places for pumpkin picking.

It was a beautiful day and lots of apple were picked and they are really tasty this year. I have already made apple sauce and muffins, next I think a pie needs to be made...Mmmm...maybe apple butter too.

If you like the looks of Skippy on his adventure, you can find his brother Chippy in my shop, along with a few other squirrels. They would all love someone to give them a home and take them on adventures.

Even though summer has overstayed its welcome this year, I'm determined to enjoy fall. I want to carve pumpkins, ooh and aah at the changing leaves, and wear cozy sweaters.

So, in pursuit of some autumnal fun, we jumped in a car and drove out to the Hudson Valley for some apple and pumpkin picking on Saturday. We wound up at Prospect Hill Orchards in Milton, and despite the 90-degree heat came away with an impressive haul of apples and one perfect pumpkin. Ah, Fall. (Sort of).

The next day I decided to make an apple pie. Now, I have never considered myself a baker. My futile attempts to make pie crust from scratch have always ended with tears, horrible swearing, and banging of rolling pins against the counter. (Embarrassingly I seem to do this a lot). I resolved that this time the experience would be a peaceful one. No pie-related outbursts allowed!

I turned to Cook's Illustrated magazine, which had arrived last week with recipes for Apple-Cranberry Pie and Foolproof Pie Dough.  The pie sounded great, but I hesitated after paging through the recipes. I'm not a huge fan of Cook's. Their recipes are generally reliable, yet tend to be exhausting and time-consuming. And I just cannot stand Chris Kimball's hokey letter at the beginning of each issue. But the foolproof aspect proved too attractive in the end, and I dove into the realm of flour and butter, and an interesting key ingredient: vodka!

The pie took me about four hours to make, from start to finish. Recipe note: If you decide to use Cook's dough recipe, make sure to generously flour your work surface, and don't roll the dough out too thin. I rolled it paper-thin the first time, and I couldn't lift it off the work surface into the pie plate. I had to start all over again.

And look! Isn't it beautiful? OK, I may be exaggerating a bit, but I am so proud of this pie. The crust was both buttery and flaky, the most important characteristics of a pie crust. The sweet apples and the tart cranberries combined beautifully, one never overwhelming the other. (I didn't use all of the cranberry mixture prescribed by the recipe; it seemed like too much to me.) And, most important, no outbursts!

So Summer, linger as long as you like with your heat and humidity. Autumn will be here soon enough. And I'll peacefully make more pies to prove it.

(Unfortunately I cannot link directly to the recipes on the Cook's Illustrated website; I think you have to be a member of the website to see them.)

I went out with Sam (the GF) this weekend to get away from the crowds of the city to go hang out with a different kind of crowd: tons of little kids running around climbing trees and picking apples.

I'm pretty sure that we were the only people there without any kids, but it was still pretty fun and I learned something new. I kick ASS at picking apples. Many people were afraid of climbing that high and getting all the good apples at the top, but not me. I picked the HELL out of those things! I am even second guessing my career path after this weekend, but that is a different discussion.

So here are some pics of me making generally stupid expressions for the camera. Oh, and Sam looking generally cute too.

I SO wish that I was 10 years old again so I could play king of the mountain and push those little punks off of the hay pile... (Un)fortunately Sam has better judgment than I do and talked me out of it. Still looked like fun...