October 2009 Archives

Vacation

Jen and Jordi have been envious of some of their friends who have nice DSLR cameras. Josie's poor pixels were somehow not all they could be. While a new DSLR is on their holiday wish list, Jen borrowed a nice Canon and was snapping some pics yesterday.

It is certainly true that a bigger lens and bigger sensor makes for better pictures. That makes gathering light so much easier with a never-sit-still Josie. But still I say it is the photo subject that counts most.

On a side note, you may notice the site's new "piebee" image. The bee portion of the original image was borrowed from some now forgotten place on the web. A few weeks ago, an honest bee was spied in the back yard. I macro-stalked the busy one as it buzzed around some flowers behind our bedroom. One of the lucky shots, photoshopped and paired with an old blueberry pie photo, is the result. I may have to tweak some other style elements of the site to match the pink behind the bee.

A month or two back, our DVR caught Alton Brown's Good Eats episode from 2008: Super Apple Pie. Last Sunday, I got around to making an apple pie and incorporated a few of the ideas from that show.

The major novelty was to use grains of paradise in the recipe. Grains of paradise is a spice not typically found in the local supermarket. Indeed, I didn't find it at Wholefoods or online at Penzys. A web search, of course, did find The Spice House, and they lured me into ordering a spice grinder (see photo) as well.

Alton also touted using apple jack as a replacement for the half dozen tablespoons of water that go into making the dough for the crust. There was less medicinal odor compared to the vodka I had tried back in April. But rolling out the dough was a chore and the end result wasn't noticeably superior. Perhaps I didn't leave the dough sit long enough to allow the gluten proteins to develop.

Grains of paradise is described as peppery. It is a nice taste that lets the apple flavors come to the fore. Jen was underwhelmed, I will attribute that to the absence of the traditional cinnamon and nutmeg. Still, the pie did not last long. And although Josey was pleased with the pie, she really likes the accompanying vanilla ice cream!

Other recommendations from the TV show had to do with paraphernalia. We have a cheap apple combination slicer and corer of forgotten provenance. It cuts an apple into eight wedges. It is thought thinner wedges lead to the ideal size, so I have been looking at twelve wedge slicers. That should go on my holiday gift list. When searching on Amazon, they like to offer up likely shopping combinations; suggested were pie birds, grains of paradise, and removable bottom tart pans. All of which appeared on Good Eats. Methinks there were a lot of folks watching that show.

As for pie birds, I had one at the old house, but haven't seen it since moving. Too much stuff!

The weekday nights last week were crazy busy. Here is a quick summary of the week, I have a few more things to post here over the next day or so, so let's get something online and move on.

Karen and I started Monday with our first Beginning Spanish adult ed class at the high school. Our teacher, Penelope, tells us this is her first time teaching adults. I think this is going to work out fine, as we are just big kids after all, right?

Tuesday I joined folks at work for a release party, celebrating the latest rev of one of our products. Brews and burgers and shooting (very poorly) some pool.

Jen and Jordi had given Karen the very nice birthday gift of tickets to see Steve Martin and the Steep Canyon Rangers. Yes, that Steve Martin is a big blue grass music fan and accomplished banjo man. The show was advertised as an evening of banjo and blue grass music and that's what we got. It was a good time!

Most Thursday nights are basket ball nights for me, but this week was an off week from hoops as the whole school was taken over for parent-teacher's night.

Finally on Friday, our entry in the Buda Grandmasters club league, Minimum Time Aloft, had our first win (asterisked, as we were short on roster players and had to pull in a few ringers). As a "club" team, we don't get new t-shirts from Buda. I have, however, just updated my t-shirt page with the summer league threads.