Pi Day 2008

We celebrated Pi Day 2008 (3/14, in case you forgot) with a homemade pizza (using this recipe for the crust and adding spices to spaghetti sauce for the sauce--I'm still not satisfied with this method, so if anyone has a good pizza sauce recipe, we'd love to learn it from you!)

and what we have decided to call "Raindrops on Roses and Whiskers on Kittens Pie." This name is Ryan's fault--he asked me what kind of pie I was making and I called it "Rebekah's Favorite Things Pie," so he started singing. Realizing that it does not contain all of my favorite things, we went with just the first two in the song. The pie is based on some Kraft Food and Family recipes, but I, of course, did not actually follow them (I think it's an attention span issue--you have to pay so much more attention to follow a recipe than to just go with your general idea of the recipe). Instead, I made an Oreo crust, melted some chocolate chips and put a very thin layer of melted chocolate in the bottom of the crust, then mixed about 4 oz. of cream cheese with 2 Tbsp of sugar, folded into that mixture somewhere between 1/2 cup and 1 cup of whipped cream (real whipped cream--as in, made from whipping cream; no sugar) and then stirred in the rest of the melted chocolate chips (probably melted about 1/3 cup chocolate chips overall) and spread that on top of the melted chocolate in the cooled Oreo crust. I put the pie-in-progress in the refrigerator. While the bottom layer was setting a bit, I mixed 1/2 cup (about) creamy peanut butter with 2-2.5 cups of milk, then beat in two vanilla pudding mixes for 1-2 minutes and let it sit for about 5 minutes. For the final step, I poured the peanut butter pudding on top of the rest of the pie and adorned it with a chocolate chip π.

It was pretty good, but next time I would only use one pudding mix and 1 cup of milk and add some whipped cream to the pudding. We froze two pieces of it and liked it much better that way.

Domesticity Abounded

We had a domestic flurry this past weekend--on Sunday, I made homemade pizza using this recipe for the crust. The recipe is pretty annoying to read, and I didn't feel like the dough really superior to any other dough that I've ever made, so I'm not necessarily recommending it. It did set the smoke alarm off, however, since I was preheating the oven with the baking stone in it at 450 degrees, which caused a bit of smoke. Ryan waved stuff in front of the smoke detector and it stopped quickly. For toppings, we had cheese (of course), Italian sausage, onion, green pepper, and tomatoes. Oh, and I broke the rolling pin when I was rolling out the dough. While I was making the pizza, Ryan was busy designing a skirt for me based on the one skirt I wear all the time (all the time being the 3-4 times a year that I bother to wear a skirt), thereby taking part in the domestic flurry. After we ate, I helped (not much) him cut out the pieces. When we were done cutting, we'd had enough domesticity for a while, so we went to play tennis (we are both terrible!).

On Monday afternoon, I decided to sew my skirt together. However, my sewing machine hates me and has tension issues whenever I use it. Ryan has no problems with it, however, so he took over when I got frustrated (which was basically right away. I think the sewing machine likes him better because he's a boy and the machine is blue. My sister has a pink machine that has no problem with her--and she doesn't even like pink--not that I do either...). I needed to do something useful, so I went downstairs to make key lime pie. Now, if you're like me, you look at that recipe and think, "Oh, a pie that has only 4 ingredients in the filling and three in the crust. This will be fast!" There, my dear reader, you would be wrong. Well, the crust is fast, but key limes are tiny things with many seeds that do not produce much juice. "But you only need a half cup of key lime juice," you say? Ah, but a half cup of key lime juice took me at least half an hour (at least!) and at least 20 key limes (good thing they're so light and were only about $1.29/lb). And then there's the lime zest. Yes, you only need two teaspoons (I checked that twice before I started just to make sure it said "teaspoons" and not "tablespoons" and then, once again, thought, "Oh, this will be fast"). I grated almost all the peels from the limes that I used for the juice before I had two very scant teaspoons and declared myself done. I now understand why some people have juicers (I was cutting the limes into quarters and squeezing them--it's easier if you cut them the opposite way that I normally do--that's a good description, isn't it? Okay, the opposite way of the little membranes inside)...if I were to make this pie again, I might actually invest in one...or at least borrow one. I'm not sure if a zester would be that helpful having never used one myself, but perhaps zesting before squeezing would be more effective (I didn't want to do that when sqeezing by hand because I was afraid that the weakened rind would not get the juice out as effectively). Now, having complained about the work, I would like to say that key limes are actually quite juicy; it's just that juicy when you're the size of a small bouncy ball does not quickly translate to a half cup of juice. Overall, the pie is good, and we are still enjoying it with real whipped cream (whipping cream was on sale and we're mad at Albertsons for no longer selling the cheap brand of the squirty kind, so I bought and whipped real whipping cream). The skirt is almost all done (I sewed a little bit on it after the machine got warmed up, but Ryan did most of it). Our domesticity has ended, however, seeing as it is 105 degrees outside and 81 degrees downstairs in our house. We're living on fruit, salad, and cheese and crackers these days (okay, it was a little less hot yesterday--like, 3 degrees--so I made a "pizza burrito" for lunch using a sundried tomato and basil tortilla and the toaster over and Ryan made a pork stir fry) or anything we can grill--we practically don't have to turn the grill on to cook things!

Pi Day

 

No, we didn't give up eating for Lent; nor did we give up blogging. We just keep forgetting. Also, my computer kept shutting down after 20 minutes or so because it was overheating, so running Picasa was out of the question. I now have a new laptop, but I'm not promising that will mean more regular posting. We'll see. Anyway, as everyone should remember, Wednesday (3/14), was Pi Day, so we had an apple pie. I must say that I am a big fan of the refrigerated roll-out pie crusts that are being sold these days--very easy! Possibly a bit lazy, but when you're peeling and slicing 9-10 apples, a faster crust is much appreciated.

In other Pi Day news, it appears that my email to bluemountain.com last year about the inaccuracy of their definition of "transcendental number" on one of their Pi Day e-cards did not actually inspire them to change it--despite their reply that they were terribly embarassed and would fix it as soon as possible, a reply that I received before the end of March last year. I meant to write to them again this year before Pi Day to remind them to fix their "educational" blurb at the bottom, but I forgot. Thus, the lie continues to be perpetuated by the poor unsuspecting people out there who just want to wish their friends and family a happy Pi Day.

This entry is not very focused on food. Oh, well.

Happy Pi Day!

As I'm sure you're all aware, today is Pi Day. So, instead of being a good, productive student, I decided I needed to make a pie. And I decided that I needed to share that pie with all of you, so as I wait for inspiration (and I mean that in the Biblical sense) on my homework (yes, Rachel, it's analysis homework), I'm posting this picture. This is a chocolate-peanut butter pudding pie (please notice the beautiful teapot in the background--Ryan thought I was silly to want a teapot, but he has become a big fan--there's something much more soothing about a whistle informing you that your water is hot than there is about four obnoxious microwave beeps--or is it three?). I thought pudding pie would be the fastest method of making my own pie--of course, I forgot about the fact that the crust has to bake, so the process was several hours long since it also had to cool, but oh, well. I was going to buy a pre-made crust, but Oreo crusts were $1.99 at Safeway and we had a few Oreos (the peanut butter stuffed ones--Ryan's new favorite indulgence) at home, so I decided to use those. Of course, I had to check whether Oreos were on sale before I left the store just in case Ryan had eaten the remaining Oreos. They were. $1.88. They're normally $3.69 or something like that (we only buy them on sale). So I had to buy a new bag, but I still think I came out ahead since I used a total of about 7 in the crust and some butter (margarine) that cost about $.25 (it's a pi day entry--I have to share my mathematical triumphs at the grocery store!). I don't know how much energy I used in the baking of the crust, however, so I cannot truly declare myself victorious. Anyway, my final remark concerning this pie (I'm beginning to think this is probably a very boring entry, so I'm not going to read it myself) is that, as I was placing the chocolate chips around the edge, I was very disappointed that I had not thought to place three chocolate chips, then one peanut butter chip, then four chocolate chips, then one peanut butter chip, then five chocolate chips, then nine peanut butter chips....