Even better pie today

So I made a pie a few days ago. Then I didn't want to bother with pie crust, so I made an attempted crumble with frozen cherries. I didn't use thickening starch, though, because I wanted to see what would happen. The result was some weird oatmeal cookies fused to the top of a cherry soup. Good flavor, but not what it was supposed to be.

(THE CRUMBLE WAS ALMOST PERFECT!!!!! But I didn't use any thickening starch. Oh man.)

()

I decided that today, I'd use a recipe as faithfully as I could, instead of just winging it again. I haven't really done the recipe thing before. At least not this week.

This is the pie recipe that I used today:

http://www.pillsbury.com/recipes/peach-pie/e09fbe68-5291-4642-aa1e-4686fcf17c4e

...Regular readers should remember that I have some technical whatevers with making hyperlinks in my app. But a simple copy-paste will let you follow the link. Sorry for the inconvenience! 

Except that really, should I be sorry for that inconvenience? 

This is not a blog about doing a good job. There are lots of food blogs about appearing competent. THIS, on the other hand, is a blog about surviving mild failure, and about the occasional moments of success that still happen when the ratio of fail to non-fail is heavily skewed towards the "fail" side. Yes! Embrace the process! Embrace and cherish your mortality! Life finds a way...INTO YOUR FACE!!!!!

So.

This is the pie that I just took out of the oven. I wrote "PiE" on it. How cute! I find it cute. I'm my own audience. My audience thinks it's cute, because I am that audience. I am 100% of that audience, and that means that this pie received a 100% approval eating from its target audience.

YEAH, I WIN AT THIS ACTIVITY!!!!!!!!!!

I can't yet speak to the quality of the frozen peaches that I used, but as far as I know, they're the most wild wildcard in it...assuming that the cooking time was still correct, even though the peaches were only kinda-sorta thawed when it went into the oven...

Okay, this is too much stress. I'm going to take a nap.

I made other food too! Lasagna, also beans. I didn't make cottage cheese, though.

Here is a recipe that I was loosely inspired by:

http://www.marthastewart.com/338978/rich-artichoke-and-mushroom-lasagna

I forgot about most of the seasonings, and I used sautéed zucchini and fresh spinach instead of artichoke hearts, but I made the fuck out of the béchamel sauce. Like, that shit turned out GREAT. The rest? The rest of the lasagna needs salt, so it is pictured with salt.

The beans are cannellini beans, roasted with homemade garlic butter. I made the garlic butter by literally just putting two whole cloves of garlic in a mini blender with butter and olive oil. It was so spicy that when a clump dropped onto the floor and my cat licked it, he made an "eech" sound and sprinted away like he was frightened.

The cottage cheese is just cottage cheese, but it's 4% milkfat and Darigold, which is a local brand. So it's pretty fucking good.

Pie. I ate the pie.

It tastes like cheap store bought pie crust and baked apples. So...I like it. I am eating while I type. 

The sea salt flakes on the top of the crust (I stood up and looked at the kitchen) were definitely a good idea. I just realized that I COMPLETELY FORGOT ABOUT THE EXISTANCE OF CINNAMON! But who cares?

Featuring, our sweet couch and my husband's cook feet:

Pie? Maybe.

Okay, so it baked at 425F for about 50 mins, and the internet says that it has to cool for two hours before I can eat it. So I have no data to reliably measure the quality of the pie with yet. It looks a little crappy and sad, but I'm still very impatient and I want to eat the whole thing RIGHT NOW. But I cannot, because I still have over an hour to wait. Dammit.

Those freckles look like a rash.

Pie? We'll see.

I just made an apple pie. It is in the oven. I tried something I haven't done before, with the filling, by layering thin slices of apple in a series of flat spirals. I then topped the apples with flour, brown sugar, and butter. 

I forgot to add salt before putting on the top crust, so I sprinkled some chunky(?) salt, like...uh...those medium-sized salt crystal flakes? You have to know what I mean. It's not, like, regular table salt. It's fancy table salt. It came in a little tube jar with, like, a spice grinder built in. Anyway.

I sprinkled those salt pieces and some raw sugar crystals on the top of the pie crust, which also had some room-temperature butter smeared across it, because why not?

The pie is now in the oven. I don't know how it will turn out, but I DO know that I like sitting down again. So I have that going for me.

Actual (But Still Lazy) Peaches and Cream Oatmeal

I am literally doing this right now.

Canned peaches might count as cheating, but who cares! There are actual peaches, there is actual cream, and I used old-fashioned dried oats instead of quick oats.

Mark Bittman once said that dry, old-fashioned oats become edible after soaking in liquid for ten minutes. I've done that a few times and have found it to be true, at least according to my own digestive system, which is totally fine with the practice. 

This time, I used boiling water and it worked really well. So take THAT, corn syrup lower fiber instant stuff! You aren't the only option anymore for people who want oatmeal but don't want to clean up afterward. (Apart from the dirty bowl and spoon, and apart from putting the ingredients away again. But other than that!)

Chicken salad made with freakin' love

MY APP MADE THE TEXT TINY!!! AARGH!!!

Because my partner is not vegetarian, I woke up before 6am and made a truly badass chicken salad to fill sandwiches with, to send to work with him. (He's in the home stretch for Never Alone, which is a video game that my husband works on.)

My sandwich goal was to create something suitably complex and creamy without using mustard, Johnny's seasoning salt, Penzeys Ozark seasoning mix, Old Bay, or Worcestershire sauce, because I use those pretty much every time. Instead, I chopped some celery seeds and cumin seeds, sprinkled in some lemon olive oil, used diced pickles, horseradish powder, powdered paprika (which rhymes with Caprica)...I put a lot of seasoning stuff in the mayonnaise base and it's really freakin' good. Made with freakin' love, is what's what.

Tillamook smoked white cheddar slices are included, for use as a sandwich topping OR as a side dish. Some little, diced cubes of that cheese are stirred into the chicken salad, too. Not enough to taste overtly, but enough to just make the flavor a little more interesting. When tasting the chicken salad once I was done, each sample tasted slightly different than the sample before it, so I'm confident that every bite of the sandwich that it will become will be unique, and that each bite will compliment, rather than simply mimic, the bites prior to the bite taken. It will tell a story. A story of "oh, hey, that's in there, too!"