Apple Pie Update

After much whining....er I mean deliberation and contemplation of my Apple Pie Anguish I decided to take matters into my own hands. NO, I did not go make an unsuspecting baker's life a living hell, nor make him eat 7 of his own awful pies (which may not sound like a lot but you try and eat 7 and see how good you feel) I did nothing evil and violent or even slightly twisted like chanting spells not so quietly under my breath, sitting at the table closest to the kitchen of the restaurant and giving all staff the evilest eye I could manage followed up by a wedgie if they wandered too close. Instead I channeled my frustrations in to a homemade apple crisp that could kick the ass of ANY store bought/restaurant made pie ever not to mention leave them crying and begging for mercy whilst I stomped all over their.....................right.............channeling aggression into the crisp. Well anyways don't get all snooty on me now cause you think that an apple crisp is not an apple pie, cause I say it dang well is, just minus the crust.
And how was it? DIVINE!!!!!!!!!!!! FULLY COOKED and so cinnamon-y and delicious it brought tears of happiness to our eyes at our own culinary genius. So there you go, no more ranting about apple pies, I'm over it, done, finished........SATISFIED!!!!!!! Not to mention 17 dollars richer in tips (Alan appreciates apple-y goodness as much as I, only he tips better!)

Apple Pie Anguish

I am not a violent person by nature.
I do not bitch slap the check out girl for touching my tomatoes.
I do not trip the idiot smoking near the doors to a public place and make him eat his cigarette, nor take pleasure in his sobbing for forgiveness if I SHOULD make him eat it.
I don't flip the finger at morons who must have learned how to drive from a video game.
I don't holler obscenities at strangers for giving me the evil eye just because we were dancing in the middle of a department store aisle. If they don't wanna see it they can dang well look elsewhere.
I hardly ever do anything criminal....
BUT there are days....there are days when I just can't sit back and take it......some injustices are so wrong, so basically evil in their existence that I can not just cringe and turn a blind eye. Some one must pay for the injury they have inflicted upon my person, some one must PAY I tell you for the cruelty and mental anguish they have caused....caused how you might ask...HOW??@@#!@
BY serving me RAW APPLES SURROUNDED BY MUCOUS-Y STUFF AND ALL MASQUERADING AS APPLE PIE.
APPLE PIE!!!!!!
Apple pie my ass...in fact that sounds better then the dutch apple crap I've been subjected to on occasion. Is there a sign on my forehead??? Something I can't see that says "apple pie sucker here" No need to break out the good fully cooked apple pie, just serve up the the stuff the 2 year old in the back baked up in their easy bake oven...no...actually that gives more credit to the pie then I want to give. Something a 2 year old baked up in their easy bake oven would be better then...*shuddddders* canned apple pie filling. My heart can't take it. There is NO bigger betrayal then being served a slab of delicious LOOKING pie, sliding my fork through the flaky crust, the crispy crumbles into.........what in the holy hell??? I don't even know what you can call it...in MY world (which is all that is right and good) apple pie has cinnamon and brown sugar, the inside of an apple pie should be brown..NOT WHITE BORDERING ON FREAKING GREEN!!!!!!!!!! Do I need to ask the waitress to bring the pie out for my visual inspection before I actually commit to ordering a piece.... I don't want to make a fuss but I have to admit perhaps the embarrassment of asking to examine the merchandise before buying would be less then throwing a tantrum in the middle of a restaurant and making the waitress cry. If you have never seen a grown woman throw a tantrum over apple pie then consider yourself lucky. If flying silver ware and sobbing bakers and the full born fury of an enraged and betrayed apple pie connoisseur isn't your cup of tea...then perhaps you'd best steer clear of me when I have the urge to try apple pie from an as yet untried apple pie source.
There IS good apple pie out there, I've had it and it was gooooooood, sell your own mother and tattoo the recipe on your back good. Apple pie that leaves me speechless...YES speechless for WHOLE minutes while I bask in the dreamy cinnamon-y goodness and rightness that is a decent slice of apple pie.
Perhaps this is the problem, perhaps if I'd just been fed apple crap all my life instead of some half decent bordering on exquisite pies I'd not know what I was being subjected to at these.....restaurants...HA! More like apple pie clone sweat shops. And they get away with it??? I mean...I just can not fathom what the heck is going on behind the closed doors of some kitchens.....a little common sense people...like if you slice into the pie and it goes CRUNCH THERE DAMN WELL BETTER BE SOME FREAKING NUTS IN IT!!!!!!!!!!!!! APPLE PIE IS NOT CRUNCHY!!!!!!
That's apple pie 101 people..apples that go crunch are RAW, If people wanted raw apples they'd get a RAW APPLE. Pies are baked...supposedly...pies should be squishy and gooshy and ooooeeey gooey little microcosms of heaven. APPLE PIE IS NOT CRUNCHY. And you know what...fine..fine..say the baker accidently didn't keep an eye on the timer and took the pie out too early...fine..I've done that myself a time or too (meanwhile I damn sure put the pie BACK in the oven when I discovered my error...but that's just me I happen to CARE ABOUT WHAT I AM BAKING)
But anyways say a busy baker at a restaurant is busily baking up a storm for all the unsuspecting suckers...ER..I mean *DINERS*, and say this baker pulls the poor pie outta the oven too early and it mistakenly gets served to the suckers, I mean diners...that's fine...INNOCENT mistake.
BUT, you explain to me, explain to me how a BAKER can in good conscience make an apple pie that has NO brown sugar in it..NO cinnamon to speak of AND some how not bake the pie to doneness....I'll tell you how..THIS BAKER DOESN'T CARE. They could just as easily be whipping up a nice fresh batch of injected molded medical supply parts. This person has NO business being anywhere NEAR innocent apples and virgin pie crusts. Oh the pie crusts, it's pretty hard to mess up a pie crust, who even cares about the pie crust, a pie is NOT about the pie crust, they don't say "would you like some pie crust with some apples?" NOOOOooooooOOOooooo cause it's all about the apples people. And the apples are just one part of the triad of goodness that is a decent apple pie. You gotta have brown sugar, you gotta have cinnamon and you gotta have apples. The crust can go to hell for all I care. It's main function in life is just to surround the apples, and to keep waitresses from getting their grubby fingers all over my apple-y goodness.
So here I am once again feeling the sting of apple pie betrayal. Did they know what they were serving me I wonder?? Have a good laugh over that one from behind closed kitchen doors? Mean while my heart is breaking with the first forkful....I don't even have to take a bite...........I feel my throat aching, my eyes well up. They couldn't have hurt me any more then if they'd taken the very fork they gave me to eat this *stuff* and jabbed it in my back. Betrayal. I can take it. I have before and I will again. But can the apples people??? How long do you think apple pie will let itself be victimized this way????
I for one have learned my painful lesson...yet again. Know your source people, you don't want to get stuck with a bad batch of apple pie.
Let them go on making their apple pies, more like MOCK APPLE PIES, just let them. Let them think that nobody noticed. Maybe I am just a nobody to them......one nobody who noticed....and remembers.
But do not worry dear friends that I have lost all faith in the apple pies of the world. Like I said there are good ones out there......and where there's good apple pie, I'll be there, fork in hand, smile in place, anger in check.
But should you be the unsuspecting diner next to me at a place serving the miserable excuse for a so called apple pie....beware. Better yet move away. Go to another restaurant. For like a mighty volcano my fury will not be contained any longer...should I be denied my good apple pie.
And please remember, bad apple pie is NOT a victim-less crime.....just like bonking a bad baker over the head...some one is going to get hurt in both cases.

A Probiotic Pictorial

Kefir is our latest love.
And recently we discovered how to make it at home with our very own Kefir grains which has started us down the path of probiotic bliss.
Now if I tell you that Kefir is a refreshing, cultured milk beverage you might think I've flipped my lid. But it's true, Kefir is a very satisfying, slightly fizzy, vaguely yogurt-like drink. We find it delicious, and apparently tons of people agree because the internet is loaded with information about it. It's one of those things that once we learned about it feel like "how in the heck could I not have heard of this before?"
Kefir has a long and fascinating history. Apparently Kefir originated in Russia in the Caucasus Mountains where people from that area were reported to have very long life spans. There's even a fantastic legend that says that Kefir grains came from Mohammed as a gift to the Orthodox people in the Caucasian mountains, and that the grains themselves were called "Grains of the Prophet". There's another story that these people guarded their Kefir grains and although they shared the beverage it made they wouldn't give away the grains themselves. People attempted to reproduce Kefir without the grains but to no avail. In the early 1900's an attempt was made by the owners of some cheese factories in the northern caucasus mountains to obtain some of the Kefir grains. It sounds like something from a fairy tale but they sent a female employee to *charm* some grains out of Caucasus Prince. Apparently he was able to resist these charms and wouldn't share the grains so off she went but was kidnapped by the Prince's men and returned to him because he wanted to marry her!!! She was rescued and brought the matter to the Czar's court where she ended up winning her suit against the Prince's kidnapping and her settlement was....you guessed it...KEFIR grains. She is credited with bringing Kefir to the Russian People where it was first used for medicinal purposes.
Despite all the wonderful probiotic health reasons of Kefir we drink it first and foremost cause it's dang tasty!
We ordered our grains off the internet because like I already mentioned you can not make real Kefir without real grains.
Kefir grains added to the appropriate amount of milk (organic of course) produce ready to drink Kefir in about 24 hours. So this is sort of like having a pet that needs taken care of. Every day we feed our grains new milk and enjoy the delicious Kefir the grains produce.
Alan likes to say our Kefir is full of organic nano-bots *grins* because they're microscopic buddies that do good stuff inside your body. (sounds a lot like nano-bots right!) It makes a kind of sense if you think about it.
If you have no interest in our daily process of making Kefir then quit reading now. Though I can't understand how you'd NOT be interested. If YOU wrote a blog about how you get up and prepare oatmeal, or put your socks on, or make coffee or dance to Esthero's "wikked Lil' Grrrls" every day I'd read it.....really I would.
It all starts with these...our wonderful little Kefir grains. As you can see they look more like pieces of Cauliflower then grains of any sort.
They are added to organic milk every day and then hide out under a towel on our kitchen table busily converting plain milk to Kefir. It's not under a towel cause it's camera shy but to keep it out of direct sunlight.
You can really see that the Kefir grains are having an affect on the milk. It thickens up, sometimes even separating into curds and whey.
When we see it has started to do this we stir it up and get ready to exchange the new batch of Kefir for more milk.
After we have stirred the Kefir we start scooping out the Kefir grains, they tend to float at the top. We scoop them out just to help strain the whole batch easier.We strain the Kefir through a big colander into a big bowl. (We learned the hard....VERY messy way that it was easier to dirty an extra bowl just for the sole purpose of straining rather then straining right into the smaller bowl we end up storing the Kefir in.)
The Kefir grains left in the colander plus the little curds they have made in the Kefir plus the slightly thick nature of the the Kefir itself makes it a little difficult to strain and vigorous shaking of the colander is needed to strain off the Kefir completely.

After draining the Kefir off of the grains as best we can we often weigh them to see how much they have grown. The Kefir grains will grow a little bit with every batch and eventually some have to be separated out of the mix or else you need to increase the amount of milk you are using. Our grains have way more then tripled since we first got them. We now have extra grains just sitting in the fridge waiting for some kind soul to make Kefir in their household with them. We never really realized how very few people we know until we started thinking of who we could give our extra Kefir grains to. Perhaps as a VERY surprising gift to the mail man?
After the grains are weighed we add them back to the pitcher we use to make the Kefir.
We pour the appropriate amount of milk into the pitcher over top of the Kefir grains. After adding the milk we cover the pitcher with a lid and cloth and let the Kefir making process begin all over again. We store our finished Kefir in Clara Belle the fridge and prefer to drink it chilled with a bit of stevia for sweetener and vanilla for flavor, occasionally adding fruit to the mix.It is absolutely delicious to us and rather addicting. The slightly fizzy nature of it when I have my Kefir sweetened and vanilla-ized reminds me a bit of a vanilla ice cream float in a lemon/lime soda. The flavor as I mentioned earlier is yogurt like, I'd also compare it a bit to buttermilk flavor. We have quickly filled our Clara Belle fridge with huge amounts of prepared Kefir and have used it in soups, sauces, salad dressings and baked goods. (of course you lose some of the health benefits when you heat it but the flavor adds some nice zing to all the afore mentioned food stuffs)( We have even made batches of cream cheese type cheese called Lebna that I am sure I'll have to blog about eventually........
There is a whole wealth of information on the internet about the vitamins and beneficial bacterias (of which there's a ton, way more then yogurt has) in the Kefir. For now I'm just thrilled with the flavor but there's some interesting reading out there on the health benefits of Kefir.
O.k. I gotta quit blabbing and post this before it turns into the world's longest blab-fest about Kefir. Besides I'm pretty sure it's that time again........time to take over the world you might ask? Not yet.... it's time to add another batch of Kefir to the fridge and start another batch brewing.

A Poetically Perfect Meal...

Ode to Chili Gravy....
to the speckled creaminess that is your very existence
to thy savoriness that doth cling to every bite.
the rich and thick puddles of your steaming self,
a battle with my taste-buds that I do not wish to fight.
where have you been all my life chili gravy?
that it should be now you bring me light
to a previously empty, flavorless Tex-Mex existence...
you fill my heart and plate with chili gravy delight!

Margarita, Margarita how you fill my heart with heat
wildly dancing in my mouth, join me in a bite to eat
how you make my lips pucker for a sweet and tarty kiss
Margarita, Margarita you sweet and sour bit of bliss

Oh... the loaded enchilada
or a wet burrito if you will
the freaking amazingness of you
gives my menu quite a thrill
ooey, gooey and smothered in sauce
of course the chili gravy kind
filled with cheese and peppers
how you blow my culinary mind
cilantro is your purfume
while onions are your date
join me and my tomatoes
it's time that you were ate

PRO-CHOICE for snails!

I've seen some pretty sicko things in my day...but...SNAIL-A-CIDE!#@$%$#!@!!!
EGADS, what is the world coming to? What did a wee poor snail ever do to you? I mean besides slime up every available surface with sparkly butt mucous??? SOME of us think that's pretty when the light hits it just right..... and what was once a blank and dull drive way is revealed to be a canvas for choreographed snail dances....it has to be dances...slow dances for sure but why else would the trails zig zag so wildly over the drive....snails can't go in a straight line perhaps?? I prefer to imagine the dance myself, snails in a lovely, meandering and passionate ritual, sliding sensuously over the pavement to music only they can hear. (I myself have laid on the drive way till the wee hours of the morning trying to hear this music for myself, but alas it was to no avail. Perhaps I was distracted, what with the fear of night stalking rattle snakes, howling coyotes, odd clicking from the trees, ghosts, bird chirping that sounded suspiciously like laughter and of course the snails themselves. Perhaps it's incongruous of me but as much as I admire the snails I am a bit weirded out by their cold, clammy bodies crawling over my legs. Call me old fashioned but I like my snails at a bit of a distance, at least an inch between me and them.)
Now look I might be pro-snail but that doesn't make me an extremist. I don't invite them in for tea, I don't break down and cry every time I hear that suspicious crunch underfoot when we walk down to the car at night. (at least not any more, wild sobbing and over 79 snail funerals later has led me to realize that snail crunches in the dark are just part of the circle of life. Plus the neighbors started looking at us funny across the rows of 79 little hand carved headstones.)
But back to the Snail-a-cide, some people who shall remain nameless but guilty actually take it upon themselves to reduce the population of snails. *gasp and double GASP* I know, right????? Why wouldn't any one want a few hundred little slow moving friends about? Ummm...apparently though snails eat things, damaging gardens, over populating the area, etc etc blah blah, save it. If we can't get along harmoniously with SNAILS of all things how in the heck are we supposed to understand our fellow humans?? I mean, it's not the snail's fault he was born..er hatched..er born?? I gotta look that up. Is it the snail's fault he was hungry and the prized plants of the garden are the tastiest?? If I got annoyed at every one with bad eating habits I'd never set foot in a restaurant again, are bad eating habits such a crime anyways? Ok, yes, sure snatching bits of fried chicken off a fellow diner's plate at Denny's might get you some very stern looks, a lecture on proper etiquette and thrown out of the restaurant but it sure as hell didn't get me terminated...hypothetically speaking of course..hee hee
Killing snails raises some deep philosophical questions within me. Like maybe we're supposed to do it....maybe it really is the "cirrrcccccle of liffffffe" (sung very off key but with much gusto)
Maybe it's our job in that circle to go on mad snail termination sprees so we can show em whose boss and keep the numbers down, or else the world would be over run with them....thats a scary thought.
I still think we ought to try reasoning with them though myself, or better yet start working on some snail birth control. EXPLORING SPACE?????????? GIVE ME A FREAKING BREAK HERE. How is exploring space gonna do any good for me in the short term really, ok, yes I enjoy the images of of Mars as much as the next person but listen to this, NASA has a budget of $13 BILLION dollars for this year...so I was thinking what if we took a mere ONE BILLION of those funds and put it towards snail birth control. I know, I know, freaking brilliant right?
In the mean time we can all do our part. One person at time. You know how they say it's good to talk to a person in a coma cause maybe, just maybe they can hear you? Remember those commercials about talking to your kids about cigarettes whether they wanted to listen to you or not cause maybe, just maybe your advice will sink in....... Well I remember those ideas....
and if you wanna find me on cold rainy days, at dusk when the sun is setting and the dew is dewing and all the little snails come out to play...I'll be sitting outside reading aloud to them about birth control. "PRO-CHOICE for snails!" An admittedly rare book to find but defiantly worth the investment if you want to educate your snails about abstinence, birth control and population over crowding issues.