Pie Crust!

I made pie crust today because it has to sit overnight for the apple pie tomorrow. I've already figured out a design for the top! No, it will not be a crumble top.

I looked through my old photos to see if I ever took a picture of the pie I made 5 years ago, and unfortunately, I didn't.

I guess the rules for this pie crust are that it's made with patience and whole wheat flour. I know it's rare to see whole wheat pie crust, and it's even rarer to see pie crust made with chunks of butter (not melted) without the use of a food processor.

I found a pie crust recipe here and I altered it specifically for whole wheat flour and apple pie filling.

Ingredients for a 9- to 9.5-inch pie base and top

2.5 cups whole wheat flour

1 tsp salt

1 tbsp cinnamon sugar or just plain sugar (more if you want)

1 cup (2 sticks) of butter cut into chunks

5 to 7 tbsp apple juice (or water)

Method

1. Sift flour. Add everything except juice/water into bowl.

2. Cut butter using a metal spoon. I suppose a plastic knife would work well too.

3. Cut butter. Now, the dough starts smelling phenomenal. For some reason, my dough smelled like cheesecake-graham-cracker crust, or just pie crust in general.

4. Cut butter. The dough looks browner, the butter pieces are smaller, and ... I smooshed some butter too because cutting butter took a lot of time. In retrospect, though, leaving a few lumps may not have made much differenc.

5. Add juice/water until you can form a ball.

6. Stick in fridge overnight. I didn't wrap it in plastic wrap... I just stuck it in a container. For cookie dough, at least, it doesn't seem necessary to wrap stuff in plastic.

Well. Let's see what happens tomorrow!

Common Sense...

A common sense is taste. Another one is to actually name a plum a "plum".

I decided to try pecan pie, for the first time in my life. As I looked at the slice of pie, I realised something. This was literally a lump of fat mixed with a lump of sugar. There is no substance. It isn't even disguised as something awesome! The crust is a lump of baked fat and flour. The pecans are chunks of fat. The ... sugar-fat filling is basically brown sugar mixed with butter and spread into a thick gelatinous paste.

I know I can say the same thing about caramel, or toffee, or even chocolate, but that stuff actually tastes amazing. This tasted like fat and sugar in their raw states, which, for some, may be delicious. I, however, would prefer if there was also a cup of cocoa powder in this slice of pie...

I have to say that pecans are delicious, but pecan pies are overkill. They over kill your adipose tissues...

So, the second lack-of-common-sense kind of thing is the fact that they called this plum "sweet fruit". As if "plum" isn't already too generic [There are plenty of varieties of plums. There're the little ones, the big ones, the super sour ones, the ones with the red skins, and they're also related to [or, one compartment] of prunes. Actually, here is a list... which includes the Mirabelle plum, the Damask plum... etc. The fact that it's merely labeled a "sweet fruit" threw me off. It's pretty funny, I suppose.

Soon, they're going to have fruit stickers that say "fruit" on them.

I think I actually threw this sticker away, by accident, since I don't have my fruit sticker book with me in college. I really need to bring it here after November break.

MP's Grad Party

The Food. Was. Awesome! Well, who am I to judge? The food anywhere, at any party, is usually way more creative than the banal [Though, I eat a lot of bananas at home. And, bananas are NOT banal. Haha. Another silly joke! I'm going bananas!] stuff I eat every day at home for dinner. Though, today's snacks were truly original compared to the past few parties which I attended. Most of it was from my favourite supermarket/civil-exploration place - Trader Joe's! Anyway... awesome pasta sauce!
From left to right: tortilla chips, dried pineapple [simply the best thing there], seasoned crackers, TJ's cheese crackers [A.K.A. "better than Ritz" Ritz-Bitz], carrots, peanut butter crackers, [A.K.A. "better than Ritz" Ritz-Bitz. Did I mention that I used to love the peanut butter and/or cheese flavoured of these? Yeah, in HK these, along with the "Garden animal crackers" were my favourite. Oh, and the chicken [?] flavoured crackers.], sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, spicy chipotle salsa [great!]
Close-up.
Pasta with alfredo sauce, pasta with tomato sauce, and vegetables with butter and bread crumbs. I felt like there was potato in the vegetables... but maybe it was just me. Either way, the vegetables were really nice :)
Salad with onions and ranch dressing. I don't really have a thing for ranch dressing, but I like onions so that was good.
Bad resolution of crunchy oatmeal raisin cookies. They were approximately 2 cm in diameter... and although I could taste the oatmeal, I could neither taste nor see any raisins. Hm. Didn't make sense, but they were really delicious, so I ate a lot of them. Actually, I'm usually more into soft cookies, but these were quite interesting. Reminded me of ginger snaps, even though they didn't have any ginger in them, of course.
My first ever cookie cake [I think]! The icing was icky, in my opinion, but I'm not really into consuming icing. Icing is great to look at, but not really to chug down. The cookie itself was really soft [Some propylene glycol? HFCS? I didn't check...]. and the chocolate chips actually tasted like chocolate chips!
My first eggplant and ricotta pizza ever! The ricotta cheese was pretty amazing; usually I just have it in lasagne, but the creaminess added a really interesting texture to the pizza. The eggplant wasn't that great, though, and I think I prefer plain eggplant parm. Or just grilled eggplant. I found the crust rather sweet, which is kinda weird considering this is a savoury product [Not a candy pizza. Those are... eh...], and it was also really dry. Not flaky dry, but BLAND dry. Maybe I was just really thirsty at the time...

I will update about the chocolate tomorrow.