My favorite season: Pie season!

I love baking. It makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. I love the way the house smells when something is in the oven. I love cleaning the brownie batter out of the bowl with a squeegee. I love the smile on someone's face who's enjoying one of my concoctions. I love the simpleness of it. I love the indulgence of it. It's a form of therapy I suppose. 

When I was younger and living with my parents, my mom would always do the baking. I have several fond memories of those years. One in a particular that always sticks in my mind is a particularly procrastinated Christmas. If my memory serves me (and I was quite young, so it might not), it was Christmas Eve and none of the baking had been done. My mom called my sister and me into the kitchen, where there were ingredients everywhere, \told us she's on fudge duty and to pick a cookie, double the recipe and get to work. I don't remember what cookie I picked, I don't remember how long we were in that kitchen. I just remember enjoying myself and being happy. 

When my parents divorced, I took it upon myself to become the family baker. I would bake a batch of cookies every Thursday night so that we could all have cookies in our lunches the next day. If you ask my siblings, they'll probably tell you about my "cement cookies". These were a simple chocolate chip cookie recipe that I somehow ruined. The resulting cookies could be used in a house's foundation. But bless them...they ate them anyways. 

Luckily, I've progressed over the years. I've branched out into cooking but my true love in the kitchen is still baking. I have a couple favorite recipes and one that brings me the most joy is apple pie. From start to finish, an apple pie will take me nearly two hours because I make the crust then I make the filling and then there's the baking time of nearly an hour. This is the baking experience that I'll share with you today. My first apple pie of the 2012 holiday season!

 As with most things, I suggest you have a beer or a glass of wine handy. For my apple pies, I prefer to use a blend of apples. 3 Granny Smiths for their tartness and their stability and 3-4 Honeycrisps for their super sweet flavor. 

This is the old, old recipe I still use from the copy of Better Home and Gardens I pilfered from my Mom. In this book, I made notes and what not. Notice the note above...the first pie I ever made was this apple pie in 1999. 

Crust:

I usually double the recipe for pie crust so I have plenty of crust and don't have to get the dough super thin. 

 This is my method of "sifting". I hate sifters, with a passion, so I whisk my dry ingredients together. 

 Cutting in the "lard" with a pastry knife. This recipe calls for Crisco. I've been tempted to use a different recipe that uses butter but I haven't bothered to look for a good recipe yet. 

 "Lard" is incorporated and dough resembles peas. Or so the book says. You don't want to work the lard in too much or the crust won't be as crispy. So sayeth Alton Brown...who is my favorite food network guy.

 Time to bring it all together with water. The book calls for cold water, so I usually throw a couple ice cubes in the water to keep it cold. 

 With a coupe tablespoons at a time, moisten the dough until it comes together. Working your way through the entire bowl, section by section. I used a fork for this because the book tells me to and that's how my Grandma always made hers. 

 The dough is all moistened and coming together. Time to make the big balls of dough. I usually make two balls out of this. One for the top crust and one for the bottom. 

 I used parchment paper to roll out my dough this time to try and cut down on the mess. It worked almost perfectly. The parchment paper did get a little moist and would move around a lot but it did cut down tremendously on the mess. If it hadn't been for this parchment paper, you have to coat your counter with flour. They do make awesome little pastry mats, I just don't have one. What I do have is an epic marble rolling pin. I covet that thing. 

 You still need to add flour to the top of the dough so the pin doesn't stick to it. And you'll need to do this repeatedly as the flour works into the dough. If you don't, this could happen. 

 This is your worst nightmare. The dough stuck to my pin and I kept rolling, tearing this section. Luckily (?!) this isn't the first time this has happened to me and I learned how to fix this. Little bit of water and a flat metal frosting spatula, and voila, good as new(ish). 

To transfer to the pie plate, I fold my dough on itself a couple times (the parchment paper made this easy). If your dough is to brittle, you shouldn't do this or you'll have 4 cute sections of dough instead of 1 big flat sheet. Instead use a couple spatulas, your hand and a prayer to transfer it. I unfolded my crust and left it to rest there while I move along. 

At this point, I rolled out the other crust the same way I did the first but left it on the parchment paper while I worked on the filling. I did it this way so that I could throw the pie in the oven as soon as possible after introducing the sugar to the apples. If you wait too long, the sugar breaks the apples down and it becomes a soupy mess. Sounds delicious but it makes for one hell of a runny pie. 

Filling:

 I have one of those fancy apple corer, peeler things that attached to the counter but I haven't had much luck with it lately. I never seem to get the whole core out. So I went back to the basics and bought a corer...which is nice to have anyways if you'd just like to core a single apple and don't want to go looking for your coring, peeling, thingymabob. It takes a little practice but if you're patient you'll learn to peel an entire apple without breaking the string of peel and never removing the peeler from the fruit. Then you'll have this awesome spiral of apple peel goodness that dogs and husbands gobble up (side note, do not feed your dogs apple cores, they're poisonous). 

This is the best part. When you mix the combination of sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger and cornstarch with the apples. I tend to use WAY more cinnamon than the recipe recommends and more sugar too. To properly mix the cinnamon mixture with the apples I suggest using freshly washed hands. Best tool ever. 

Next, pile those apples high in that pie plate. Making sure to fill all the gaps so the apples don't settled too much. 

 Dot the apple mixture with a couple tablespoons of butter and top with the second pie crust. I like to trim my pie crusts to match each other then I fold the top under the bottom and flute the edge. 

Lastly, cut a design into the top crust to let the steam escape. I think I tried to make a star but it turned out more like that starfish from Spongbob. Oh well. 

I would make an apple pie a weekend if I had enough people to eat them all. This pie turned out particularly yummy and even converted a non-pie-believer. If you want to really dazzle them, make this recipe as I have but for the top crust, make a lattice, or a spiral lattice. Or if you just want it to be devoured, make a crumb topping with flour, butter, cinnamon and brown sugar and forgo the top pastry crust. I did that for Thanksgiving with my in-laws and it turned out to be a big hit. 

I hope you enjoyed my rant on baking. I enjoyed writing it. Next on the baking to-do: fudge!!!!

Liz DiNatale

A suit of armor fit for a T

Steven and I had searched for months for a new (to us) Toyota truck. It all started about 4 years ago when Steven sold his old Toyota truck to a friend in order to buy my engagement ring. I still say that the Toyota reincarnated (as my ring) is far shinier than it ever was before.

All was well and fine not having a truck while we lived in the townhome. Then we thought it would be a good idea to go ahead and buy a house...a house house...with a yard...and yard work. You realize pretty quickly how useful a truck is when you have a big pile of tree limbs to haul away.

Luckily, shortly after buying our house, we got a roommate, Will, who had a Ford F150 that he let us borrow for tree limb hauling and what not. Super helpful. Unluckily he moved out a year or so ago and we've been limping by on borrowed trucks and making things fit into the Subaru ("Excuse me Mr. Lowes guy, can you cut that piece of plywood in half...yeah...we need it to fit into the the back of a wagon. Thanks.") ever since.

We finally gave in and searched craigslist for used Toyota trucks. It took us forever but we finally found one that fit all of our requirements and was within our budget. The downfall was...it was in Cashiers, NC and everyone else wanted it to. We dropped everything one random weekday and drove 5 hours to Cashiers to check out this fabled truck. Of course we decided to buy it. That would have been one hell of a trip for nothing otherwise. It is a 95 T-100 v6 manual with 155something miles on it.

Our fleet was complete again.

Not long after that, the plastic bed cover came off because it was holding water and would eventually rust the bed. Our plan was to apply that awesome bed armor that's become popular. It looks like a thick coat of rubber that acts like a tough skin for the metal. It costs a couple hundred to get it done professionally or $70 and an afternoon to do it by yourself. Which do you think we did?

That's right. We did it the hard way.

Little bit of tape around the edges and off I went.

This stuff was a runny mess of rubber goo.

One coat was nothing but after a second, much thicker coat, we were money.

That stuff is tough and rough. Now our bed is free of rust and and all rust is prevented. Well done, T, well done.

Liz DiNatale

Little Miss Mechanic

I was lucky to have a father who believed that his daughters should know how to work on their own cars. The first thing he taught me after I got my license was how to change my oil. Then my distributor cap, then my air filter, my CV joint, my radiator, alternator, etc, etc. It was this tutelage that gave me the confidence to change my own radiator (on a different car) in the parking lot of Advanced Auto on Western in a skirt and high heels. Wish I had a photo of that, it must have been comical. 

Unlucky for me, my MINI has recently gone out of warranty so all my maintenance and repairs will either cost me an arm and a leg or will be done by myself. About a month ago, I had my final appointment with the MINI dealership whilst under warranty. They gave me a clean bill of health and told me my brakes needed to be flushed and the cabin air filter needed to be changed and that it would cost almost $400 to do both of those things. I decided it was time I learned how to flush brakes. 

This is probably the least helpful owners manual ever. For instance, if you were by chance changing your own oil and you wanted to see how many quarts of oil to put back in your car. If you go to the owners manual, instead of telling you how many quarts the car needs, it says "We recommend servicing your MINI at a MINI dealership" or some crap like that. Ridiculous. Thank god for Google and our societies obsession for sharing information online (yes that was meant to be hypocritical). 

Brake bleeding is pretty simple. You match the fluid type, dump a bunch in the reservoir, have one person at the caliper loosening the bolt and one person in the car stomping the brakes. You're essentially using the brake system to flush the old fluid out. It takes a while, but it's simple. We did discover when taking my wheels off that the MINI dealership had severely stripped one of my lugs. We'll be taking it back to MINI for them to fix that this week. 

Yay, me bleeding the fluid. All gross looking and what not. 

We decided to go ahead and do an oil change while we were at it. This vehicles oil change interval is 20k miles. The engineers at MINI were on something when they decided on that. We choose to ignore it and change my oil every 6-8k miles.

They were also on crack when they decided how to design the oil filter. It's in the most inconvenient spot. You have to remove the radiator reservoir just to get to it. Then it's all at some weird angle that you need this massive breaker bar to remove it. Oh and the cap is plastic so if you're really good, you'll strip the damn thing. 

Lastly was the cabin air filter. That was the easiest to change but also the most uncomfortable. 

This is great for the back. I felt awesome after this. 

Regardless of all my complaining, I'm damn glad I can work on my car. It allows me to have a giggle when a guy tells me he doesn't know how to change his oil or tires or add radiator fluid. Maybe that's mean of me but if they can laugh at me for my shortcomings of the woman stereotype I can laugh at them for their lack of the male stereotype. But in the end, taking care of ones own vehicles is very domesticated...

Awesomely domesticated. 

Liz DiNatale

Anniversary Hike

A little over 2 years ago, the hubs and I were married in front of our friends and family and nature in Waynesville, NC. Waynesville is an adorable small town just outside our favorite town, Asheville. Since then, we've returned to Asheville often. Last year on our anniversary, we spent the weekend retracing our steps. For our adventure that year, we went ziplining with these guys, http://www.navitat.com/asheville/ so much fun. Can't wait to go again!

This year, our anniversary fell on a Wednesday or some crap like that so we didn't get to do anything adventurous on our actual anniversary. Instead, we cooked dinner together, ate at the table with a bottle of wine (our favorite Pinot Noir that we served at the wedding) and played an epic game of chess instead of watching TV and zoning out. All in all I think we had a successful anniversary. But we still planned to return to Asheville.

The weekend before last (28th to 30th of Sept) we packed the MINI with our backpacks, the dogs and their packs and headed off to uncharted territory, STIZ backpacking. Luckily a few months prior to this experience, we bought a truck from a nice guy named Chip who just so happened to plan and guide backpacking trips in the NC Mountains. We picked his brain for good loops to start on, what to pack and for reassurance that we weren't nuts. He told us about Shining Rock, a mountain that is topped with HUGE outcroppings of Quartz, told us about Mountain House freeze dried meals and confirmed that we were slightly nuts, but not because we wanted to go backpacking. Chip recommended we hike up Shining Rock Trail and back down Old Butt Knob. But because we think we're bad ass, we decided to hike up Old Butt Knob and down Shining Rock Trail. Yep....

Our awesomely giving friends, Anthony and Lorena lent us their guest bedroom on Friday night. We stayed up until 2 am killing 3 bottles of wine and laughing at Anthony's pictures from the 80's. He's a good sport. Somehow, and I blame this on Steven (because I can), we slept in until 12pm. We never sleep that long. Even after the Slip and Bleed when we were far more intoxicated. I guess we needed it. This did put us in a pickle though, we wanted to start climbing by 1pm. So yeah...that wasn't going to happen. A mad dash to shower and fill our water bladders ensued. Then a slower dash to get breakfast and wait for the most anticipated grilled cheese I've ever had (which ended up mediocre at best).

Finally, around 2pm we were heading towards Brevard and towards the Shining Rock Wilderness. This is when I realized that I don't remember packing the water purification tablets...crap. Quick detour to the local REI. This ended up being handy because we needed clarification on how to find Old Butt Knob anyways. The nice guy behind the counter pointed to the parking lot and the main trail and said "You'll walk along this trail for a while, it'll be mostly flat and then when you see a trail to your right that goes straight up, that's Old Butt Knob. Nothing is marked out there and there's a bunch of fake trails."  At this point Steven was becoming discouraged...and green...pretty sure his Tuna Sandwich was tainted.

By the time we reached the trail head, Steven needed a moment to collect himself. The super tight winding road didn't help him. Around 3:30pm, we were on our way. I wore the damn GoPro the entire way up and never turned it on....

The dogs were loaded down with 2 meals worth of food and 2 liters of water (not each). Steven and I both had a little over 20 lbs on our backs. It is me or does the combination of my HUGE Keen hiking boots (they look huge but they're really not) and my HUGE pack (it is huge...) make me look Hobbit-like?

We followed Shining Rock Trail for a while until we saw a trail to the right then went straight up. We were on Old Butt Knob, we were sure of it.

That looks straight up, right? It felt like it was straight up...

We bumped into a couple other groups hiking the same trail. One couple had two dogs with them. One of which was very fond of mounting Masi and Gunnar. After the 3rd attempt of the owners trying to stop the dogs by gently saying "Oh, No, Stop..." and grabbing the dog by the neck but not really moving it, I was fed up and smacked it across the head the next time it tried to mount Masi. The dog left ours alone after that. Come to think of it...so did the people. Whoops. The other group was 3 guys from South Carolina who had planned to hike 20 miles that weekend but had become lost on a fake trail. All 7 of us thought for sure we were on Old Butt Knob trail. It turns out, we were all wrong.

You see, Old Butt Knob was a ridge line hike. You see this,

That's Shining Rock Creek. That was beside us the whole time. Creeks don't flow on ridge lines... Which meant we had accidentally followed Chips advice anyways. We were on Shining Rock Trail heading towards Shining Rock. The trail twisted and turned and at one point we were certain we had lost it or were on a fake trail but then it would clear up again. Finally, after hours and hours of climbing and being sure the summit was just around the corner, we made it. Well at least we made it to where everyone camps. It took us a loop up and back down the trail to find a suitable camping location under a HUGE pine with some awesomely soft ground. We were nearly set up when the group of 3 guys showed up. There weren't many camping sites left and we were happy to have the company, so we invited them to set up in our area.

The sun set quickly and a cloud rolled over the mountain top. It made for an eerie yet beautiful scene. We spent the night sitting by the fire with the 3 guys from the trail and the 2 guys from the site next to ours. Eventually the clouds parted and the whole area lit up with a full moon. It was pretty amazing. I've camped plenty before in campgrounds that seem so remote. But I've never camped in an area that was so perfectly quiet. Even still I slept like crap. Every time Rhea moved, her scratchy pads made tons of noise. I finally put ear plugs in and was out.

The next morning we enjoyed some re-hydrated freeze dried omelets and our Starbucks VIAs in the warm sun. Who ever said roughing-it can't include good coffee?! If they did, they lied.

After packing up and refilling our water from the Shining Rock Creek (which had gone from a rushing river to an iiitttyy bittty trickle way up in the mountain), we went for the summit. Oh what a summit it was. Big, huge boulders of quartz shining in the morning sun. It was...it was wow.

I am particularly fond of the look I'm giving Steven in this photo.

I think we were looking at the dogs in this picture and not the person taking the photos. There was a cliff edge behind us, we didn't want them falling off.

Packs are not flattering...

I love my fuzzy mountains.

Then we started the hike down on Old Butt Knob. It started off so nice. It runs the ridge between two mountains (one of which is Old Butt Knob). The dogs were doing great on their second day with the packs. We let Gunnar have the day off and gave him a lighter load and made Rhea carry the water this time.

Periodically there'd be views like this. The leaves were so vibrant already.

Then it started getting steep. This is me down the trail from Steven. I'm maybe 4 steps away from him.  (again..packs are not flattering....)

This is the flip side of that photo. Steven up the hill from me.

Our mountain goats were fine.

The terrain became so steep, I like to describe it as a staircase of boulders. I'm so glad we didn't hike UP this the previous day. Near the middle of the way down, we started hearing vehicle traffic and Shining Rock Creek periodically. We stopped at an outcropping to rest, water the dogs and eat a snack. At the point we had run into the 3 guys from SC again.

We decided it was a good opportunity to strap the GoPro to my chest again. We kinda stopped taking photos for a while so please feel free to view the video to see what the rest of the trail was like. Oh and just to whet your whistle, I do about bust my ass on video. Enjoy.

We made it down by 3 or 4pm. We were spent, the dogs were spent, my legs were shaking... Oh and I forgot to mention this. At some point the night before, a tab had fallen off my pack and made my pack sit WAY low on my hips. It was restricting and painful. I was so glad to take that bugger off.

She may seem alert but she's exhausted...I swear. 

We took a short detour into Asheville for a quick bite and a beer at Asheville Pizza and Brewery then headed east.

Another successful Asheville Anniversary I think. 

Liz DiNatale

Everyone deserves cake on their birthday

Everyone deserves cake on their birthday. That is a fundamental belief of mine. Ranking high with fundamental beliefs like the "Golden Rule" and LOTR. Sadly, birthdays become less and less exciting as you age. This year, my 27th (on the 5th), was probably my least anticipated. That's not to say I didn't enjoy my day and that my husband didn't get me an awesome huge monitor with which to edit photos on without straining my eyes...because I did, and he did. I also had a cake for my birthday. First I had cupcakes that my friend, Chrissy, baked for me (because she's awesome like that) and then at dinner I shared a Tartufo with the hubs (because he's awesome like that). And then we shared a couple Limoncellos with the large Tuscan owner of the restaurant. mmmmm

Since the first birthday I spent with Steven, I baked him his favorite cake. Even though it kind of goes against my morals (because it uses a box cake), what baby wants, baby gets. At least concerning cakes. 

This cake is a Beer Cake (really a spice cake made with beer) with brown sugar frosting (terrible to work with). I could never figure out how to stack this cake because the frosting always sloughed off. However, this year, I had a moment of clarity. What if I made a perimeter of a harder, denser, stickier frosting that would contain the brown sugar frosting. A lot of frosting recipes would work for this but I chose royal frosting. Because it hardens and it's easy and you can pipe it. 

And that's what I did and this is how it came out. 

I even made a perimeter line for the middle layer of frosting.That brown sugar frostingly goodness wasn't going anywhere! 

As usual my planning wasn't the best and I scrambled to bake this cake last night before we went to dinner (he had to have his cake with dinner, I would have it no other way). This is my kitchen afterwards. 

Actually doesn't look too bad from the photo but let me tell you, brown sugar and confectioners sugar was EVERYWHERE. 

If you would like the recipe to this awesomeness, please feel free to comment on this blog and I might just edit the post to include the recipe. If not, no biggie, I'll keep it to myself *insert evil laugh*. 

Liz DiNatale

P.S. Happy Birthday to all the September birthdays out there!!! 

Cooking for the freezer

I decided to cook for an army the other day. I picked two recipes that I love, my family's lasagna and Chrissy's Chicken Pot Pie. I thought it would be quite the undertaking but it was actually quite simple. I made enough lasagna for 2 pans and enough pie filling for 2 pies. I bought a bunch of those aluminum mini loaf pans from the store and set out to fill them. 

I didn't take many photos of the Lasagna since that is a family recipe and I have to like you a lot to share it. And with how simple Lasagna is you can easily guess the recipe just from pictures. But after boiling the noodles, cooking the meat, spreading the cheese and filling the pans, here is the result. 

One pan for dinner

And 8 single serve pans for the freezer. 

Now onto the Chicken Pot Pie. Chrissy's Chicken Pot Pie is one of the tastiest I've ever had. But a whole pie is way too much for a two person meal. So...single serve!

You'll need an onion, some chicken broth, veggies, milk, butter, pie crust....and of course chicken. 

Chopped onions with the broth in the back. I added extra broth because I had read that the freezing and then baking process takes some goodness out of the pie and adding some extra broth helps. 

Melted butter to saute the onion. mmmm buuttteerrr... Just call me little Paula Deen...without the accent...

Everything in the mix now. This smells like childhood. 

Since I was prepping these for the freezer instead of the oven, I cooked the chicken thoroughly in the pot. 

After letting the filling cool a bit I loaded up the tins. I did my best to cut lots of rectangles out of the circular pie crust. It wasn't pretty so I didn't photograph it. 

And thats how you turn 3 hours of cooking time to weeks worth of food. 

Now that's domesticated...

Liz DiNatale