blonde moments of genius: Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving seemed enormously calm compared to the six day push for deadline of a musculoskeletal paper the day before -- etiology, pathophysiology, comobidities and a treatment case study of C8 radiculopathy secondary to herniation. I was one of the lucky ones whose diagnosis had a vague but present body of literature to work from. Some unlucky classmates had to write a scientific paper based on absent scientific knowledge for diagnoses such as Scheuermann's disease and pubic ramus fracture. We were all mentally fried and loopy come Wednesday, and after class none of us could turn it off.

The next task at hand, baking pie for the first time, suddenly became ridiculously overwhelming. I've never made a crust before, the closest thing I have to a rolling pin is a Nalgene bottle, and John requested pecan pie -- pecan! I already informed him that there wouldn't be any of the traditional custard stuff, or "goo" as I not-so-fondly refer to it, and I'd want to make it less sweet. He was okay with this. My two-hour walk home from school was filled with crust debate. Graham cracker crusts are easier and rolling pin-less, right? I have graham flour at home. But what makes it "graham" flour? And anyways, all the recipes call for graham crackers, which already have other stuff mixed in with them. So do I buy graham crackers when I already have graham flour? Will it stick together and actually work regardless? So it continued ad nauseum.

When I arrived at the uptown Fairway it was only as customer filled as regular rush hour. Previous years brought Thanksgiving eve shopping throwing down elbow to elbow and kick to kick with all the other customers regardless of how simple your shopping list may have been. So this year I was quite relieved, as I could stand staring blankly at all kinds of baking paraphernalia for as long as needed until electrons finally decided to jump back into my head and help me make a decision. But, hark! In the organic aisle was premade crust with no vegetable shortening or lard, and the first ingredient was whole wheat flower rather than sugar. And it came with a tin -- this is good, since I hadn't realized until then that I did not own a pie dish. Seemed like a cop-out, but a few electrons graced me with the reality that being in grad school means I'm excused from not making my own crusts.

Then the search for pecans. In my search online for a less-sugary, karo syrup-less recipe I found out that pecan trees are the only nut tree indigenous to the States, from Georgia, Texas and another state for which I forget. So why are they so friggin' expensive?? Dang, y'all.

The pie ended up a success. I ended up adapting from a recipe online (Richard's Pecan Pie) -- used 16 ounces of pecans, and in lieu of the water/sugar combo used 1/2 cup maple syrup and not quite 1/2 cup of molasses. Anything I bake ends up twice the weight of what the rest of the world produces for the same product, and this pie was no exception. Not quite the 6 lbs Guiness Stout gingerbread from three years ago, but still hefty. I'm just glad it worked out and I didn't scorch the thing. This being my first pie, I pulled it out of the oven and had no idea how to judge if it was actually done. T'was a lucky guess to trust it to finishing itself off on the counter.

A few from John's place, taken with the Bronica. Hadn't used the Beast in quite a while, since its too big to cart around on a daily basis. Means the shots were more playing than what I otherwise would have taken.