milkbox .net

5Nov/092

Apple Pie

Do I continually out do myself or what???

Ingredients

The Crust

  • 2 cups all-purpose flour
  • I teaspoon salt
  • 1 tablespoon sugar
  • 6 tablespoons butter
  • 6 tablespoons shortening
  • 6 to 8 tablespoons ice water

The Rest

  • 1/2 cup unsalted butter
  • 3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
  • 1/2 cup white sugar
  • 1/2 cup packed brown sugar
  • 1/4 cup water
  • 6 apples - peeled, cored and sliced



Instructions

The Crust

  1. Put the 2 cups flour, 1 tsp salt, and 1 Tbsp sugar in a big mixing bowl.
  2. Use a masher (potato or dough) and mix in the 6 Tbsp butter, 6 Tbsp shortening, and 6-7 Tbsp water.
  3. Mash this up until it holds together but isn't too goopy (7 Tbsp of water was good for me).
  4. Wrap it in plastic wrap and put it in the fridge for 20 min.
  5. Peel and cut the apples.
  6. Tell someone how you wonder what your upstairs neighbour is doing.

The Pie

  1. After 20 min, remove the pie crust from the fridge.
  2. Take about 10-15% of the crust and set it aside.
  3. Roll the big component of crust and put it in your pie thing.
  4. Put all the apples on the pie crust.  Mound them.
  5. Take the 10-15% of pie crust you set aside and make it into long strings or flat slats that will go over the apples.  Think old-school apple pie and how it looks when it has the Kris-Kross (daddy mack!) thing going on.

The Sauce

  1. Melt the 1/2 cup butter
  2. Add in the 3 Tbsp flour.  Make it kinda a gel / goop.
  3. Add 1/2 cup white sugar, 1/2 cup brown sugar, and 1/4 cup water.
  4. Get this boiling.
  5. Pour it over the pie.  Let it get good and covered.
  6. Bake at 425 for 15 minutes.
  7. Bake at 350 for 35-45 minutes.  Use your eyes here.
  8. Optional: sprinkle some cinnamon on top after you pull it out.

img_0315

30Oct/090

Tofflate Cookies

If it helps the name at all, give it a french accent.

I got the hankering to make some cookies and now I'm nauseous from cookie dough.  I'm also sugar high or just super tired.  Here we go.

  • 1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter (room temperature)
  • 3/4 cup granulated white sugar
  • 3/4 cup firmly packed light brown sugar
  • 2 large eggs
  • 1 1/2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
  • 2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
  • 1 teaspoon baking soda
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 1 cup semisweet chocolate chips
  • 1 cup toffee chips
  1. Cream the 1 cup (2 sticks) of butter with a mixer.
  2. Add 3/4 cup white sugar and 3/4 cup brown sugar and get that all mixed.
  3. Beat in 2 eggs one at a time.
  4. Add 1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla.
  5. In a separate bowl, mix 2 1/4 cups flour, 1 teaspoon baking soda, 1/2 teaspoon salt.
  6. Collide the flour mixture and the butter mixture.
  7. Mix in 1 cup chocolate chips and 1 cup toffee chips.
  8. You have two options:
  9. Put parchment paper on a cookie sheet.
  10. Put mounds of cookie dough on the parchment paper.
  11. 375 degrees for about 10-12 minutes.

This made a ton of cookies and I'm pretty sure all my sampling of cookie dough reduced the amount of cookies I made by at least 2-3. The original recipe says 12-14 minutes and I think it was a little too long. My first batch charred a bit but also my oven sucks. It's so small I cannot fit a normal sized cookie sheet in so I had to use a bunch of small ones. The parchment paper is a gift. Less cleanup and nothing sticks to it. So awesome.

21Oct/090

Nothing beats a good old chicken sandwich…

As I sat here waiting for some code to finish running, I started thinking about how good my lunch is going to be, and yet, how simple it is...  (in revision I realized how my tenses in this sentence are all over the place)

First a side comment about brown bagging it. Tara and I went to visit my aunt recently and she mentioned how all these girls where she works are always complaining about how they don't have money and all this, yet they go out to eat everyday. Her direct quote was "HAVEN'T YA HEARD OF BROWN BAGGIN' IT?"

So that has been a true inspiration to me. Only eat lunch out once a week and the Airliner has half-off Tuesdays so you can get a large deep dish pizza for like 10 bucks. It's enough for four people. I went yesterday and we had so much left over that I took it down to the ped-mall and gave it to some guy that held a sign saying "anything helps." The thing that pissed me off though was that the guy was pulling out a pack of beef jerky from his bag. I guess deep dish pizza is better than jerky but still, he at least had enough money to buy jerky. That stuff is expensive!

Anyways, long story short, the trick to brown bagging is preparation. You have to think in advance and try to prep some of the stuff for later. Monday I bought about four chicken breasts and cooked them on the George Foreman grill. So this morning I heated up a breast, slathered some mayo on some bread, and I'm pretty sure this is going to be one excellent sandwich.

Tagged as: , No Comments
8Oct/091

As Promised…

Recall the first note i found the other day. Well, I saw this big black truck pull up in our lot as I was leaving and I saw the guy so I decided I'd talk to him "as promised."  So he didn't seem too bad.  I think he's had lots of notes called on him.  There is one on a door downstairs (I think it's probably his door) that says something to the effect of "if there are loud noises coming from the apt, come talk to me before you call the police."  Which, I GET!

So yeah, he didn't seem like that bad of a guy and all is well.  I told him it's just hard to get out of spots and kinda annoying so avoiding parking there would be nice.  He got a note on his truck which in all honesty was kind of the person.  I have wanted to tow people who park there.  Hell, it may have been from the apartment people.  I'll try to click a picture of the note on his door.  It's pretty great.

Tagged as: , 1 Comment
7Oct/090

This is messed up.

There are some classic lines:

Guy: "You're not an American!" Host: ".... I AM an American?"

Anyways, it's worth watching and only 7 minutes long.  I need to watch ABC primetime more often.  Dateline always had that crazy pedo stuff on.  It's hard to believe people are OK with this.  I am so sheltered.

This just made me think about if I've ever let this kinda thing happen without saying anything.  The only thing I can remember is that I was at Wacky Waters (waterpark just outside the Quad Cities) when I was real young and I met this guy and his brother that I hung out with all day.  We went to play miniature golf and there were these guys behind us that kept hitting their ball up while we were still on the hole!  Except, we started to notice that they only did it to the guy's brother, who happened to have some developmental disability, but they would NOT do it when either I or my friend were putting.  His brother would make a comment back at the guys and they would just laugh at him.  I got pissed for the 10 year old or whatever I was.  Finally they hit their ball up on him, I stepped up on the it and hit the goddamn thing out of the park.  Pain Stewart style!  Of course I got kicked out of the miniature golf course but it was worth it.  The guy running it was just some punk teenager who should've seen what was happening but was too busy looking at girls or something.  Those guys were pricks.  I think that's the closest I ever got to standing up for someone else that was being picked on for something they couldn't change.

If you don't say anything you're just as bad as the people that say something negative.  Letting people think it's OK to do shitty things doesn't help anyone.  Luckily I live in a town where I don't encounter that much.

Filed under: random No Comments