Barking Mad

Nobel Peace Pies

Is there any one thing that says "Summer Time" to you? 

For some it might be the 4th of July and all of the celebrations and parties it brings with it.  For others it's taking the shrink wrap off the boat, the cover off of the grill and breaking out the beer and brats, it could even be seeing their green grocer unload crates of fresh local corn on the cob - still tightly wrapped in it's green husks,  and for some it might be the arrival of their annual allergies.

For me there is nothing in the world that says summer time like strawberries.  Fresh, ripe, ruby red berries that are bursting with sweetness and flavor.  The smell alone of a strawberry brings back memories of sitting along the shore in Maine, with close friends and family while the embers of a pit fire close by burn red, orange, and white, and the smells of a lobster bake with earthy potatoes and bright yellow, crisp juicy ears of corn waft by on tendrils of smoke.  Afterward we all settle around the fire and dip into gorgeous bowls of fresh farmer's market strawberries with a dollop of  whipped cream on top.

I eat strawberries all year long.  If I can't get them fresh, then I load my morning smoothies up with frozen strawberries, a little yogurt and some skim milk or orange juice and call it good!

Over the 4th of July weekend I decided to try my hand at making a fresh strawberry pie...something I had never undertaken before.  I scoured my lonely few cookbooks for a recipe and couldn't find anything I liked, so I went out and surfed the web and found one that looked relatively easy.  

I'll preface this by saying that I suck when it comes to making pie crusts so I got a couple of frozen ones and used them.  I just can not, for the life of me, get a pie crust that I make to turn out halfway decent or anything resembling edible.  They are either so dry that they end up being a choking hazard, or so mushy that again, they're a choking hazard.   Pie crusts elude me. 

The recipe is very easy and takes almost no time to prepare.  Once prepared, all you have to do is pop it in the ice box to chill for a few hours and voila!  You have one of the best strawberry pies ever!  And I'm not saying this to be vain...I sent the extra one (this recipe makes two) to work with Gareth and they proclaimed it award worthy! 

So without further ado, how about we get on with the photos...because what good is a post about an amazing pie without some pictures?

Go out and get yourself some beautiful strawberries, then wash and hull them.  Oh, believe me, it was hard to stop at just washing and hulling.  I wanted to eat every single berry! 

   

   Gather your ingredients.  Two pre-baked 9 inch pie shells.  Sugar (You don't have to use super-fine sugar, I've just gotten in the habit of using it lately. Regular granulated sugar is fine), corn starch, 3oz package of strawberry Jell-O, and water.

    

 

 

 

This is the only part of the process that takes some time and attention.  Stirring, oh-the-constant-stirring of the sugar, cornstarch and water.  You need to stand right there and watch over it, stirring it constantly until boiling and until it reaches a syrupy consistency.

 

 

Add your Jello-O...Oh my gosh!  It smells so good!

   

Remove from heat and stir in Jell-O completely. Let cool for a few minutes.

 

I didn't pre-load my pie shells with the berries because I didn't want the shells to become soggy.  Now's the part where if you have some small people just hanging around your house (or in my case, standing directly behind me, begging me for strawberries every 32 seconds!), now would be a good time to take advantage of the free labor they afford you....

 

...but keep an eye on those little hands!  Before you know it, they're absconding with those gorgeous strawberries!   If you can keep your free child laborer on task, they tend to do a fantastic job of arranging the berries in the crust!

 

 

The recipe says that it makes two pies.  I had berries left over, but not enough for two pies.  So I grabbed some frozen raspberries out of the freezer and got creative with the second pie.

 

 

Top your pies with equal amounts of the gelatin-cornstarch-sugar and water mixture.

 

 

Pop those gorgeous pies in the ice-box (fridge for you non-New Englanders!) to chill for a few hours...and voila!  You have gorgeously set pie. 

 

I got a little over-excited by the smell of this scrumptious pie and as I was placing the first piece of pie on the plate it sort of didn't quite make it to the plate.

 

Ahhhhh!  This is much better.  Place a scoop of vanilla ice cream next to your pie and you have a little piece of Heaven right there on your plate! 

 

My only problem with this pie is that I think it's a wee bit too sweet.  However, since dropping 4-6 Coca Cola a-day habit, a lot of things taste overly sweet to me.  That said, I still think the sugar in this recipe could be cut out almost completely using something like Splenda and a sugar-free gelatin.  I'm going to try doing that the next time around and maybe playing with different flavored Jell-O as well.   You could probably use peaches, or apricots, cherries and other flavored Jello-O's as well, using this same exact recipe.

Despite me thinking it was a bit too sweet, Gareth thought it was one of the best pies he'd ever eaten and Gaby heartily agreed with her daddy!  Heck, maybe if we put together a whole bunch of these pies we could take them to Congress and the Senate and tell them to shut up and eat them...they'd be so busy enjoying the awesomeness that is this pie that they wouldn't have time to argue with one another...talk about an act worthy of a Nobel Peace Prize...no, make that Nobel Peace Pies! 

 

We Did NOT Eat Our Cat!

It seems that the order in which a couple of mobile uploads posted to my Facebook page have caused a few raised eyebrows out there.  

Click to embiggen (I know that's just a made-up word, work with me here!) and get the full story

 

Yesterday I took a picture of our Ragdoll cat, Geronimo, who was laying across a bunch of Gaby's toys and refused to let her have them back.  Almost immediately after that, for some odd reason I took a picture of the roast chicken that I'd just taken out of the oven to baste.  Poor Laurie (from Fooleryland), thought perhaps it was a "Before and After" shot. A couple of other people bemusedly chimed in and well, now I'm posting evidence that we did in fact, NOT roast the cat and serve him up alongside the rissoto and steamed carrots that accompanied that wonderful roast chicken!

See, here's Geronimo happily in Gareth's arms...wondering if he's going to get a taste of the lovely chicken...

 

Besides, have you seen this here fur beastie lately? 

 

 

He's GINORMOUS!  Geronimo weighs more than 20lbs! He never ever would have fit into that roasting pan.

Don't worry my luvlies, I haven't started cruising cat cuisine sites nor will I start displaying stickers like this one, here on the walls of the asylum...

 

Banner image stolen from this site...be warned, if you click on that link you will never be able to UNSEE what you're going to see!  You've been warned.

 
 

Next Thing Ya Know, She'll Have Us Up at 3AM Doing Push-Ups!

Meg has informed us that we will in fact, be eating these. Yes ma'am!

 

   

 

   

   

Just wait until you see all the, the...em, errr, ahhhh. well, the crap goodness that's packed inside these things.  I'll post a vlog of the entire ordeal lovely meal once it's all said and done.  We have also been informed that we'll be doing a considerable amount of push ups should we not wish to partake in our government sponsored feast. After all, they're "Warfighter Recommended, Warfighter Tested, Warfighter Approved™"  I guess, if all those warfighters can eat them, then a blogger, her British hubby, and their four year old can manage to choke one down enjoy one as well! 

A lot of you have asked if Meg is enjoying the rest of her leave, here in NY. I'd say so. One of the first things she did was look at our lawn and shake her head...

 

   

Hard to believe it's already Wednesday and by Sunday afternoon she'll be winging her way towards the UK where she'll be stationed until she deploys to the middle east in the next couple of months.  So, we're enjoying every single second of having her home with us.  This is despite the fact that she's had to put up with a whiny mom who has one of the worst sinus colds she's ever had, and a little sister who is so happy to have her big sister home again that she's been bouncing off of the walls almost continuously since Meg stepped foot in the front door.

The drive back from Maine was bittersweet to say the least.  Maine is every bit as special to Meg as it is to me and she was hit by the realization that she probably won't be back in the lobster state for two or three years. 

On the way back towards NY, on Sunday morning, Meg and I climbed all over the rocks at Nubble Light in York, and then just sat there and inhaled the salty sweet perfume of the Atlantic ocean and didn't need to say much because we were both thinking the same thing...how much we hated leaving.

   

At some point our goal is to make Maine our real home again.  I don't know when, but I do know that we will.  Until then, no matter where we are Meg, you always have a home with us...we'll do our best to make "home" wherever we are!

 
P.S. I know I was supposed to post Part II of, "It's Just a Boob" today.  I completely forgot.  It'll be up later tomorrow! 

This Time Last Year

 
Autumn '09 foliage taken along Rt. 302 in Naples, ME

This time last year I was sitting in my comfy home in Maine, recovering from the end of the 22-month long litigation surrounding the "Very Bad Thing" and as a result I came down with...

The Flu from Hell - the one where I broke up with Zicam!

I also discovered that despite getting in the spirit of St. Patrick's Day, I'll never ever...

Dye my beer green again!

March also saw me come clean about the years-long affair I was involved in.  Boy it sure felt good to...

Get this off my chest!

I also received an early morning phone call that very nearly gave me a heartastroke when...

Speedracer (my oldest daughter) got busted!

This year, I'm sitting in a rented house in upstate NY, about to head back to Maine to make one of our final visits to the home that we still own, but not for much longer.  I've kept pretty quiet about what was going on back there because I feel such huge guilt over what's happening to the house we invested so much in, partially remodeled and are now most probably going to lose to foreclosure. I'm so grateful that Gareth was able to find a job so quickly after losing his, back in Maine, but it's still bittersweet to return back to a place that will always be 'home' for us. 

So whilst we're back in Maine sorting things out this weekend, enjoy some older posts from this time last year.  And if you're still anxious to read more about life in the asylum, go ahead and dig into the archives. 

Hope you all have a wonderful weekend!

 

It's a Meatloaf-Sandwich-for-Breakfast Kind of Day

 
image credit

I woke up this morning with a hangover headache.

Alright alright, it was in fact probably a wee bit of a hangover.   Gareth came home from work last night and knew that I hadn't had a great deal of time yesterday to really delve into all of the comments that were left on yesterdays post, or the waterfall of emails it elicited and was a bit worried that once Gaby went down for the night that I'd spend hours on the computer, frustrated.  So he took Gaby and I to dinner where I ordered my first ever Blue Moon ale.   I am not a fan of beer, ales, stouts, or even alcohol in general. I don't think they taste that great.  I drink a few times a year. I try not to overdo it because I've been known to snowboard down the stairs after having a few too many glasses of wine.  Oh...that would be the stairs IN the house!

I don't much care for beer because of the aftertaste it leaves in my mouth and it just doesn't taste good to me.  However, I thought the Blue Moon looked good for some reason so I ordered one with my meal.  A tall one.  A really tall one.   Our server told me it was her favorite ale and it had a slightly nutty/citrus flavor. 

It arrived at our table with an orange slice perched on the side of the glass.  I took a first tentative sip and discovered that I liked it.  I really liked it.  Hey Mikey!  She likes it!  

 

Sorry about that last line.  You'll only get it if you're as ancient as I am.   Anyhow, that first Blue Moon went down extremely well and Gareth, that cheeky bloke I'm married to, asked me if I wanted another? If I didn't know better, I'd say he was trying to get lucky!  

Magically, another tall frosty citrusy (that's not how that's spelled, is it?) Blue Moon landed in front of me. And down it went...albeit a bit slower than the first.  

 

By the time I got around to finishing my second ale, my cheeks were bright red and my nose was bright enough to light up a runway in the middle of a blizzard.  Or that's the way it felt anyhow.   I handed the car keys to Gareth and tucked my hand into the corner of his elbow as I weaved my way out of the restaurant.

As we made our way home Gareth mentioned that we were running really low on milk and should probably stop and pick some up.  Right at that split second my bladder commanded my full attention and I looked at Gareth and told him to go straight home because I had to pee like a racehorse!  It didn't help matters that every single bump he went over damned near sent me into the land of near-incontinence (let's keep in mind, I've had FIVE kids!), and then Gaby kept kicking the back of my seat.  I felt as if the two of them were conspiring to see who could make mommy pee her pants first!

I jumped out of the car and nearly fell flat on my face trying to wobble my way up the front stairs and into the house and then sprinted for the loo!  Relief!  And with it came almost instant sobriety.  That's just the way my body works.  I spent a little time working through the avalanche of emails and comments from earlier in the day and eventually climbed into bed and only to fall into a fitful sleep full of dreams about some sort of bizarre elephant-lion hyrbid.  I'm sure those dreams were a mixture of the Blue Moon and the fact that I fell asleep watching Planet Earth on the Animal Planet channel.  

I woke up seriously craving a huge bowl of Shredded Wheat and glass or orange juice.  This is par for the course when it comes to the night after I've over-indulged when it comes to alcohol and left my liver begging for it's life!  I always want Shredded Wheat.  Some people swear that a huge greasy fry up will kill the hangover whilst others say it's surely a little of the hair of the dog that bit you that will have you feeling aces in no time flat.  For me, it's always Shredded Wheat.  I was practically salivating over how badly I wanted a bowl of the brittle hay-like cereal.

I took a couple of bowls down from the cupboard, grabbed the Rice Krispies for Gaby and the Shredded Wheat for myself and went to grab the milk out of the fridge.  I lifted the gallon milk container and to my horror there was barely enough left for Gaby's cereal and not a drop more.  Shit!

I looked at the box of Shredded Wheat and my empty bowl and stood there, lower lip hanging out whilst I listened to the sounds of Snap, Crackle and Pop taunting me from Gaby's cereal bowl.  Bastards!

I sat Gaby down with her cereal and a glass or orange juice and thought about how a fried egg with a little bacon and toast didn't sound so bad after all.  I dug around in the meat drawer in the fridge and grabbed a pound of bacon then turned a burner on the stove on and banged a pan down on the stove top to heat up.  I really wish I hadn't  "banged" the pan down so hard.  My head is still reverberating from the sound. I opened up the package of bacon and the smell that hit me nearly dropped me to my knees.  Cheeses of Nazareth, how old was the bacon...that pig had surely passed it's "Best By" date.  In between dry heaves I scanned the package and the best by date made me gag even harder...December 15, 2009!  Shit!

OK, so I guess it's just going to be a fried egg on a piece of toast, with a glass of orange juice.  I dropped a tiny pat of butter into the heating frying pan and as it sizzled away I removed the carton of idiot proof eggs from the fridge and set them on the counter.  I opened the carton and to my horror discovered that the only thing remaining in the carton where the cracked and empty shells of eggs I'd used for something else.  Like an idiot, I'd put the empty carton back in the fridge.  Shit!

I shoved the empty egg carton into the trash bin and plopped myself down on the couch, completely disgruntled, head pounding, and stuck my lower lip out as far as it would go.   No milk, no eggs...no breakfast! 

Gaby had been watching my entire tantrum and bless her heart, offered to share her now-soggy Rice Krispies with me.  She said, "Mumma, you gots to have some breakfast! It'll make you poop!"  I told her I was good and that she was such a sweetheart for offering to share her own breakfast with me.  I stood back up and went over to the fridge, opened it and just stood there and stared into it.  Maybe I was hoping for something to jump out at me and offer itself to me.  The only thing that looked remotely appetizing was some leftover meatloaf from Tuesday's dinner.  The thought of a cold slab of ground chicken, oatmeal, eggs (dammit, that was what I used the last two eggs for!), onions and Worcestershire sauce, working it's way down my throat did not sound terribly awesome.  But then I spotted it...a loaf of bread, some mayo and the last bottle of Coke in the fridge. 

I can tell you that was pretty much the most amazing meatloaf sandwich I have ever eaten.  And my hangover headache?  Gone.  Not a trace left. Looks like a meatloaf sandwich is my new Shredded Wheat!

As I was putting away the mayo and the rest of the meatloaf I noticed that a rather large jar of maraschino cherries had been tipped over in the fridge. The lid was laying at an odd angle against the jar of cherries and thick, red, cherry syrup was dripping all over the inside of the fridge and down the back, and in between the drawers and onto all of the produce.  

Shit!

**********

Thanks again for all of the lovely, heartfelt and supportive comments on yesterday's post.  I have some final thoughts on some of the stuff that was mentioned and alleged as a result of the post and the comments it generated, but I'm gonna give it a day or two before delving back into it.  I still have about a hundred emails to sort through and read (or trash - that Peggy sure is a verbose creature!), and it's going to take me some time to mull it all over.  I am still confused as ever.  But then...that's nothing new.