Apple Pie

To the best of my efforts, I didn't type "applie" but I'll be spell checking for it again later...

Two weeks ago I went to the Dupont Farmer's market on Sunday since I had missed the Saturday Courthouse market when I was hanging out at P.R. Harris, getting ready to put other people's Hands on DC. The rhubarb is still not in season, in fact, there really isn't any fruit in season yet, but there are apples. And since I'd been wishing and hoping for rhubarb to make a pie I decided I should make an apple pie instead. So I bought a lot of apples - granny smith and a few other varieties.
And then I waited... And waited... HODC came and went and my two presentations came and went, and Wednesday night when I got home early (ok, like 6:30) I promptly made the pie crust.
Two sticks of butter makes it better.
Then I went for a run (because if there are two sticks of butter in that crust, I need a run before I eat any) and when I got home, sliced apples. I used my so sharp it'll cut you knife (because it has) and made super thin slices of apple, then mixed it with a flour, sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg and lemon juice....
And rolled out the crust. Thoughts on this: when you refridgerate crust, cut it in half and mold it into discs not balls.
Filled the crust with apples and voila.....

Possibly my best apple pie ever:


Gooey and delicious, but not runny.


Bon Appetit!

Saturday: 5 reasons to be happy

Need I say more? Tomatoes are in season!

The Silly Silly

Surprise after bringing SB to the airport:


But I'm afraid to eat it (it's BLUE):


What mom sent:


She sent these too, kisses!:

I like tourists.

WHAT?

Today has been very productive, outside of the fact that I haven't written this memo yet. I have chocolate marble banana bread in the oven, made smoothies (sans ice), and went for my 1 week out run.

Cherry Blossom is on Sunday. I'm feeling: trepidation. :)
But my run this afternoon was good - I went down from the Marine Corps Memorial, past Arlington Cemetery, along the Potomac on the VA side, across 14th St bridge and into the madness.
The madness being Cherry Blossom crowds at the Tidal Basin of course. It actually wasn't that bad, but the people who decided they should drive down there? Kind of a stupid idea. There I am, running faster than you folks in your cars. So I continued past the Jefferson Memorial (my favorite) and along the river on the DC side with the Cherry Blossoms. There were lots of people out and about (the weather today was also lovely) - people walking, running, biking, etc.
I even saw a bus full of sakura girls (or just Japanese girls dressed up for the parade I guess) escorted by a DC police car.
Then I ran past the Lincoln Memorial, over Memorial Bridge and back past the Cemetery and the Marine Corps.

Cool route. So why did I decide I like tourists? It might have been the historical symbolism involved in the run, but it's nice to ignore DC's problems (Marion Barry, DCPS, guns, crack - heck, all of those can be contributed to Marion) and see what the tourists see* when they come to DC. Also, amidst this recession it's nice to see people still able to enjoy themselves and take a vacation. I know they stand on the left and hog the sidewalks downtown, but I guess I also have the privilege of taking the Blue Bus to work/school and not having to deal much with them.
Maybe it's just the weather making my disposition a little sunnier (maybe, especially because I'm screwed on my bracket now that Pitt lost, Louisville didn't help either).

I dunno. Memo time. House smells like chocolate and bananas (and smiles).

*Unless they have the misfortune of staying in one of the budget NY Ave hotels. Then they'll see the other side of DC.

What can your pre-tax dollars do?

NERD ALERT - We're not talking cookies here (but if I could repay loans in cookies...)!

Allow me to digress from baking here while I try to work out this idea I came up with at school today. I'm sure someone else with much more influence than I have has had it too, but as grad students with a gazillion dollars in student loans (no, I'm not going to do the math, I don't want to know the real number) clearly we're looking for a way to not be in debt for the rest of our lives. Especially thanks to AIG and predatory lenders destroying the economy.

In class we were talking about social security and Medicare and 401Ks so this was a kind of related topic: Why can't we repay student loans with tax-free dollars? Example, like your flexible spending accounts, a chunk of money comes monthly from your paycheck and goes to health expenses. So in this proposal, the money you would be putting in the bank then sending back to whoever is managing your loan would go straight from your paycheck to the loan people, without setting foot in your bank account (or passing go or collecting $200 dollars). And you wouldn't pay taxes on the money that you're paying interest on. 

Pros: 

You don't have to pay taxes on that part of your wages. 

Less defaulting on loans - if you're employed you automatically are paying for your loans. 

Employers may find it attractive to include loan repayment as a benefit (which may decrease your salary).

Incentivizes college attendance. (A little bit.)

Cons:

How exactly would this be managed? Does the govt need to set up one loan/repayment place so that employers aren't tasked with managing all of that hassle? (Or would this create new jobs!)

Thoughts? It seemed like a good idea to us in the lounge - those of us who actively need to plan how to get out of this kind of debt-up-to-our-eyeballs. 

Side note: did you watch Mama's Boys? It would have been the worst reality dating show I'd ever seen until that jerk on The Bachelor dumped his fiance on live TV. Anyway, there was this one very fake girl who had $130k of debt - and not the student loan kind. More like the fake tits and over spending credit card kind. Dealbreaker!

But maybe some serious and super-smart economist or Congressional historian can explain to me why this isn't working? (Dear Steven Levitt, if you were to post on my blog I would have a nerdgasm.)

Note, somewhere in this post I used have in 3 different tenses. In a row. And I think the sentence made sense. 

GREEN.

Did I ever tell you about the time I dyed my brother green (mom, stop reading...)? 

It wasn't that bad, I was just being stupid, and maybe I was 12 years old..... I decided that while it's fun to play with Oobleck (corn starch + water) it would be WAAAAY more fun to play with green Oobleck. So I added a few drops of food coloring.

Bad idea. 

All of a sudden our hands were green and of course so was a good lot of my two year old brother. Bath time, immediately. He may have had some stains for a while, but that's ok, I mean, you can eat food coloring so it's not bad for you.

And now the point of this story: 

I thought it would be cute to make green rice krispies treats for St Patrick's day (and cuter if I could find a shamrock cookie cutter but no luck - see Baked & Wired Valentine's treats). Anyway, they came out sort of Army camo colored. Taste good, but a little pale.

Lesson learned. Green food coloring is for frosting ONLY. 

Sunday Champagne Brunch

The Spread:

Clockwise from the melon:
Cantaloupe, coffee cake, eggs (which SB made for us) & potatoes, banana bread, raspberry scones, mimosa, cranberry muffins.