A Multilingual Post

The milestones just keep on coming! Today I baked my first from-scratch apple crumb pie all on my own. I count this as my first pie because my previous experience involved Laurie, who is a culinary genius. Just as you can't really say you rode a bike when there were training wheels attached, my first pie-baking experience was very closely guided and I was afforded few opportunities to screw up.

But today I did it ALL BY MYSELF when I should have been writing cover letters. Ahem. Did I admit to that?

The illustrated version:
It all began this morning when I acknowledged my hankering for home-made baked goods, and kind of a yearning for an afternoon in the kitchen. So I grabbed the grocery list, added apples and unsalted butter at the bottom, and set off to finally re-stock our kitchen. Funny how the supplies dwindle when you've got two people/grad students scrounging for sustenance and nobody really organizing the food detail. Anyhoodle...

So I obviously started with the pie crust. No illustrations from the process, but it went pretty smoothly and, after much chilling, rolling and delicate moving, resulted in this beauty:


Whilst it chilled, I busied myself with peeling and coring the Granny Smith and Golden Delicious apples for the filling and also pastry-blending the crumb topping. Here is my "work station" with all the parts ready to be put together:



In go the apples...(pretty green stripe courtesy of Blogger photo uploads)


And the crumb topping:


By far the best picture is of Joel's face when I showed him the oven-ready pie; it is truly for his delight that I toil:


And 45 minutes later...voila!

Thankfully the red-eye in that last one doesn't seem to show up here. I actually named the file "Demon Baker" when I saved it because it is quite frightening. As in, I wouldn't feel comfortable eating my own pie if I knew someone with those eyes baked it.
*Note: If you click on the photo and open it in its full size, you will apparently SEE WHAT I MEAN. Yich!

Now for a close-up, and The Slicing:


Bon Appetit! Like, good appetite or whatever, not like the Grove City food service. Though I hear they've come a long way, I remain adverse to having my culinary endeavors compared with theirs.

Also, congratulations to the Kings on the birth of baby Jacob!! He's a Halloweenie, and in honor of the happy occasion we took the first piece of pie to Michele in the hospital. Due to a muy rapidalmente birth (Spanish for, a very rapidly birth), he doesn't look nearly as squished and funky as most newborns. In fact, he looks very much like Chris with a hint of Michele's nose:

Congratulations to the Kings, and Happy Halloweenie all around!

And yes, I totally just preempted Jacob's parents by being the first (I think) to publish a photo of him on the blogosphere. W00t!