The Grand Poobah Pie!

As promised in my last post, I now bestow upon your floured culinary heads the recipe for the grand poobah of pies!


Are you listening?  You should all rush to your respective kitchens and try this recipe; it will send you over the moon!  Seriously.  It is like one ginorm chocolate chip cookie with a lot less flour and a lot more butter.  That should hook you right there.  It is also Dave's favorite pie, and I must admit to using it on him as a distraction when:  1) I'm wanting to buy something that I know will raise Dave's eyebrows, or 2) when I'm asking for forgiveness after I buy something that I know will raise Dave's eyebrows.  I do use that particular pie tactic with discretion, however.  I certainly don't want its charms to wear thin now that I have a good system going and all . . . 

GRAND POOBAH TOLL HOUSE PIE

Doesn't this presentation look just so cute and artsy-smartsy?  Why, thank you.

Whip the eggs into a frenzy

 Add just a smidgeon of flour

Next comes some white sugar followed by . . .  

. . . some brown sugar

Mix that goodness together until smooooooth, 
just like a Barry White song 

Okay. Remember!  I'm only the messenger here!  Don't shoot me for simply relaying to you that you will now be adding a swimming pool's worth of butter to this party in a bowl

Gotta have chocolate chips if you're going to have a chocolate chip pie!  (I figured that one out all by myself; I am so proud.) 

This is the point in the recipe where we may end up parting ways.  I use a pre-made crust for my pie!  *Gasp*  Sucre bleu!  I know!  If you want to go to the work of making a home-made crust, you have my respect and my blessing.  I, however, usually wish to save my temper tantrums for bigger and better issues rather than fight with a made-from-scratch-but-it-didn't-turn-out-yet-again pie crust.  But that's just me. 

It may not be much to look at, but I promise that this pie will have you doing whatever it takes to get a second slice.  Just ask Dave--my bathrooms have never sparkled more. Just kidding.  

(Psst:  Between you and me, not really kidding.  Try it; it works.)  

Oh, hey Dave!  Heh. Heh.

Toll House Pie

Uh, excuse me, people?  Let's try that again . . .   

Award-Winning Grand Poobah Toll House Pie!

That's more like it.

INGREDIENTS:

2 eggs 1/2 cup white sugar 1/2 cup all-purpose flour 1/2 cup packed brown sugar

1 cup butter, melted and cooled 1 cup semisweet chocolate chips 1 cup chopped walnuts 1 recipe pastry for a 9 inch single crust pie

DIRECTIONS:

1.	Preheat oven to 325 degrees F (165 degrees C).
2.	In a large bowl, beat the eggs until foamy. Add the flour, white sugar and brown sugar; beat until well blended. Blend in the melted butter. Stir in the chocolate chips and walnuts. Pour batter into one unbaked 9 inch pie shell.
3.	Bake at 325 degrees F (165 degrees C) for 1 hour. Serve warm with whipped cream or ice cream, if desired.

And, I Didn't Even Burn Down the House! (That's a miracle, right there!)

When our neighborhood got together a while back for a folksy, old-fashioned, and fabulously fun picnic in the park, many, many homemade pies were held up for public scrutiny, heckling, and/or admiring. They were also held up for judging. Those pies were judged. Publicly judged. Is that what we're supposed to be about, people? Judging others? Alright, it was judging others' pies. I guess it's a different matter entirely once food gets involved in the dustup.

As it turns out, my little ol' pie was the grand poobah of the pie contest! SHRIEK! I know! Stuff like this never, hardly ever, happens to me and my pies. For the record, yes, Dave was one of those doing the judging, scrutinizing, heckling and/or admiring (and tasting, I'm guessing), but since he is a man of integrity, he recused himself from judging my particular pie. How that all worked out in the end is a mystery to me, but apparently the other judges just ate up my pie (literally) and let me have it! The prize, I mean. Not the pie. And, certainly not in the face, praise the heavens. 

For my efforts, I won a bag of beautiful cherries, a gift card to Kneaders, and a handy-dandy pie server which doesn't work quite as well as a rolling pin when it comes to defending oneself from an home intruder while in the middle of one's pie baking, but it can give a good slap!

Tune in next time to get this swimming in butter award-winning pie recipe so you can make it yourself!  Who knows?  Maybe you too will win a handy-dandy home intruder repellant in the form of a good, sturdy pie server.  (I still maintain a rolling pin would give a better klonk to the head, but whatev.)

Mercy Me! PB Cookies Going Rogue!

"Holy mackerel, Ethyl, do I have some juicy, neighborly gossip for you!  You know that Sagers woman who lives up the street?  The one with the very serious Internet shopping habit?  Yeah.  Her.  Well, she's absolutely crossed the line this time.  She strayed from the straight and narrow peanut butter Hershey Kiss cookie path and went rogue!  YES!  She did!  I know!  If we don't stop this kind of behavior, you can kiss the respectability of this neighborhood GOOOO-BYE.  I know!  Spread the word!  LaVerna for sure needs to hear about this!  I never!  . . . " 

So, yeah.  Ya'll know the ridiculously easy peanut butter cookie recipe using only three ingredients and then topped with a delicious but boring Hershey Kiss, right?  Well, I threw a wrench into the works and switched things up just a tetch.  Not so much because I suddenly became fantastically creative, but because I had mounds and mounds of leftover candy.  Heh. Heh.  

Try this at home, boys and girls.  Look around your house and see what kinds of unusual toppers you can pop onto the tops of these cookies.  Make sure those unusual toppers are edible though.  My guess is that my leftover Peeps from two Easters ago just wouldn't cut it.  Just a guess though.  

Ridiculously Easy Peanut Butter Cookies

1 cup peanut butter

1 cup granulated sugar

1 egg

Chocolate candy for topping cookies

Mix all ingredients together in a large bowl with a wooden spoon or with a hand mixer.  Personally?  I go with the hand mixer--it is much easier than fighting with that stubborn egg yolk.  (It sorta puts me in the mind of this.) Once mixture has come together, scoop out heaping teaspoonfuls onto cookie sheet, using both hands to smush dough together to form a ball.  Bake in a preheated 350 degree oven for eight minutes.  Remove cookies from oven but leave cookies on the cookie sheet.  Immediately top cookies with your spectacularly unusual toppers.  Or, just go with the Hershey Kisses.  Either way, it's a win-win sitch.  If you are going to wrap the cookies with plastic wrap, etc., for gift giving (making you a very popular friend, btw), allow chocolate to melt slightly from heat of the cookies, then place cookies in the refrigerator for about five minutes to allow the chocolate to solidify again.  Otherwise, you'll be giving away a messy, albeit delicious, heap-o-goodness.

This is what you COULD use for your cookie toppers--as boring, humdrum, or dull as they may be.  (Although this picture does make one salivate just a little bit, doesn't it?  I just may be rethinking this whole thing, now that I see this . . .)

Or, you could turn your neighborhood on its ear and go for one of my brilliant choices!  Never mind that it was simply out of desperation to rid my house of all of this chocolate. Just don't pay any attention to that part.  Swooosh!  Wipe it right out of your brains.  Swooosh!  Gone?  Let's try that again.  Swooosh!  Whatev.

Yes, yes.  I KNOW I still have a lot of candy to plow through.  Stop spying on me through this photo.  I'm doing the best I can here, people.  I'll get to it, don't worry.  I have grand plans for all of those malt balls which you can see here, by the by.  Bet you'll wish you were one of my neighbors when that brilliant idea becomes a baked-good reality!  Hey!  If you were one of my neighbors, you and LaVerna could totally be gossip girl buddies at my expense! 

I'm not going to swear on Gideon's Bible or anything, but I do believe these cookies are gluten free.  FWIW.

Way More Groovy Than the New iPhone!

Nah, no iphone for me.  Nope.  I'm pretty much stuck in the 1960's as far as my eeeelectronics are concerned.  It's weird, though--for some reason, I keep feeling the need to phone Moscow.  Huh. So strange.

"Hi!  Wanna come over and watch "Bewitched" or "The Beverly Hillbillies" with me?  

We can drink some Tang and eat a bunch of Sixlets and Slap Stix Caramel suckers and Jiffy Pop until we make ourselves sick.  Then, we'll rat our hair into a huge beehive 'do and go crazy with the Aquanet.  Yeah?  Far out!"

I know.  I'm such a nerd.

Happy Birthday, Mr. Black Velvet Suit!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO THE 

HANDSOME DUDE IN THE 

THREE-PIECE BLACK VELVET SUIT!!!

In this photo, Birthday Boy Dave was post-high school, pre-mission, and had a thing for fat ties and velvet duds.  His platform shoes were pretty hep too, making him even longer and lankier.  (Wish he wore those platform shoes now since I have a thing for my 4" heels, causing me to forever say to Birthday Boy Dave, "Be sure to stand up straight, cuz I've got my high heels goin' on!")

For you sharp-shooters out there who have an eye for detail, you may recognize that Birthday Boy Dave is standing in front of Heritage Halls, my place of residence during my freshman year at BYU.  Yes, you would be the Final Jeopardy winner if you said, "Glory be, I think that's where Christian was living merely six weeks ago, isn't it?!"  BINGO!  Yup, same place!  And, you would be the Double Jeopardy winner if you said, "And, didn't Ashley live there during her freshman year, too?"  Crazy that what goes around, comes around, huh!  Seanie skipped the whole on-campus, cinderblock housing thing right out of high school and went straight for a shack in Honduras.  Go figure.

Further proof of the same old, same old.  I think the cinderblock walls we see behind Birthday Boy Dave are identical to those in Christian's and Ashley's Heritage Halls bedrooms.  Nothing. has. changed.  But, hey!  What's Birthday Boy Dave doing in my room? Whoops.  Heh, heh. Don't ask me.  I have no recollection of what he was doing in there because I'm fiercely distracted by my ginorm Jackie O. sunglasses on the shelf up above Birthday Boy Dave's head. What the what?

BIRTHDAY BOY DAVE FACTS:

--One of six boys

--Goes by "Dave", "Sags", "Papa", "Mower Man", "Monkey Boy"*

--Loves Japanese food, especially Katsudon

--Love his lawn; I mean, LUUUUUVS his lawn

--Dick Van Dyke, Andy Griffith, and Jimmy Stewart are his heroes

--Is happiest when mowing his lawn

--Interviewed in h.s. by national news about his amateur film

--Mows his lawn at least three times a week during the summer

--Is one of those black licorice eaters *shudder*

--Calls his lawn "Your Highness"

--Spoils his high-maintenance wife rotten

--Adores his children

--Cannot get enough of his grandson

--Wishes that he could mow his lawn every. single. day.

HAPPY, HAPPY BIRTHDAY, 

MOWER MAN!

And, while we're on the subject of our beloved BYU campus (and, yes we were--weren't you paying any attention at all???), here I am as a college sophomore with those good old Deseret Towers (may they R.I.P.) behind me.  Or, would that be, in front of me?  But jeepers, ya got me on this one, guys.  What in sam hill AM I doing in this photo, anyway?  If memory serves, my friend, Sheri, and I were a little over-eager to hit up Sundance Ski Resort, and we thought that this would be a close substitute.  Frankly, I think what we were actually(!) doing was showing off and being flat-out dorks.  Unfortunately, that part of me hasn't changed a whole bunch . . .

*jk about that one

Don't Try This At Home, Boys and Girls!

A big shout-out to Jordan and Kimball who introduced me to the awesome video below.  The video is so awesome, in fact, that it caused me to sit completely rapt for exactly 6:06 minutes, slack-jawed, horrified, and amused all at once.  That's quite the dance party mash-up.

Now, it's your turn:

Make sure you have your volume up; 

the accompanying music contributes to at least half of the coolness factor here. 

I know!  Right?! Too bad this spiffy Phantom Flex somethin' somethin' slo-mo camera thingy used for this video wasn't around when we were kids because suddenly what was deemed as pretty darn naughty by my parents most certainly would have magically become supercalifragilisticexpialidociously spectacular if seen in slo-mo like this!  Stupidity captured at 2500 frames per second indeed!

I'm pretty positive that my older brothers pulled off several of these antics back in the day.  In fact, I'm sure of it cuz we always had Bic lighters a-go-go floating all around our house, and now we all see why.  That big carpet burn in one brother's bedroom?  That's just small potatoes. And, I don't think my mom ever fully recovered from all of the homemade rockets and huge floating candle lanterns made out of dry-cleaning bags sent whizzing into either the neighbors' dead trees or onto their tinder-in-waiting-dry-as-the-desert rooftops.  Some of those rockets often contained a cargo load of insects, some of which were subsequently burned at the stake by a powerful magnifying glass if they had the (un)lucky fate of surviving the blastoff and landing. Or, if not them, then it was their tiny little aunts and uncles who did the Joan of Arc thing.  And, don't even get me started on the blow darts and the neighbors' cats.  You don't even want to know . . . 

But, my!  What great footage my scarred-for-life childhood experiences would have provided had we owned one of these Phantom Flex camera thingys!  It just goes to show that one's perspective of tom foolery can be viewed as either wickedly mischievous or as cool as all get out--just depends on your camera.  Yes, ye brothers of mine?  

Me? Wigging Out?

Just because I sniffle and boohoo a little bit nearly every day as I say humble prayers for my young elder, and just because I stand wistfully at his bedroom door looking in, and just because I refuse to pack away his yellow sneakers and his red sneakers that lay about our mudroom, don't think that I'm freaking out!  I've got things under control.  At least, as far as Christian knows.  Poor Dave, though.  All I've got to say is that he is one patient man.  And, johnny-on-the-spot with a Kleenex.

Seriously, though.  I'm as proud as a pickle of Christian and wouldn't want him to be doing anything else at this time of his life.  What an awesome example of goodness and righteousness and dedication he is to me!  Jeepers, I love him so!


*Well, looky there!  We're at exactly 1 month, 7 days and counting . . . 

The Final F.R.I.D.A.Y. Freakout For Christian--For Now

Ahhh.  A few weeks back, we had one last F.R.I.D.A.Y. fling before Christian embarked on his most awesome adventure of serving a two-year LDS mission in Stockholm, Sweden.  


*sniff*  


So sorry.  It is hard, people.  Hold on . . .  


Anywho!  


Yep, I'm okay.  Just give me a sec here. 


*sniff*

Anywho!  Now as I was saying, we were lucky enough to squeeze in one last F.R.I.D.A.Y. freakout merely days before we drop-kicked Christian out of the car at the curb of the MTC.  As good fortune would have it, Ashley, Kimball, Dave, and Marian were able to join the F.R.I.D.A.Y. regulars.  In honor of this very auspicious F.R.I.D.A.Y. freakout, Kimball randomly but  graciously represented the firefighter brotherhood and wore that revered uniform with dignity and great élan.  You can see by the look on his face that he doesn't take this charge to impersonate represent his fellow fighters any too lightly.


Aldolpho, on the other hand, was a pill and a photog hog and ended up sneaking into all of our pics, including the two below.  Looks as happy as a clam, doesn't he.  But, of course he would.  And, why not?  He has free food, free transportation, and a head of red hair that would make even this redhead follicularly jealous.  Not to mention this redhead.  And, let's not leave out this carrot top.  Which makes this carrot top come to mind, which always leaves me a little skeptical about the authenticity of that red hair.  This is the redhead who gets my vote!

Goodness to pete.  This happy chap is always wanting to be the center of attention.  (I was meaning Aldolpho!  Sheesh, you guys.) (Ha! Did I scare you for a minute there, Sean?  He who is the most humble of the humble?!)

So!  What was your verdict from our previous F.R.I.D.A.Y. frou-frou?  Was Aldolpho bobsledding precariously on top of a bottle of steak sauce, or was he desperately seeking attention while posing publicly as a bawdy bathing beauty?  Crazy dude.

My, I do miss that Elder Sagers.  

Snarfing Down Some Onomatopoeias

So!  I see that you survived my oh-so-very-clever (really? clever? um, no) "Ode To Sugar" read here.  And you came back!  Wow!  I. am. impressed!  Give yourself a sticky little lollipop for being willing to subject yourself to even more tiring nonsense by showing up at this blog yet again!  But, I'm glad you did because hopefully that means you noticed that I've been doing some mighty fine 'splainin' about that pile of candy spilling all over my house.  Aaaand?  It's really not as bad as you thought, right?  Right? Well, not quite as bad as you thought.  Yes, it is bad.   

All right!  I admit it.  I am a sucker (zing!) for candy!  The evil witch in "Hansel and Gretel" and I are like THIS.  Tight.  We get it.  Candy draws a crowd.  Candy is pretty.  Candy looks happy. Candy is fun to say.  C-c-c-c-c-aaaaaaaaandy.  See?  The mere pronunciation of it is delicious.  It makes me feel the need to completely surround myself with it.  However, pronouncing the word candy doesn't even come close to the deliciousness of saying the word cake.  Or, cookies.  Or, popcorn.  Say it with me, people--pawpah-korn.  

Mmmm, I love me a good, old fashioned onomatopoeia. Which, technically, these words probably are NOT.  I don't know.  I'm no linguist.  But, if you say them with just the right guttural sound in your throat, they'll make you absolutely rabid with desire for a freshly baked cookkkkkie (see how it just rattles around in your mouth so tastily?) or a big mess o' German chocolate keck!  Oooh, and that reminds me of this hilarity!  Luuuuuv Franck Eggelhoffer and his $1200 keck--such a classic.

*I cracked up when I saw the qualifier in the bottom right-hand corner of the record album cover shown at the top of this post:  NON-BREAKABLE IN NORMAL USE.  I guess what the manufacturer is saying is that if I choose to use this record album to hit a home intruder over his head, there is no guarantee that it won't break?  What about using it to play Frisbee golf? What about if I try to get crafty with it to make a nifty molded candy dish for our hep-cat music room?  Ah.  Apparently, the guarantee clause doesn't cover creative genius-ness such as that. 

on·o·mat·o·poe·ia

   [on-uh-mat-uh-pee-uh, ‐mah-tuh‐] Show IPA

noun

1.

the formation of a word, as cuckoo, meow, honk,  or boom,  byimitation of a sound made by or associated with itsreferent.

2.

a word so formed.

3.

the use of imitative and naturally suggestive words forrhetorical, dramatic, or poetic effect.