Pie Report: Apple & Pear Five Spiced

I made a Pie on Sunday.

Last fall it was Soup. This fall, it's Pie. It is not, however, a pie diet. That would be suicidal for my body. I'm limiting myself to one pie a week. As much as I love soup, I love pie more. And it's a toss up of what I love more: baking pie or eating pie.

So, I'll try to document my pie baking adventures and pie baking philosophy. Sadly, this documentation will not include photographic evidence. I don't have a digital camera (gasp!) and, also, I'm too lazy to take and upload pictures. Also, my pies get eaten quickly.

Over the summer I experimented with chiffon pies. Now it's fall, and it's time to move on to the delights of double crust, fruit filled pies. I'm talking to you apple!

Back to Sunday, when I made a pie, it was a double crust pie filled with apples, pears and Chinese Five Spice. Up to Sunday, I'd only used Five Spice in stir fry and my pathetic attempts at Singapore Noodles.



Chinese Five Spice was a surprisingly excellent accent flavor. And the pears helped out too. The best part about putting pears in the pie, I didn't have to peel them! Pear skin bakes away! Apple skin, not so much. But this new fun, fact about pear baking is making a pear pie for next weekend seem much more appealing.

The pie was good. It got eaten within 48 hours. It made an excellent breakfast. The hardest part in making it was, as always, waiting for it to cool. Which I failed to do. I lasted about an hour and a half. Then I just had to cut into it to see what the heck Chinese Five Spiced pie tasted like (it tasted like yumminess) and a half inch deep sea of juices poured out into the space my pie slice left.

I will work on my self control for next week.

Pie Report Conclusion: Apple + Pear + Chinese Five Spice = GOOD PIE.

Recipe after the jump.



This recipe is adapted from a recipe in this book. It's also from memory, so accuracy might be a problem.

Double Crust: 2 c flour, 1tsp salt, 1/2 c veg oil, 1/2 c cold water

Filling:
3 1/2 c apples (peeled, cored and sliced)
3 1/2 c pears (cored and sliced)(*)
2 T lemon juice
1/2 c sugar
Mix the above ingredients and let juice in a strainer suspended over a plate or bowl for ten minutes (so that ideally the apples will lose much of their water and not deflate your pie too much when you bake it...which only half worked for my pie)
1 1/2 T corn starch
1/4 c sugar
2 t Chinese Five Spice
Mix the starch 1/4 c sugar and Chinese Five Spice. Add to juiced apples & pears. Mix well. Pile on top of pie crust. Place several dabs of butter or margarine over pile of fruit then place second crust on top. Seal and flute edges. Cut vents into top crust.

Bake: at 400 degrees F for 30 minutes, then at 350 degrees F for 30 more minutes.

Let rest at least 2 hours (probably more) before eating. Resist cutting into it...if you can.

(*)No, you don't need to peel the pears!!! It's fantastic. No-peel fruit!


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What Not To Wear To Work:

Multiple bracelets that jangle.

An annoyed person in a cubical near you, is probably fantasizing about how best to rip them off your hands....or just chop off your hands.
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Blogging is Back: Boise State is Blue

I'm watching Bosie State vs. Oregon on espn360.com (how else is a girl without cable supposed to survive?) and just feel like sharing.

First issue: the field. It's blue.
Second issue: the Boise St. uniforms. They're blue.
Third issue: Blue on Blue = I can't tell what the heck is going on when Boise State has the ball.



Click through to read my sporadic blogging.


10:36 Boise State just had quite a drive including a go-for-it on 4th down and a recovered fumble off the snap for some serious yardage, followed immediately by another recovered fumble off the snap but this time for a loss, and then a field goal kick...that didn't happen. Score still zero - zero. You people who are sleeping. You're not missing much.

10:38 The blue field freaks out the announcer. I'm not freaked out by the blue field. I'm annoyed. Because it's not so easy to pick out what the home team is doing. Though right now, it looks like they are sacking a Duck.

10:39 Disclosure #1: I love Boise State because they trampled on Okahoma in the best ever made for tv movie but seriously happening in real life college bowl game.

10:42 Oh my. This Kirk Herbstreit Salsa-Boy Dancing With The Stars commercial is so hilarious, I don't even mind that espn360 plays it every single commercial break. I like Herbie, despite his alma mater.

10:47 End of first quarter. Still zero - zero. Not so much fun. At least the commercials are good. Mia Hamm in a commercial! Excellent. Texas in a commercial! Excellent. NASCAR in a commercial. Not so excellent, but it does have people speaking in Dutch accents (they came 5,000 miles from Holland) so I'm mildly entertained. And the Herbie Salsa-Boy commercial is back!!! Espn does good commercials.

10:53 Boise State in the red zone. Hope they don't fumble the snap again. Uh-Oh. Flag on the play. Hah. The announcer just said "this is a WAC officiating crew." In my head, my first reaction was that he said "this is a wack officiating crew." Turns out the officiating crew is both WAC and wack because they meant to whistle the play dead but didn't. So no more red zone. Ball comes back, minus five yards, and then Boise manages to lose two more yards on the 2d down.

10:56 Third and long......fails. Boise tries for the field goal again. No. Good. Still zero - zero. Boys, this is no time to spite all the football pundits who claimed this game would be high scoring. I wanna see a touch down before I fall asleep.

11:02 Third consecutive 3 and out for the Ducks. The announcers are blaming the blue turf.

11:08 Once again, Boise State goes for it on 4th down. Probably becuase they've not been able to kick a freaking field goal. I shouldn't complain. I'd much rather see a touchdown.

11:09 Disclosure #2: I'm so excited for Texas and the current football season that last night I watched almost the entire 2009 Fiesta Bowl on hulu. 'Horns crushing Buckeye hopes in the last couple minutes. It'll never get old.

11:12 here it comes.....TOUCHDOWN. finally. Boise State up by 6. What? They ran it in for 2. (probably because they aren't making their field goals tonight). Love those Boise state trick plays. But is it really a "trick?" Isn't it just a smart play, as in my offensive coordinator just out-smarted your defensive coordinator?

11:17 Ducks are on deck. Man, Oregon has had so many 3 and outs that it seems like I haven't even seen them play offense. And already, it's 3 and out. Nice seeing you again, Duck QB, all thirty seconds you were on the field.

11:25 The defense scores a safety for Boise State! 2 more points on the score board. yay!

11:26 Oregon locker room at halftime is not going to be a happy place.

11:27 The worst thing about suffering a safety is the added injury of being forced to kick off to the other team after you just effectively got scored on.

11:34 Boise State will try for a field goal.........and gets it. About time.

11:37 Oregon has the ball and is trying to do something before the half is over.

11:39 Oregon does basically nothing. It's another 3 and out.

11:40 Halftime. Boise State 13 Oregon 0.

USOPEN Intermission (a.k.a Andy Roddick is the best, let's check and see how he's doing)

11:44 Thank goodness for espn360.com. I can watch the USOpen as well as football. Oh, excellent. Roddick is beating a Frechman. He's already on the third (and hopefully final) set, having already won the first two. Oops, Roddick almost got broken.

11:50 Oh my. Roddick does a ridiculous overhead smash and then a big forehand.

11:52 I imagine that if I watched Roddick serve in person my neck would snap off from the force of just following his serve across the court.

11:57 Slightly disturbing montage of the French guy (Marc Giquel) doing splits as he extends to reach for the ball. The funniest part is listening to the announcers audibly cringe in pain as they watch.

11:59 Frenchie nicely slides one past Roddick. Don't worry, he's still losing. They appear to be on serve in the third set.

INTERMISSION OVER. Back to your regularly scheduled football game

12:01 Disclosure #3: It's midnight and I'm getting exponentially tired. This live blogging could end very abruptly. Just giving fair warning.

12:05 Come on Oregon, make this interesting! Nope. Boise State is already inside the 10 yard line.

12:09 Giant pile on the goal line, but no touch down yet.

12:10 Second time works much better. Touch down Boise State. And the 2 point conversion....fails. I guess they'll go back to settling for the extra point.

12:15 STILL no first down for Oregon.

12:34 Oh look. I take a tiny nap and somewhere in there Oregon finally managed to score 8 points.

Sorry readers, sorry Oregon, sorry Boise. I'm going to sleep.

UPDATE: After my head hit the pillow the score didn't change. Oregon lost, Boise State won. The score 8-19. But I did miss seeing some insane Oregon player (the running back who got dropped for that embarrassing safety)punch a Boise State player, punch his own teammate, try to punch Boise State fans, and being restrained and escorted from the field by security and his own coach.











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