Easter weekend

Happy Belated Easter! I had all sorts of fun things to blog about this weekend, but kinda took the weekend ‘off’ and this is my first chance to sit down (Not really, I still have TONS of schoolwork to do, but this is somewhat time-sensitive, too. If I wait too long, it will be old news!) and type it all out.

There was LOTS going on this weekend for us, with Andrew’s grandmother visiting and Abigail home from school…

I ran in the Bunny Hop 5K…and scored SECOND PLACE in my age group! Holy smokes! Seriously…despite some of my recent PRs here and here, when I saw the 1,011-runner crowd lining up, all hopes of placing went right out the window. In fact, I was having a bad morning due to a sudden neck spasm and stress (what else is new?), so I really had to pep-talk my way through the entire (almost all uphill, if that’s possible) race.

The neat thing was that the course went right by Andrew’s parents’ driveway! I waved as I passed the first time… (I’m in pink and purple.)

Andrew’s family (and the dogs!) came out to cheer me on…

Here I am on the way back, just a 100 yards or so from the finish. LOVE my purple running pants!

Andrew was convinced I’d placed in my age group (based on the small number of ladies who finished ahead of me), so we waited around for what seemed like forever at the finish for them to post results.

At least the oranges were good and even the store-bought oatmeal raisin cookies were decent. Andrew ate my hot dog, but I caved and got another one and ate about half when the results still weren’t posted…

Sure enough, I DID place–I got SECOND! Prizes for the Bunny Hop are chocolate bunnies, which, despite their appropriateness, are (in my mind) a bit counterproductive. Carolyn had the brilliant idea to throw mine in the freezer and use it to bake with later. It’s currently crushed into small pieces and chilling with my other chocolate.

We spent the day relaxing at Andrew’s parents’ house and running errands on Main Street. We wanted to show grandma the new cupcake place, and while there, I picked up this little guy:

Perhaps the most memorable event was our dinner Saturday night, and, as usual, I got no photos. We ended up at a local hibachi grill/Japanese Steakhouse/sushi bar due to our large party (8) and lack of pre-panning (it was 6:30 and we were trying to find a restaurant without an hour wait). Can I just say the Layers aren’t big on change, ethnic food OR fish??

Let’s just say that if Carolyn’s face had frozen they way she was turning up her nose at the menu, she’s be one unhappy camper. In all honesty, Andrew and I were pretty nervous–we’d taken everyone here thinking it was akin to a Benihana, but it turned out to be about 95% sushi and sans-hibachi tables. Our table ended up with five chicken teriyakis, one beef teriyaki, one soba noodle and one edamame order with an Alaska roll. Can you tell which one was mine??

The night wasn’t a total loss; we ended up in a room of our own and had a few good laughs, and everyone got to experience a few things out of their comfort zone 🙂

Happy Easter morning! I got up early to cook breakfast 🙂

I made the Clinton Street Baking Co.’s buttermilk waffles (thanks for the book, Susy!), maple-roasted bacon and fruit. I even made the maple butter from the cookbook and it. was. divine. Even Andrew loved it.

As always, we did Easter baskets. Andrew’s is full of junk food and candy. I threw in a Bananagrams game, thinking it would be a good 2-person game for the house.

Andrew (as usual), went way overboard with my basket this year:

He collected all sorts of my favorite gourmet/health foods, like sweet potato chips, Luna bars, flavored seltzer, Starburst Jellybeans, Ritter chocolate with Marzipan (Heather introduced me to it before we moved last year)…

…brie and special topping…

…I’ve been DYING to try this chocolate bar since I saw it in a Food Network magazine like two years ago!

Dave sent me home with some Cadbury creme eggs last weekend, and I broke into it Easter morning! (I was good; I only ate half, though.)

Andrew particularly liked his tangerine-flavored Jelly Belly carrot. I had to force him to eat one before church… Seriously, who has to be forced to eat ONE jelly bean EVER? I wasn’t going to eat a bunch of candy all alone!

After church (we accompanied the Layers), we rushed home to finish our contributions to the meal and walk the dog before heading back to their house.

Butter ‘lambs; are a big deal around here. I saw them at the grocery store a week or so ago and wondered where they’d been all the other Easters of my life. Not where I lived, apparently.

I made caramelized pear, sage and orange biscuit bites, a recipe I found in a cookbook of Susy’s last time I was at her house. They were pretty darn good, but I don’t know if I’d make them again.

I also made Pioneer Woman’s Tres Leches cake for dessert. I. CAN’T. STOP. EATING. IT. Seriously. I had two pieces yesterday and two pieces (so far) today. Not good.

We spent the rest of the afternoon hanging out before Abigail had to head back to school. I studied for my Micro test (I have THREE tests and a quiz this week…say a prayer for me, people!).

The rest of the family played ‘bean farmer,’ which I believe is really called Bonanza.

Andrew taught grandma.

Carolyn opted out and instead searched for dishes on the iPad.

After a light dinner of sandwiches and leftovers–not that anyone was terribly hungry–Andrew and I headed home to rescue the puppy and prep for the week ahead…if only I’d had another day off!

I’ll be up for air sometime on Thursday!

mrs. nye’s pies

A few weeks ago, I spent an afternoon with one of Andrew’s best friend’s mom, Mrs. Nye. Her son, Alex, and Andrew went to school here in East Aurora together and played on the basketball team. They’re a bit of an unlikely pair (Alex is a bit more fly-by-the-seat-of-his-pants and works in the broadcast news business; he’s creative and perhaps a little rough around the edges) but they totally work and both have a strong entrepreneurial spirit.

Anyway, his mom, Ann, is famous around here for her pies–she even had a small home business going for awhile–and pie is one thing that makes me nervous (I’m always afraid I’m going to mess up the crust), so I enlisted her help.

She was prepped and ready to go before I even arrived; she even has a handy pie-rolling station/cutting board built right into her countertop.

My mistake #1: I never use enough flour for the board. Don’t be stingy, Holly!

We started with flour, salt and shortening in the mixer until it resembled a pea-like consistency, then started adding water. Mrs. Nye doesn’t bother with the ‘it must be ice-cold’ business!

Then, just when it was starting to hold together, we formed it into balls/discs by hand. Again, lots of flour!

Rolling them out…

Now, here’s the tricky part: getting the crust INTO the pan… It’s always the part that makes me sweat. I’ve always relied on the ‘drape it over the rolling pin and hope for the best’ method. Mrs. Nye doesn’t sweat it at all; she just rolls it out and before you know it, it’s on the pie plate and she doesn’t care how it looks–it’s on the bottom, anyway. (I knew there would be some nuggets of wisdom in here…)

Crimp the edges however you like–this one was for a one-shell pie–and then grab a fork.

For pre-baking a pie shell, make little punctures ALL OVER THE PIE with a fork. Another thing Mrs. Nye doesn’t mess with is pie weights (she’s a bit of a minimalist).

There’s my pie! This one was a maple syrup pie–Andrew and I are huge fans of the one we had at Aux Anciens Canadiens in Quebec City a couple years ago–and I found a recipe in the pie “bible” at Susy’s house. More on the recipe later.

Mrs. Nye was preparing apples for the rest of our pies, which we would assemble and freeze. Who knew you could do that?

More dough rolling…

…pie-filling…

(My tried-and-true apple pie recipe is from a friend of mine’s mom, which is really just a basic recipe, and then I add LOTS of cinnamon–a tablespoon–and orange juice and orange zest. I saw the citrus addition on a Barefoot Contessa episode and took it to be God’s truth, and it is. The cinnamon is all me.)

…and now, the second crust! Here is where I start to get REALLY nervous. I mean, this is the one that people actually SEE, and it has to fit over the top.

Use water to ‘glue’ the edges before draping with the second crust. (Again, who knew?? No one ever told me this.)

Finish by tearing any extra crust off the long parts and use them to patch other areas, if necessary. For Mrs. Nye, who can actually roll her crust into a relative circle, this is probably an UNnecessary step. For me, it’s the only way my crust actually stretches from side to side…

Life goal #1: master yeast bread

Life goal #2: master pie

Life goal #3: master homemade ice cream

Life goal #4: not get fat in the process

(Hey, a girl can dream…)

Anyway, about the recipe. So Andrew and I just DIED over this maple syrup pie we had on a trip to Quebec City awhile back (the fact that it cost an arm and a leg and we WENT BACK A SECOND TIME should tell you something), and I’ve tried a couple times to make one at home. Imagine, if you will, a pecan pie without the pecans, but still a crunchy ‘crust-like’ top layer. That, my friends, is a maple syrup pie.

Sadly, the recipe we used from the pie “bible” (below) wasn’t quite it.

This recipe is a little closer–I made it for our Bible study shortly after returning home from our trip–but wasn’t exactly right, either. Guess we’ll just have to go back and try it again!! Actually, we’ve been trying to arrange a trip with Emily and Dan up there during the winter, so maybe next year??

Below is me with the baked maple syrup pie. Man, did it smell good! I had to scoot out after it finished, we I took it home to surprise Andrew, and then we showed up at the Nye’s with the rest of the pie to share with them.

The reason this post has taken me SO LONG is that I wanted to wait until I actually baked the apple pie from my freezer (that, and life just has a way of side-tracking me lately…) Well, with only two of us, it’s not all that practical to just throw a pie in the over with no one to help us eat it!

Last night was the perfect excuse–Andrew’s grandma came for a visit for Easter–so I packed it up and brought it over to the Layer’s to have after pizza and wings.

Sadly, I forgot to take a photo of the baked pie…by the time I remembered, it was almost gone! The crust looked pretty nice–one of my best, perhaps–I can tell you that.

And since I can’t have pie without ice cream or whipped cream (the maple syrup pie is best with freshly whipped, slightly sweetened whipped cream to cut the sweetness), I asked Andrew’s mom to make sure some was in the freezer. I also brought the salted caramel sauce (Did you know it’s most definitely pronounced “car-A-mel,” not “car-mel?” I heard that on the radio the other day.) Susy sent home with me and it was fantastic.

It’s kind of a mess in my bowl, but, as my mom would say (and I bet Mrs. Nye, too), ‘it’s all going the same place.’

how I spent my Thursday

…NOT studying, I can tell you that.

I baked instead.

Well, first I blogged at 4:30 in the morning, because that’s when the dog got me up.

And then I swam, followed by a marathon-shopping trip to Wegmans for a few essentials (we were almost out of milk already!) and goodies for Andrew’s Easter basket. I got myself a coffee and put my feet up at one of their cafe tables to chat on the phone before I even ventured into produce. Can you tell I’m on a break from school?

Well, as the clock neared 11 (I arrived just after 9 a.m.) I realized I’d better go going or I’d never get anything done. I raced home to whip up Steakhouse Side Macaroni and Cheese, a recipe that caught my eye in last month’s Cooking Light.

It’s just what the name says; it incorporates all the famous sides from a steakhouse (creamed spinach, sauteed mushrooms and an iceberg wedge with bacon and blue cheese) into one dish. It was good, but not fantastic. It was almost a little weird–if you’ve craving that traditional, orange-cheesey mac, this is NOT IT. But it was yummy and fun to put together. And (relatively) healthy.

And THEN I baked. And baked.

My desire to “send Abigail and Grandma home with some goodies” after the Easter weekend has turned into making goodie bags for all my nearest and dearest here.

Susy just gave me the Clinton St. Baking Company cookbook, so I tried their ‘brookie’ recipe. Easy and so good. I mean, what’s better than a cookie and a brownie mixed together? I’d also pulled out a recipe for some sort of mocha muffin awhile ago, making a mental note at the time to make them for Abigail when she was home from school, so I whipped up some mini-muffins to spread the wealth.

I even went all out and got Easter baggies and treat boxes. If only I could spend ALL my time doing stuff like this… I have a few more things to make this weekend before I’m finished: almond butter bars (recipe will be added here soon) for the goodie boxes, as well as some savory muffins and Pioneer Woman’s Tres Leches cake for Easter Sunday. Some lucky ducks are going to get some sweet surprises this weekend!

And then I did the dishes.

After fitting in some co-op work, a dog walk and–eventually–some studying for my Micro test, I headed back into the kitchen to make dinner. At 8 p.m. Because that’s when Andrew came home. Good grief.

I didn’t take a photo, but I made Pioneer Woman’s Sloppy Joe’s (I’m on a never-ending hunt for the best recipe from scratch) to see if they were better than our current favorite, Cooking Light’s version. They weren’t, but they were still very good. Very similar. Amazingly, Andrew professed a love for CL’s recipe, which is just fine with me, since it’s probably healthier.

Andrew’s off tomorrow, so I’m planning a workout, then brunch, then more baking/studying before meeting a friend for a mid-afternoon “snack/lunch” at Danny’s, a local favorite. Then, it’s pizza and wings and HOMEMADE APPLE PIE (it’s been in my freezer just waiting for the perfect occasion) at the Layer’s house with Abigail and Grandma 🙂