BRAINPAN LEAKAGE

…Make me some piiiiiiiieee.

Thanksgiving – or L-Tryptophan Day, as I like to call it – was pretty good this year. I’m not one for setting aside a single day to do the “thanking thing.” I try to make sure I do it when the situation calls for it, rather than waiting. And, we all know I don’t buy into the concept of a divine being providing me with the things I need to be thankful for… Well… Except for E K, but her Supremeness is something else entirely…

But I digress <– My favorite expression – and activity – as we all know…

Anywho, L-Tryptophan Day was good. Did the hanging out with family thing. Got to spend time with our PhD niece, World Traveler niece, and College Freshman niece. The other niece and nephew are at that age where we Gr’ups are too boring to be around, so we didn’t see too much of them. As always, food was prepared, food was eaten, food was stored away in icebox crevices due to the overwhelming amount of leftovers – an L-Tryptophan Day tradition in and of itself.

When dessert time rolled around, several pies were on deck – among them being the traditional Bourbon-Rum Cranberry Mince Pie, and the experimental Bailey’s Pumpkin Pie – all direct from my kitchen. After some tweetage about the pieness, I started receiving requests for the recipe for the latter. So, here it is, sans picture of a pie because we ate them before I could take one…

MERP’S Bailey’s Pumpkin Pie

INGREDIENTS

3/4 Cup Light Brown Sugar

2 Cups Pumpkin (I prefer to use fresh, as we grow pumpkins here at home, but canned pumpkin can can be used instead. Generally available in 15 OZ size, simply forgo the 16th ounce and call it good.)

2 Whole Eggs, Large

1 Egg Yolk

2 tsp blackstrap molasses

1 tsp ground cinnamon

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp ground ginger

1/4 tsp ground cloves

6 OZ evaporated milk

3 OZ Bailey’s Irish Cream Liquer

3 OZ Heavy Cream

1 9-10 inch pie crust (homemade or store bought, your choice)

DIRECTIONS

Preheat oven to 425F.

Lightly beat eggs, then combine with the rest of the ingredients in a mixing bowl. Mix well. Pour into pie crust (I am assuming you have put the pie crust into a pie tin and properly trimmed it. If you haven’t, go back to Home Ec and do not attempt to cook anything until you receive at least a passing grade.) Since many pie tins and pre-prepared crusts have different depths, if you have any extra filling, simply pour it into a ramekin and treat it as a custard.

Place on center rack of oven and bake for 15 minutes. Reduce heat to 350 and bake an additional 40-50 minutes. It is done when a toothpick can be inserted into the center and is clean when removed.

Allow to cool, then cover and refrigerate, as it will be best when cold and dense. Serve with whipped cream, Bailey’s whipped cream, or ice cream – OR for the purists, a large slice in hand, over the sink, with a cup of coffee…

More to come…

Murv

…Even if you don’t follow them.

A classic line from a classic bit of spoken word, that being Baz Lurhmann’s “Wear Sunscreen.” (To give credit where due, it was written by Chicago Trib Columnist Mary Schmich, actually, and performed by Lee Perry… Produced by Baz, so he tends to get  all of the kudos…)

Now that we’ve set that record straight, suffice it to say, the advice is sound. Of course, as the song also says, advice is a form of nostalgia. A way of fishing the past from the disposal, painting over the ugly parts, and recycling it for more than it’s worth.

Problem is, when the recycling center isn’t open, all you can do is lob it over the fence and wait to see if they send you a check. By that I mean, teenagers aren’t all that good at reading directions. Maybe some are, but I can only speak from my own experiences. Hey, even I will admit that as a teen I often experienced DADD – Drooling Attention Deficit Disorder – by the time I reached the third sentence in any given set of directions.

It’s probably a hormonal thing, who knows… (Now that I’ve said that, someone with SDD – Satire Deficit Disorder – will be sure to explain it to me.)

The thing about teens afflicted with DADD is that they will do stuff that you just can’t make up. And, in their defense, I’m more than willing to believe that the advances in technology have contributed to this problem.

Case in point, my niece.

Yes, the one who paid someone to stab a carpet needle through the side of her nose and then plug it with a bejeweled booger cork.

Now, the incident in question occurred a few years before the age of Proboscis Piercing arrived, therefore I know it simply had to be a case of DADD, and not brains accidentally escaping through the third nostril. And, I will give her kudos for actually READING the directions. The problem is, she comes from a different time.

Allow me to explain…

It was Christmas as I recall. But then, I’m old, so maybe I don’t recall properly. What I can say for certain was that the family was all gathered at my mother & father-in-law’s house for some sort of all day celebration. Although we had consumed mass quantities of food at some point during this process, the niece was hungry again and wanted something different than the leftovers. In particular she wanted some manner of carb. My mother-in-law rummaged around and pointed her toward a bag of those frozen biscuit pucks.

All good. A biscuit puck or two should certainly fit the bill where carbs are concerned.

Niece read the directions and then set about puck preparation while the rest of us gathered around the table and talked about the various things that non-teenage folks talk about, which is to say, stuff that bores the living daylights out of the teenage folks. Yeah. Grown ups are mean like that.

Four or five minutes into the conversation an odd smell began wafting over the half-wall from the kitchen and into the dining room. I looked up just in time to see the interior of the microwave burst into flames.

Scrambling occurred, and I don’t mean eggs. In a matter of a few seconds the fire was extinguished before it could spread beyond the confines of the newfangled coffee re-heater. Once the crisis was over and the investigation into the origin of the fire began, we didn’t have to look far. There, smoldering in the center of the Pyrex turntable was a charred disc. Truth is, it looked far more like an actual puck at this point than a biscuit.

As one cohesive unit, the entire forensic investigation team turned to the niece (daughter, granddaughter).

“Wow…” she mumbled. “I wonder why it did that…”

We were dumbfounded. “What do you mean you wonder why it did that?” one of us asked.

She shrugged. “The directions said to cook it for ten minutes. It shouldn’t even be done yet.”

The moral of the story? We need to bring back Home Ec in schools. If for no other reason than to teach these kids the difference between an REGULAR  oven, a TOASTER oven, and a MICROWAVE oven before they burn the planet to a cinder. (We’ll save Infra Red and Convection for the advanced class…)

Just think, it could even count as a History credit…

More to come…

Murv