goodbye to summer

Last day in town...surreal. I'm definitely ready for school to start. For most of the summer, I wanted more free time. Every week I worked I counted down the hours to weekend. But, after two weeks of no job and no responsibilities really, I'm starting to realize that, no, I actually do need something to do. I'm driving myself crazy. I hang out with friends, or think about maybe starting to pack, and then I just start baking. Its gotten slightly ridiculous. This whole week, in fact, I've made something that my sister and I devour while watching one of the movies from our summer list (every holiday/break, we make this super ambitious list of things to do, books to read, movies to watch, skills to acquire....rarely is it even close to accomplished.) 

So this is what I've been up to, in pictures. It basically involved combining eating with some other activity.

-Making shepherd's pie (brought on partly out of nostalgia for Shannon's and partly because Karen and I spent the afternoon speaking in our kind-of-passable British/New Zealand accents).

-Watching Inglourious Basterds and spending the rest of the week yelling "Au revoir, Shoshanna!" and "Ob-LIGE him!" at each other.

-Watching Rabbit Hole and then making blueberry crumble to cheer ourselves up.

-Finally reading all the books that have been sitting neglected on my dresser (whilst having a lovely cup of tea). Every time I read something by C.S. Lewis, I'm like "why don't I read this stuff all the time?"

-Watching our deck be torn down and then rebuilt. This is probably the trippiest thing that's ever occurred in our house. For a couple days, our second story door, that used to open onto the deck, opened  to thin air. Unfortunately, my mom decided that my sister and I were not responsible enough to handle dangling ourselves out the door and taking silly pictures, so she duct-taped it shut. 

-And my crowning achievement, beignets de tomates vertes avec fromage du chevre, also known as fried green tomatoes with goat cheese. SO GOOD. This is pretty much the one and only part of Southern cuisine I've fallen in love with. And I'm getting all fancy now and Frenchifying them after a visit to South City Kitchen in Atlanta, which does the whole upscale-Southern food thing with aplomb. 

My little brother and I had a very pleasant lunch/afternoon snack of wilted spinach, fried green tomatoes, more goat cheese, and apples. 

And now, I'm getting back into the college swing of things by catching up on work in Starbucks and seeing my friends for the last time in a while.

Its odd, thinking back to this time a year ago. Last year, leaving meant having to start over. It was an exciting yet completely terrifying experience. Everyone I met, I would think, "Will we end up friends? What will you mean to me? How will you fit into my life, or I into yours?" Everything was fast. This year, I'm not heading off, I'm coming home. 

This isn't how I planned my summer to be, but I ended up enjoying it. Or most of it, anyway. A big thank you to all my hometown friends on that account. Thank you for the support, the love, the encouragement, the crazy random fun, and the endless photos. 

That being said, I'm beyond excited to see all my Wheaties again. I've missed you guys more than I thought possible. And oh my gosh thank you for all the letters! I absolutely love getting mail, and this:

made my day every time a letter/package/postcard arrived.

I don't know what's going to happen blog-wise. The key ingredient for this was free time (which, even without a full time job, is going to be thin on the ground in college). Also, the fact that most of the people who read this go to Wheaton makes it a little redundant. It's been fun though. And hopefully sharpened my photography/writing skills a little. So...we'll see. Thanks to everyone for reading. 

Seeing as I leave first thing tomorrow, I should probably start packing now.

decisions are best made before midnight

First off:

After thirty five days, hours spent with our fabulous insurance agent Angeline and even more hours spent with their hack-job "insurance company", several delays on the body work, and countless "not yet" responses to the Anderson family question of the summer "Is the car fixed yet?"...

MY CAR IS BACK.

We got the call last night, I decided this warranted some sort of little celebration. A celebration in the form of chocolate ganache cupcakes with sea salt caramel and chocolate frosting. 

These things take absolutely forever to make. Its one of those deals where you break out the baking sheet at around eight o' clock, figuring it'll be an hour, tops. Then you start reading the recipe (http://foodgawker.com/favorites/lca925/ , first recipe after the jump) which includes instructions like "pour in two shots of espresso" (this means, of course, you must make espresso), "make caramel" or "let frosting chill for two hours". And so at eleven, when everything's baked and made, it seems silly to have spent all that time and have the frosting look bad.

That's when the pastry bag comes out. Best thing my mom has ever bought me.

Fair warning, these things are addictive. And terrible. They are essentially a hodge-podge of things that are bad for you (coffee, butter, sugar) and things that are worse (heavy cream, caramel, vast quantities of chocolate) consolidated into one tiny cupcake. But since its all from scratch, its not processed (good!). So it all sort of evens out.
And they are by far the best cupcakes I've ever made/had. Even beating out NYC spring break three-quarter pound Oreo cupcakes.

Listening to: Rumour Has It, ADELE

scones and (not) studying

Guess what, everyone? I have the week off! Yay! And there was much rejoicing in the land.

Unfortunately, I don't just get to slack off and sleep in. Although I do have lots of fun things planned. Long story short, I was supposed to spend the beginning of my summer on a study abroad program in Japan. And then, as I'm sure you're well aware, the country got hit with a massive earthquake that it still hasn't recovered from yet and the trip got cancelled. And although the impact on my life has been nowhere near to how awful losing your home, family, and livelihood would be (sidenote: Red Cross is still taking donations to help Japan, please give if you can), it did mess up my plans for the summer.  So I'm taking all the classes I was supposed to take in Japan online now. Or I'm supposed to be. I kind of forgot about it for the last three weeks. So today was supposed to be my major study/catch up day.

But studying in the summer is...awful. Even when its raining (guess we've officially hit every-single-afternoon-summer-thunderstorm season down here Georgia). Lots of procrastination occurred. Target runs. Unnecessary skyping. Reading other people's blogs. Thrift store-ing with my sister. Making birthday cards (not even for specific people, just general birthday cards). Wearing knee socks and sliding around my foyer. Setting up google+. I even cleaned my room. So after working really hard for fifteen wholes minutes I decided to give it up as a lost cause and made strawberry-almond scones and listened to She & Him instead.

Hey, there's always tomorrow.

Listening to: Into the Fire, Thirteen Senses

Apple Pies and Unpacking

Greetings from Michigan! So, so much fun to see friends and do silly things. 

Robinette's Apple Haus & Winery

I was inspired to make an apple pie for Memorial Day, partly because apple pie seems so American and patriotic and also because my mom told me she needed a pie crust used up. Usually, I make my own (its actually pretty easy), but for this I just made the top.

Apple Pie (or Tart, depending on how you do the crust)
{ingredients} 
-5 or 6 apples, I usually use a mix of Granny Smith, Gala, and Michigan
-1/2 cup sugar
-1 tbs lemon juice
-1 1/2 tsp cinnamon
-pinch of ginger, nutmeg & allspice
-pie crust**
{directions}
heat oven to 350 F
cut apples (peeled and cored) into small pieces. coat with sugar, lemon juice, and spices. let sit 15 min. then do (a) or (b). not both!

(a) for a pie, place filling in crust in pie pan. if you're using two doughs (one base and one top) then make knife slits in the top (to relieve pressure and to look fancy). 

(b) if you're using one, then you're making a tart. fold the filling in the center of the dough and wrap the dough around it--it won't cover it completely. place on a baking sheet.

brush the top with cream. bake for an hour, give or take, checking on it regularly to make sure nothing has exploded.

Finished product!
(I need a better camera)

**Pie Crust
I got this recipe off of a show on Food Network and it was very snappily called "Pate Sucree", which I'm assuming is French for "pie crust". I was only there for a week, so I never delved into baking terms. Anyhow.
{ingredients}
1 1/4 cups flour
1 tbs sugar
1/8 tsp salt
7 tbs butter (i usually use less though)
3 tbs water
{directions}

Mix flour, sugar, salt. Add in small bits of chopped butter with a mixer (or by hand, if you have time to kill and a masochistic streak). Once the butter is incorporated, add water a tablespoon at a time until a dough forms. And you'll know when it forms. You're just mixing along and all of a sudden you have this giant dough ball.
Roll it out on a floured surface (this is a great time to get some use out of your rolling pin!) and then wrap in plastic and stick it in the fridge for about twenty minutes.