Teeth and Pumpkin Pie
Well the first exciting thing to say is that the baby has two very lovely teeth! The two front bottom ones, just like her big sister's first two. She doesn't seem at all distressed by them either, which is great. Tonight it was so cute to watch her practice chewing. We gave her some little cubes of tofu which she enjoyed very much.
Yesterday I made one of my famous pumpkin pies to bring to my office - yes, I did it to ingratiate myself to my new co-workers - and I had some extra filling left over that didn't fit in the pie shell, so I poured it into small ramekins and made two pumpkin custards. I shared mine with the baby and she thought it was the greatest thing ever. She would finish one bite and open her mouth to get some more. When I told her we had eaten it all up she cried. Go Mom! I took the pie to work today and it was a hit. I was actually not thrilled with the crust but at least it tasted good.
Speaking of crust, I am having some crust issues and I'm not sure what to do about them. You may recall a posting here about a month ago with a photo of a very nice apple pie I made with Ina Garten's crust recipe. That crust was absolutely perfect - it came together quickly and rolled out great. I was thrilled because I thought it meant all my crust problems had been solved. But then last weekend I made that recipe again and it came out all wrong. The butter got all weird and melty, and didn't hold all the flour together the way it's supposed to. I had to toss it and try again, and the second one was much better but still not as easy as the first time with the great apple pie. So I tried the "Foolproof Pie Crust" recipe from Cook's Illustrated and was all prepared for it to be the answer to my problems. And you know what? It was worse! It never did come together - I've never seen such a crumbly crust - and when it baked it got all hard and weird. Tasted OK but working with it was incredibly difficult. So I think I'm going to go back to Ina's recipe for this week's holiday pies and hope it goes as well as it did the first time I tried it. Luckily we have a ton of flour and butter in the house so I have room for some mistakes. I will try to get my camera to start working so I can post some yummy Thanksgiving photos!
