My Husband’s Birthday Pie

by Elizabeth Posted on February 24, 2012

Given the choice of cake or pie or cobbler or any other dessert treat for his birthday, my husband always chooses the same thing. And it’s never cobbler. EVER. Whereas my choice always falls somewhere in the fruit pie/cobbler spectrum. But that’s another story for another day.

When it comes to desserts my husband has one true love — his grandmother’s chocolate pie. The Valentine’s Day right before we got married I managed to get the recipe from his side of the family and after a few funky first attempts at meringue, I got it.

Never quite happy with how my meringue turned out and with the recipe I received having no specific instructions on how to make the meringue for this particular pie, I turned to my Granny yesterday. She told me that there are so many different ways to make meringue out there, all of them with their pros and cons. It’s really more about the look you’re trying to achieve and the taste you’re going for.

I’ve found meringue recipes with hardly any sugar in them and I just can’t understand that. How can one swallow meringue if it’s not dripping with sweet, fluffy flavor? (Confession: Until I was in junior high I just assumed meringue was marshmallow topping of some sort and avoided it entirely.) Granny directed me to one of the many old cookbooks that I have been gifted with over the years. So, for this pie today, I am going to try a “Honey Meringue”. My husband likes sweet and this could be really good. I will report back later this evening and let you know how it is.

Oh, and I think I know what I’m doing with the leftover egg yolks!

Posted in Daily, Food, Friends & Family, The Husband | Tagged , , , , | 4 Comments

New Look

by Elizabeth Posted on February 23, 2012

It’s been here for a couple of weeks, but I thought I should mention something in case you are reading from an RSS feed. I changed the look of the blog to something cleaner and more along the lines of what I’d been wanting for years now. Just finally found a theme that fit the idea in my head. The theme is Brunelleschi by Kit MacAllister and I love it. It’s really simple to customize and there are a lot of options with it to begin with.

I’m enjoying the additional sidebar and the extra room it gives me. And yes, after years of it being gone (basically because I was too lazy to put together another one) the links to some of my favorite blogs has returned. It’s in no way complete, but I should be getting to that this weekend or sometime soon.

One other change with this theme is where the “click to comment” link is. It’s a little bit hard to locate below each post on the main page and each single page, so I may change that in the future. But it’s there and I love to hear from you all!

So, I hope you like it! It’s clean and fresh and I am pleased.

Psst! It’s my husband’s 31st birthday today. If you feel like wishing him a happy birthday, he’s @OUCrumpy on Twitter :)

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My Own Personal Inception

by Elizabeth Posted on February 21, 2012

About a month ago one Friday I woke up at 5am, wide awake after dreaming about sitting in a parking lot, waiting for something, with this song playing the entire time.

Weird? I haven’t thought about that song in a long time. Sure, it’s in my iTunes library, but it’s not one I listen to on even a semi-regular basis.

Fast forward one week to the next Friday. I woke up before my alarm again, aware that I had been dreaming, but unable to recall anything about the dream. I got up and made my way into the kitchen and prepared my coffee the same as I always do. The whole time it was like my dream was trying to bubble up to the surface, but I never could catch it, no matter how hard I tried.

Later, I hopped in the shower and Ellie Goulding was playing. After that song ended, what came on? You guessed it. The song I dreamed about the week before. It was odd and I could feel my other dream trying to make its way to the top layer of my consciousness, but it never did.

Half an hour later I am driving to work and I come up on an accident with an injury. A medi-flight helicopter was hovering close over the top of where I was driving. Then, like an explosion in my brain, my dream from the night before came back. I had been back on my college campus for some reason and there was some kind of announcement that there was a gunman on campus. Turned out, of course, that he was believed to be in the building that I was in. I was with a group and we were crouched down near a window (always dumb). Outside the window I could see police helicopters who then launched some kind of missiles into the building. The people in my group were fine and they got the gunman, I just thought missiles were a bit big to take out a lone gunman.

Long story short — apparently I have strange dreams on Thursday nights. I found it odd that both of these dreams would be brought back to the surface of my thoughts in such random ways.

And if you think those dreams are weird, I had one involving the kilt the other day that must be symbolic, but I’ll save it for another day.

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To you I will always return

by Elizabeth Posted on February 20, 2012

That’s a little bit sentimental, isn’t it? I mean, to have that attitude about one’s blog. Ah well. You know me.

In the past few weeks I have shown up here and started multiple drafts of posts that will eventually appear here. None made it far past my inner editor the first go round, though I know they’ll show up at some point.

The fact is, it’s hard for words to choke past a beleaguered heart. I have tried. There is just so much going on. In areas of my life that I don’t talk about here and with things that I’ve been instructed not to talk about (see here). I am fine and my husband is fine and mostly everything in our lives is “fine,” so don’t go worrying about us. It’s just that when the heart is preoccupied with other things and the overflow is unpleasant there isn’t much left to share with the world. So I rally and try to keep the essential operations going around here. And sometimes it takes all that I’ve got.

Boy howdy, this makes it sound like I’m depressed or something. I am not, as far as I know. Sometimes there are valleys though. This isn’t a deep one and I know I’ll come out on the other side fit as a fiddle.

There are a few things coming around the bend that I can’t wait to share with you. A couple of different series that I’m due to finish up. An epiphany I had today about music (children of the 80s and early 90s should appreciate it I think). Some natural remedies I’ve tried. How to survive a cold. A smattering of quotes that have touched me from different books I’ve been reading (and listening to) lately.

I guess I just wanted to say that I’m still here. This has been a quiet season (other than my chats with Jennifer), but I feel it’s coming to an end.

Posted in Daily | Tagged , , | 8 Comments