Pumpkin Pie with a Ginger Snap Crust

Move...successful!  The only really crappy part is that I lack interwebz until December 1st, so I am forced to do things like blog at work.  Which is OK, because I've had a total of about 7 customers thus far today.  There's not even work I can pretend to do.

Pumpkin cream cheese pie did not happen on Thanksgiving.  What did happen, however, was a pumpkin pie with a ginger snap crust borrowed from the lovely author of this blog. Frankly, making an all-butter regular pie crust, while satisfying and usually worth it, takes a lot of time, and I was exhausted from moving.

While some people (namely my sister) scorn pumpkin-related holiday recipes, I am a huge fan of baking with pumpkin.  It adds a lot of moisture to pretty much anything, so it's hard to really screw up most recipes involving it.  Plus, pumpkin spice tastes like the holidays.  Where can you go wrong?

However, I hate most store-bought or restaurant-made pumpkin pies.  I am picky about crust, and I don't like anything to be under-spiced (blandness is the worst baking sin that can be committed).  I was convinced for years that my grandmother had a super-secret pumpkin pie recipe, because hers was the only one I liked.  A couple years ago, when I caught the baking bug, I asked her what it was, and she told me it was the recipe on the back of the Libby's can, with a little more spice.  Easy enough--thanks, Grandma!

So without further ado, here's the recipe, slightly adapted:

Filling:

3/4 c. sugar
2-3 tsp. pumpkin pie spice (if you're really insane about controlling seasoning, you can separate out the spices, but I'm not going to splurge for cloves for a pie I make maybe twice a year)
1/2 tsp. salt
2 eggs
~2 c. pumpkin puree*
dash of vanilla
15 oz. (one can) evaporated milk

*instructions for how to make this will follow

Crust:

1 1/2 c. finely crumbled ginger snaps (fair warning--these take awhile to smash up)
1/2 c. pecan bits
1/2 tsp. cinnamon
dash of nutmeg if you like nutmeg a lot
6 tbsp. melted butter

 A bowl of crumbs (in case you're not sure how it should look?)

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

Bake the crust first.  Combine all ingredients and pat into a pie pan.  When it looks like a pie crust ought to look, pop it in the oven for 8-10 minutes.  Once the crust is complete, raise the oven temperature to 425 degrees.

For the filling, blend the sugar, spices and salt in a little bowl.  Set aside.  In a larger bowl, mix the eggs, pumpkin puree, vanilla, and evaporated milk.  Mix dry and wet ingredients together.  Add filling to crust.  Put in oven for 15 minutes.  Bring the temperature down to 350 and bake for an additional 45 minutes.  You'll know it's done when you stick a knife/toothpick/whatever in the center and it comes out clean.

Ta-da!

I had some leftover crust and filling, so I lined a muffin pan with the crust mixture, baked the crust, buttered the sides of the tins, poured in the filling, and got these adorable little mini pumpkin pie/tart things.  Good if you hate slicing pie or want to fancy up your pumpkin pie.  Instructions are the same, but bake the crust for only 8 minutes and the pies for 35-40 minutes.

 Sorry about the quality...

To finish, make a buttload of whipped cream (go to town with a whisk and a CHILLED bowl with CHILLED cream, add some vanilla or cinnamon).  Dash on some more pumpkin spice.

Happy Thanksgiving, all!

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OK, so to continue this overly long post...I decided to make my own pumpkin puree this year because all the pumpkin enthusiasts say it's a pain in the ass, but that it tastes better.  I will agree with the first part--it is definitely a giant pain in the ass.

But here's how to do it.  Buy a sugar/pie pumpkin.  Slice in half, scoop out guts, cut into smaller slices, and peel.  The peeling is really the difficult part...a vegetable peeler should suit you fine, but if you can find a really sharp one, even better.  Massage thumbs when done.

I'm probably not doing this right.

Bring a large pot of water to a boil, add pumpkin, and boil, uncovered, for 25 minutes.  If your pot is slightly too small, obsessively check that all pumpkin pieces are submerged while other Thanksgiving guests are doing fun things, like playing Settlers of Catan.

Once you have boiled the shit out of the pumpkin (if you stab it with a fork, there should be almost no resistance), get a food processor and blend it.  Don't get lazy and just mash it up with a fork, because it will be chunky and gross.  I tried doing it by hand, but when I mixed it with the other filling ingredients, it looked so wrong that I had to break out a food processor. 

Did it taste good?  Definitely.  Better than Libby's?  I'm doubtful.

The perils of riding a bike

There will be no place in this post to brag about my new wheels on my Gary Fisher Lane, so I'm going to do that first.  Velocity A23s with DT Swiss spokes.  Do I know much about bike wheels?  No.  Do I know that these are AWESOME?  Yes.  Recommended by our shop mechanic and bought by me on super duper clearance.  Cha-ching!  

I live up near the Cathedral and generally commute to 12th and Pennsylvania...sometimes to Alexandria...sometimes to L'Enfant...sometimes to Glover Park....sometimes to Friendship Heights...so if, while I am bitching about this street or that street, my route seems very erratic, it's because I have three separate jobs (well, one is an internship).    

The best word with which to describe today is "yikes".  I walked out the door at 8:19 AM, and Wisconsin Avenue was a parking lot.  Massachusetts Avenue was even worse.  Perhaps it was a motorcade or something, but I heard no sirens...anyway, I wimped out and took the sidewalk down Mass.  Sometimes I try and ride down it in the street, but it was pretty much impassable today, and I like not being stressed.  The sidewalk has its own share of stressers, but fewer that could kill me. 

Can we talk about Dupont Circle for a second?  And how pedestrians there absolutely suck?  People usually cut in front of me when I have the light on the inner loop, and at the south part of the circle where the inner and outer loops intersect.  One time, I hit an old lady who was crossing in a pack of (pseudo folk etymology heads-up!) sheeple.  She was behind a tall man, so I thought I was in the clear when he moved, but I didn't see her.  Fortunately, she was fine, admitted it was her fault, and then she asked me for directions.  Weird.

I'm also beginning to have serious problems with the 15th Street cycle track.  A friend of mine once remarked that, "Cycle tracks must exist in heaven," and I must say, I profoundly disagree.  Today, a lady cut the light where the road turns into Vermont Avenue while I was going one way and some other guy was coming the other way.  She effectively blocked both of us at the same time and said, "Oh, sorry, I always forget that's there!"  Ughhh.  Then I tried to stop for a couple of pedestrians who I thought were going to step out in front of me (not at a crosswalk), neglected to signal the stop, and the guy behind me had to slam on his brakes.  I apologized and explained why I stopped...fortunately, he was nice about it.  He wasn't even following me too closely, so I can't really fault him.   

To contrast with that, my coworker and I were riding down E St. today, and that cycle lane has its own set of annoyances.  Namely, cars parked or driving in the bike lane (that site, while slightly overly territorial, makes a good point).  There's that ongoing debate about which side of parked cars the bike lanes should be positioned in, and I'm not sure which side I'm on.  You're really in dooring territory either way (unless, like in Montreal, you have a thicker barrier between the street and the bike lane), and when you're next to the sidewalk, you have the added hazard of clueless pedestrians.  I still encounter people parked in the 15th Street lane, and joggers use it all the time.  

There's also the alternative option of positioning the lane in the middle of a busy, wide road (a la Pennsylvania Avenue).  The biggest problem with that, besides the pedestrian issue, are cars making U-turns in front of cyclists.  I've been knocked off my bike once and had the shit scared out of me several times.   Again, concrete barriers would help, but those are (probably) expensive and would (likely) annoy people.  Though they would be ten times better than those flimsy plastic things they position every 100 feet that always get knocked down...

Is it an infrastructure problem?  Or is the collective unconscious of DC just not attuned to the presence of bicycles?  Will this get better with time?  What does anyone who reads this think?

Next blog will hopefully be a cooking one.  I am moving to Glover Park, so all of my kitchen stuff is packed, but I am in charge of pie for Thanksgiving...I'm thinking pumpkin cream cheese pie....

The perils of not riding a bike

Remember how I said I would blog about biking?  Well, here's my first blog post about biking--actually, this is more about not biking.  And why not biking sucks.

Here are the reasons why, when it is raining, you should not look out the window and go, "Bleh, it's raining.  I think I will ditch my bike."

1) Once you're used to biking, walking is so slow.  So say, if you're walking to an event after work that's "only" a mile and a half away (from L'Enfant to Union Station), that mile and a half will feel more like a day and a half.  Especially in the rain.

2) Waiting for the bus for 20 minutes when you could've walked home in 20 minutes just doesn't make any sense.

3) Bethesda Metro Station at morning rush hour = hell.  Except for that guy who plays the trumpet in the tunnel.  I really like that guy, and if I carried cash on me once in awhile, I would totally give him a few bucks.

4) Biking is free.  WMATA is not.  Even for old people--they even make them pay.

5) I have a raincoat and rain pants for a reason, and while they do look superbly dorky, I will not melt.  It's just water.  If it were precipitating hot, sizzling oil or balls of lead, however, that would be another thing.

6) Being a pedestrian is scary.  I feel like I'm even less visible on foot than I am on a bike.  Would it be totally ridiculous to walk around wearing bike lights all the time?

So even though the Metro DOES drop me off basically in front of my building both ways, and even though I can be a lazy slob from time to time and I enjoy passive commutes where I get to read, biking really trumps all.

For the record--this is my bike.  Her name is Vancouver.  Don't mock.

Just so you don't think I'm a COMPLETE lazy slob, however, I should mention that I did bike around the entire District of Columbia this past Saturday with a friend.  That's right--the whole gosh darn thing.  And while it's "only" 43 miles, have you SEEN Southern Avenue?  It's pretty much careening hills the entire way with little to no shoulder.  Had I been thinking harder about it, I would have taken more photos and blogged the experience, but because I'm not in tremendous shape, I was busy trying not to die.  As proof, here is a photo of me at the intersection of Southern and Eastern Avenues.

 And there's the route.  As intense as WAGBRAD?  No, but pretty darn cool all the same.  I should also mention that the route we took had us on US-50 (New York Avenue) for about a half mile, and the calories I burned from the adrenaline of sheer panic caused by crossing over exit/merge lanes with cars zooming along at 65 MPH was easily (easily!) worth the seven extra miles of the "actual" WAGBRAD ride. 

I was also really surprised at the conscientiousness of drivers along the route.  You always hear that "Oh, drivers outside NW aren't used to cyclists, so it's really dangerous to bike there." Or maybe you don't hear that, but I do.  I'm going to make a bold leap and say that's a claim largely supported by anecdotal evidence.  There is that video of the guy getting harassed and hit (in SE?), but I am SURE similar things have happened in the "safe" part of the city.  Maybe people just say that because those areas are poorer and more "dangerous"--I dunno.  I bike through Bethesda all the time, and it's full of assholes behind the wheel.    

Anyway, My traveling companion and I did not get honked at once.  We got a lot of stares, sure, but we did look pretty funny trundling along around DC with our light touring gear.  And I got hollered at a couple of times, but that's the unfortunate side effect of having a blond ponytail sticking out of your helmet and cycling tights that make it WAY too obvious that you're a girl.  My favorite were the couple of times when people rolled down their windows to shout encouraging (not nasty) comments...that was pretty nice.

I guess the moral of the story is to be careful wherever you bike and to not make snap judgments about the safety of this or that area based on socioeconomic conditions.

Actually, speaking of crazy bike rides, a co-worker of mine, avid cyclist, writer and bike mechanic Matt Wittmer, recently put out this awesome book entitled Where to Ride?.  He spent a lot of time researching good routes around DC, and it's a really nice compilation.  Full-color illustrations, route notes, maps, advertisements for great cycling organizations, etc. Totally worth your money even if you're a veteran DC cyclist!

It's supposed to be pouring again tomorrow, so we'll see if I heed my own advice.  Heading to Bethesda tomorrow night, however, and the Capital Crescent Trail in the dark and the rain kind of sucks...oh, the dilemmas.

Cheaper Chai Cupcakes

 The chocolate cupcakes are a different variety...I'll write up that recipe later.

When I was 18, my friend Tommy and I made vegan chai cupcakes from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over The World.  They tasted a bit more like muffins, though, and the problem with vegan baking is that if you're not normally a vegan, the ingredients are pretty expensive to buy just to make a batch of cupcakes.  Especially when you're a college freshman.

So, inspired by the fall flavors of chai, I scoured the internet to find the perfect non-vegan recipe.  The closest I found was this...but it calls for all sorts of expensive spices that I don't have.  So I altered it a bit using a steeping technique from the vegan recipe, and I was pleased with the result.  It's not a strong flavor, but it's definitely present.

Here's what you need!

Cupcakes:

1/2 c. light cream or buttermilk
4 vanilla or spiced chai teabags (I recommend Bigelow Vanilla Chai)
1/2 c. butter
1 c. sugar
1 1/4 c. flour
1 tsp. apple cider vinegar (1/2 tsp. if you are using buttermilk)
1 tsp. baking soda (1/2 tsp. if you are using buttermilk)
2 tsp. vanilla
2 tsp. cinnamon
dash of nutmeg

Frosting:

1 c. butter
1-2 tsp. vanilla
2-4 c. powdered sugar, depending on how thick you want your frosting
a few tablespoons of chai cream mixture

Preheat oven to 325 F and line a cupcake pan with papers.

Heat light cream on the stove on LOW until very warm (don't boil it), then steep 4 chai teabags in it. Cover and let sit for 10 minutes. Remove teabags and squeeze excess cream out. Let cool slightly so it doesn't melt all the butter in the next step.  Set aside a few tablespoons of this for the frosting, and put that portion in the fridge.

Cream butter and sugar (if you don't know what this means, mush them together into a nice, slightly grainy paste using a mixer or by hand if you're feeling strong) and add 2 tsp. vanilla. Throw in cinnamon and nutmeg. Add chai cream mixture and flour to the bowl, alternating between the two and adding in increments.  Mix until just stirred--do not overmix.

In a separate bowl, mix baking soda and  apple cider vinegar.  Let them do their cool volcano-y thing, dump into batter and mix.

Pour cupcakes into cupcake pan until each is about 3/4 full. Put in oven for about 20 minutes. Take out, stick a toothpick or knife in the center and if it comes out clean, they're done.

Let cupcakes cool. In the meantime, make the frosting! Blend butter with vanilla, and add powdered sugar in increments.  Add chilled chai cream mixture.  Keep mixing until fluffy and frosting-like.  Toss in some cinnamon, if you want some extra kick.

Once the cupcakes are cool, mush the frosting into a sandwich bag, cut open a corner, and pipe it onto the cupcakes. If you have a fancy frosting kit, use that. You can also use a knife and put on the frosting the old fashioned way, but using the bag is more fun, and it gives you an excuse to lick globs of frosting off your fingers.  One thing--you will have a lot of leftover frosting, so you may need to make another batch of cupcakes (oh, darn).

Garnish with a puff of cinnamon.

 Yum.

This recipe makes 12, however, if you eat 7 after you make them, your friends need never know.

Winter Squash Chipotle Chili with Bulgur Wheat

I love to bake and cook, and my notebooks are frequently full of greasy, crumb-filled pages with half-legible recipes.  A blog seems as good a place as any to keep track of them, and to share them with the general public. Some are blatant rip-offs from other blogs, so I will temper my lack of originality with the occasional post about the trials and tribulations of biking in the District of Columbia...an idea that, to be fair, was largely inspired by this guy and these guys.

The immediate reason why I decided to start this blog is a very creative vegetarian chili I just threw together, and I am VERY happy with it.  Truth be told, I'm a better baker than a cook, so I get really stoked when my thrown-together recipes turn out OK.

I am by no means an expert and cook very much by trial and error.  I'm sure that real cooks would read my recipes and scoff at my laugh of technique, but whatever.  

(I kind of forgot to add the spinach for the first serving....it was still simmering, so I went back and added.)

Here's what you need!

2-3 tbsp olive oil

1 acorn squash, gutted, peeled and cut into 1/2-inch chunks*

OR

Whatever winter squash you have sitting in your kitchen and keep forgetting to cook

1 red onion, chopped

4 garlic cloves, chopped

1 red pepper, chopped into smallish chunks

2 1/2 c. vegetable broth

1/2 can of whole tomatoes (usually they come in a 28 oz. can...a 14 oz. can of diced tomatoes would also work)

2 cans (15 oz.) black beans, washed and rinsed

A couple handfuls of spinach or chard

1/2-3/4 c. bulgur wheat (technically, optional, but it makes this chili very hearty--who needs beef?)

2 tsp cumin

1 or 2 chipotle peppers in adobo sauce, sliced

OR

2 tbsp chipotle chili powder

a few dashes of cinnamon (I neglected to measure)

a drizzling of honey (also forgot to measure)

salt

grated cheddar cheese (optional but highly recommended)

sour cream (same)

Pour oil into a large pot, heat on medium high heat.  Add onion and garlic and saute until onion is translucent.  Add a dash of salt.  Throw in red pepper.  Saute for a couple more minutes.  Add acorn squash chunks, chipotle, cumin, cinnamon, and cook for a few minutes until fragrant.  Pour in veggie broth, tomatoes, and black beans.  Aid the breaking down of the tomatoes by smushing them against the side of the pot with a spoon (it's fun!). Bring to a boil, then turn heat down and simmer.

In the meantime, toast the bulgur wheat in a skillet.  If it starts to pop, you'll know it's done.

Add bulgur wheat to chili.  Simmer, uncovered, for about 20 minutes, depending on how tender you like your squash.  Taste for spice and add honey and salt accordingly.  When chili is reaching a satisfactory level of done-ness (and the bulgur wheat is no longer crunchy), add the spinach and stir until it's slightly wilted, no more than a couple of minutes.  

Ladle into bowls (I don't understand why people include steps like that in recipes....you don't have to.  You could eat it straight from the pot with 5 friends while sitting around a campfire.  In fact, it might be better that way.) and add as much sour cream and cheese as your heart desires.

Grab a glass of red wine, some homemade cornbread, and revel in the smug satisfaction that you have cooked a successful vegetarian chili.

  

*Because of its ridges, acorn squash is a pain in the butt to peel.  If you are an amateur and have no patience, like me, hack at it with a vegetable peeler until you are ready to throw it across the room.  Then cut up the squash with whatever peel remains on it and cut the rest off from there.  I thought leaving some skin on would be OK, but it resulted in some unpleasantly chunky, wood-like bits.

Look at that lovely spinach!