Pie Eyed

Watching: Johnny Knoxville on Late Night with Conan O'Brien
Wearing: Pajama pants and a matching shirt, pink thong slippers
Baking: A pumpkin pie and an apple pie

It's hard cooking late at night. Because my mom is sleeping. And when I have a question like how in the hell can I make a pie with heavy cream when I can't find it at any grocery store in the midwest (okay, at Wal-Mart in Princeton) and I just want to make the damn pie. So I looked on the internet for a substitution. I found a few. The most mentioned was the butter and milk combination. But I don't think it was as effective, especially since I only keep skim milk. I think that I should have tried the evaporated milk substitute instead.

So the pumpkin filling wasn't thick enough, and I worried. I mixed up enough to make two pumpkin pies. But after seeing how runny the filling was, I panicked a bit and decided to make an apple pie as pie number 2, just in case the pumpkin one wouldn't set... I would hate to bake 2 pies and have them both be a bomb. But now the pumpkin is set about 3 inches around the edge, so I hope the rest will set in a few minutes. I will practically be awake all night baking at this point, LOL.

Pies are NOT my forte. My mom makes good pies, but even she has issues now and then. I have watched her angrily toss out enough botched pie crusts in my time to know that pies are touchy. Practice would probably make perfect, but I have resorted to buying refrigerated or boxed crusts so that I can eliminate the crust factor and concentrate on the filling. I need to take a pie baking class!

I can bake all kinds of breads, from scratch, and be incredibly successful. Other people get frustrated and are amazed with my patience and success of baking bread and rising dough. I can bake cookies, tea rings, roast turkeys, make salads, can veggies, make soup and chili from scratch, and make homemade tortellini. But I really don't like making pies.

Oh the center of the pumpkin pie is setting! I am using two of my Pampered Chef Stoneware Pie pans. My mom hates those. She always says that her crust burns before the center gets done because the stoneware takes longer to heat up. I use the pie crust shield from Pampered Chef and as long as I put it on within the first 8-10 minutes, I don't have a problem. Of course my mom doesn't have a whole lot of patience when it comes to letting the stone heat up and turning the heat down a bit so that the crust doesn't get done so fast.

You know, it's a small world. Case in Point? The commercial I just saw on TV. Let me start at the beginning. When I went to college, I took classes with a guy named Ty Kipp from a couple of towns over. Besides having a porn star name, Ty is super nice, and a good looking, really built guy. The broad shouldered type, like my husband, and I LOVE the broad shouldered type.

We always got along and I had alot of fun with him and other friends at school. Once I left college, I rarely if ever saw him. I probably didn't see him in 7 years. Then my sister started dating a guy who was in my class in college! Strange! and we had been good friends too, and rode to class and field trips together quite often as the only two people from our area. Well, they didn't date long, but right around that time I went to the bar in Mineral with her and ran into Ty and another classmate. Talk about wild. They had never put two and two together that she was my sister.

So Ty and Liz (sis) play on the same sand volleyball team, and I see him about once a month or so. As I was sitting here watching Conan, A commercial came on the TV for Weber Meats in Geneseo. I was busy typing and I happened to look up, JUST as I saw Ty on the screen! What?! Thank god for TIVO because I rewound and sure enough. He had his head down but I was sure it was him. I called Liz (because she is always awake) and clarified that he does work at Weber in Geneseo. Cool! Not everyday you see someone you know on TV. At least not here. Around here even the weather man is a celebrity. So I told her "you HAVE to tell Ty I saw him on TV!" And I explained to her that when we were in school, we went to Weber Meats for a lab, for our meat evaluation class. I can't remember if Ty was in that class with me or not... because that was 8 years ago!

Now the Pumpkin Pie is out and the Apple Pie is in the Oven. I can't wait for it to cool so I can put the cool whip on top. Mmmm.

UPDATE: I took the apple pie out of the oven at 1:45am. Then I fell fast asleep and had a dream that I was back in college and that I was skinny! (I was fairly skinny then) and I had long hair (in the dream) and I was at like an arcade playing Atari with Ty and when it was time to part ways, he kissed me! What the? Now this morning I was a little upset that I didn't kiss him in college- although a dream kiss is probably better I suppose. At least this one probably was. Plus I dated my husband all through college, I was only there like two months before we "officially" got it together. So I didn't get to kiss any college guys. Oh well. So this morning I was like "hmmm, I should convince my sister to ask Ty out. He's a great guy, just what she needs. They could get married. He would be an awesome uncle to my kids. "Uncle Ty." It has a nice ring to it. And someday, Ty is going to google his own name (or maybe someone will do it for him) and he will find this and be like What? The Fuck?