use real butter

I finally made pumpkin pie last night after missing one ingredient after another… I think the part I enjoy the most about the pie is making the crust.

The key is to use chilled butter. I have a recipe for sinfully flaky scones that requires chilled chunks of butter in the pastry. When you bake it, all of the butter melts out into the pan in a standing pool of golden fatness. Then, when you take the pan out of the oven, the butter is gone! Well – not quite, it was re-absorbed by the scones and eventually ends up on everyone’s ass.

Tom and Kelly are both huge fans of food. You can tell they love to eat, but they don’t like cooking. I know for a fact that they are especially fond of baked goods. So tonight after we got home from tree harvesting, I make a cranberry nut dessert. Well, I made two: one for Tom and Kelly, and another to take to the office. There are other bakers in our workplace, which is kinda nice as it spreads the cheer and the labor. When I was at Cornell, I baked for the department fairly regularly for a time (also to keep myself sane until I decided I hated most of the people in the department in my fifth year). Feeding people is an intimate act – a motherly act. This is where you take ingredients that are generally unappealing on their own (with the notable exception of sweetened chocolate), and combine them to create something wonderful, something to bring pleasure to others. Our basic human needs include food, sleep, shelter, water. I find food to be the most gratifying both in intake and in giving. It is an act of love, of thanks, of friendship.

chicken pot before the pie

banana bread with bittersweet shaved ghirardelli chocolate