rubber pie Yesterday I tried to make a peanut butter chocolate chip pie. Tried. I think I was inspired by that scene from "The Joy Luck Club" where one of the daughters (I can never keep them straight except for June and Waverly) makes a similar pie in an effort to win back her unfaithful Blaine-from- Pretty-in-Pink husband. But then she sits on the rain and tells him to get the hell out of her house because her grandmother ate opium in sweet bean buns back in China. Mmm, sweet bean buns. But anyway, that was the inspiration behind the peanut butter chocolate chip pie. I didn't have any idea on how to make said pie, but know that I had made a fairly successful batch of peanut butter fudge a few months ago, and that I could riff off that recipe to come up with something. My first mistake was not sticking to my own recipe in the first place. Upon starting the whole endeavor, I realized that I didn't have evaporated milk and sugar as called for, so decided instead to substitute sweetened condensed milk. What's the difference, right? Evaporated, condensed, meh. Well, what ended up happening is that instead of a fudge-like consistencey, I ended up with something more like a peanut butter taffy, which, while tasting great, really is not suitable to being poured in a pie crust and refrigerated. Last night I tried to cut off a little slice to see how the whole mess turned out, and ended up with a six-foot long stretched out wedge, still attached to the cake, that I had to hack off with scissors. Note to self: never again make solid taffy pie. I mean, the taffy is good, but perhaps more suitable to candy bars or some sort of filling, not in solid block form. However, for learning purposes, I have decided to include the recipe for peanut butter fudge to the right. It turns out pretty good when you make it correctly, as those at Sunday's Superbowl party will attest. I'm thinking about starting yoga classes sometime soon. Not because I'm turning into some trendy- pants-Madonna-Gwyneth-Paltrow-hanger-on-type, but, well, I have a lot of free time on my hands, so I have to do something with it. It's either that, or a ceramics class, and come on, I'm not my mother. (Yet.) First, I found a yoga center really close to my house, right next to the post office, but as I was reading their class descriptions, I realized that it was a health center specifically geared towards The Larger Woman, with yoga modified for that body type. So that was out. But then I found this other place, which looks really good, and has drop-in classes (no registration required, which is great for me, because let's face it, I'm not going to schedule class weeks ahead), but is slightly farther away, which decreases my chances of getting off my butt and actually going there, especially in this weather. But it looks like they have an intro offer for beginners (three classes for $30), so who knows, maybe I'll give it a shot. xo Michelle |
Wednesday . January 29 . 2003 . 12:30pm |
rubber pie Yesterday I tried to make a peanut butter chocolate chip pie. Tried. I think I was inspired by that scene from "The Joy Luck Club" where one of the daughters (I can never keep them straight except for June and Waverly) makes a similar pie in an effort to win back her unfaithful Blaine-from- Pretty-in-Pink husband. But then she sits on the rain and tells him to get the hell out of her house because her grandmother ate opium in sweet bean buns back in China. Mmm, sweet bean buns. But anyway, that was the inspiration behind the peanut butter chocolate chip pie. I didn't have any idea on how to make said pie, but know that I had made a fairly successful batch of peanut butter fudge a few months ago, and that I could riff off that recipe to come up with something. My first mistake was not sticking to my own recipe in the first place. Upon starting the whole endeavor, I realized that I didn't have evaporated milk and sugar as called for, so decided instead to substitute sweetened condensed milk. What's the difference, right? Evaporated, condensed, meh. Well, what ended up happening is that instead of a fudge-like consistencey, I ended up with something more like a peanut butter taffy, which, while tasting great, really is not suitable to being poured in a pie crust and refrigerated. Last night I tried to cut off a little slice to see how the whole mess turned out, and ended up with a six-foot long stretched out wedge, still attached to the cake, that I had to hack off with scissors. Note to self: never again make solid taffy pie. I mean, the taffy is good, but perhaps more suitable to candy bars or some sort of filling, not in solid block form. However, for learning purposes, I have decided to include the recipe for peanut butter fudge to the right. It turns out pretty good when you make it correctly, as those at Sunday's Superbowl party will attest. I'm thinking about starting yoga classes sometime soon. Not because I'm turning into some trendy- pants-Madonna-Gwyneth-Paltrow-hanger-on-type, but, well, I have a lot of free time on my hands, so I have to do something with it. It's either that, or a ceramics class, and come on, I'm not my mother. (Yet.) First, I found a yoga center really close to my house, right next to the post office, but as I was reading their class descriptions, I realized that it was a health center specifically geared towards The Larger Woman, with yoga modified for that body type. So that was out. But then I found this other place, which looks really good, and has drop-in classes (no registration required, which is great for me, because let's face it, I'm not going to schedule class weeks ahead), but is slightly farther away, which decreases my chances of getting off my butt and actually going there, especially in this weather. But it looks like they have an intro offer for beginners (three classes for $30), so who knows, maybe I'll give it a shot. xo Michelle |
Bikini Briefs |
appetite-killing peanut butter fudge That's appetite-killing in a good way, like, it'll make you full, not to be confused with appetite-killing because it's nauseating. Well, I guess it could be if you ate the whole batch at once, but it's tasty enough to tempt you to do just that. What you will need: - One bag of peanut butter chips. I don't know how big the bags are, since I just took out the trash, but, you know, standard size. They sell them in the baking aisle where all the chocolate chips and cake mixes are. - 2 and 1/4ths cups of sugar. I used regular sugar the first time, which gave the end product kind of a grainy, crunchy consistency. It was kind of fun that way. But if you don't like flavor crystals, you can use confectioner's sugar. - One 7oz jar of marshmallow fluff. They didn't have fluff at my supermarket, so I just used 3/4ths of a bag of marshmallows, and it worked just fine. - 3/4ths a cup of evaporated milk. - 1/4th a cup of butter - 1 teaspoon vanilla What to do: OK, this is so easy, you will plotz. Melt the butter and marshmallows in a pot. Then add the sugar and milk and mix it up. Then add the peanut butter chips and mix it up until it's all melty and even throughout. Finally, add the vanilla and mix it up. It will be deicious goo by this point. Pour the goo into a pan and let it cool. Then cut it into squares. Voila. The neat thing about this fudge is that, between the butter and the peanut butter chips, the whole mess is so greasy that you don't even need to grease the pan beforehand. Well, I guess that's either neat, or gross. I say neat. Also, I imagine that you can make regular fudge with this recipe too (that is to say, chocolate fudge), by just substituting what kind of chips you use. Oh, and when I ws at the store, I saw that they had white chocolate chips, so how's that for a future experiment? Maybe I'll try that sometime soon, after I've recovered from my latest culinary debacle. |
