Brown Bag Apple Pie

Prerequisite: A brown paper grocery bag. No, I'm not kidding.

Preheat oven to 400F.
While defrosting a premade frozen pie crust:

Filling Ingredients:
5c apples - I usually use Granny Smith
1/2c sugar
2T flour
your favorite apple pie seasoning to taste (I have an all-purpose apple pie spice that has cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, and allspice)

Mix sugar, flour, and spice in small bowl and set aside.
Peel, core, and slice apples - I have one of those peeler/corer/slicer thingies that literally makes it a snap to do all this. I used to hate peeling apples.
In a large bowl, combine the apples and sugar/flour/spice until apples are well coated.
Now, here's a matter of preference - some people just like dumping the apples into the pie shell, but I found that doing it that way sometimes makes the pie sag after baking. So I pick apples a couple at a time, and lay them in the pie crust so as to make the best use of the space. Yea, I'm a little OCD sometimes! Ha!

When all the apples are placed in the pie shell, top with the crumbs:

Crumbs:
1/2c sugar
1/2c flour
1/4c butter, at room temperature.

Mix the flour and sugar, then blend with the butter to make coarse crumbs. Spoon over the pie.

Now here's the interesting part.

Lay the bag, open end towards your pie, on a large, rigid cookie sheet. Carefully put the pie in the bag - it helps if it's oriented a little towards the back of the bag, but right in the middle side-to-side. Fold over the top of the bag a little bit and staple to close - I usually staple both ends and once in the middle.

Place on the bottom oven rack and bake at 400F for 1 hour.
Note: MAKE SURE the bag is not touching the heating element or sides of your oven. I cannot stress this enough. I have been neglectful in the past and had a corner of the bag just grazing the top heating element. It almost started a fire. That's why I use the bottommost rack in the oven (even remove the top rack). That way there's enough clearance around the bag. So I repeat, check to make sure the bag is not touching the sides or heating element in your oven.

The bag itself will be safe in the oven (as long as you've made sure it's not touching anything). You will smell singed paper. It usually goes away after a half hour. If you open the oven door to check on it, you may also see smoke/steam. It's nothing to worry about - it's the moisture baking out of the paper bag.

After an hour, carefully remove the cookie sheet/bag from the oven. Let it sit a couple minutes to cool, then rip the bag open to remove the pie. Some filling juice may have boiled over the crust edges making it sticky on the bottom of the pie pan, so it may be useful to get someone to help you - one person holding the bag and one person picking up the pie. Put your pie on a wire rack to cool.

The pie is good warm or cold, so in a couple of hours, sit back and enjoy the fruits of your labor.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Last week, we decided to pack up our camper and head out for an extended weekend of camping - 15 minutes from home.

Yea, sounds crazy, but it was actually a good time.

We headed out Thursday after work. Unfortunately it was cold as hell - temperatures were dipping down into the low 40s at night. Luckily our idea of "roughing it" includes TV, heat and a bed with lots of blankets. Friday was more of the same, overcast and chilly, and I was seriously beginning to doubt the brilliance of our idea to "get away" for a weekend. Friends came to stay with us on Saturday and entered their kids in a costume contest. Their youngest, a one year old cutie named Aiden, was dressed as a monkey and came away with Funniest Costume and a nice big Hershey bar as his prize.

The thing that amazed me about the weekend was how polite and mature the kids were. After the costume judging, the kids trick-or-treated around the campground. We had a huge tub full of candy - when we saw the number of kids at the costume judging we realized we'd be taking a lot of it back home with us. Either that or we'd all be in sugar comas by the end of the night. So when the kids came around, we told them to just grab handfuls. Most of them took one piece of candy, then looked at us in disbelief when we urged them on to take more. Even the little kids - they'd gaze into this big sea of candy and pull out one piece. Shoot, we even had good candy, like Milky Ways, Twix, Hershey bars, Nerds, Blow Pops, Skittles and stuff like that. When I was a kid, if I only had to actually choose one piece, it would have taken me 15 minutes to decide what I wanted. So we kept urging them all to take a good fistful or two. But we still ended up taking a buttload of candy home with us.

So yea, it wasn't quite "roughing it", and it may sound a little mundane, but it was just a nice weekend of getting away from all the craziness of everyday life. And only 15 minutes from home.

Today's Review: Tresemme Flawless Curls Extra Hold Mousse

Before I offer my opinion, let me start with a bit of back story:

It's a well known fact that when it comes to haircare, I'm a total product whore. I'll try anything - from the junk in the drugstores to the stuff in salons. Until a couple of weeks ago, my products of choice were Matrix Biolage Hydrating Shampoo and Conditioning Balm (the balm that you're supposed to use once a week - yea, I used it every day... damn my long, thick, color-infested hair), Rusk Sheer Brilliance, and either Matrix Sleek Look Styling Creme or Rusk CurlSilk, depending on whether I was styling my hair straight or wavy.

The last time I was at the salon, I bought Pureology Hydrate System shampoo and conditioner. Sweet bleeding Jesus, why have I never seen this stuff before? The smell is divine (the conditioner has a wonderful mint smell, and the more I work it through my hair, the more minty it smells), my color really is staying brighter longer, and it makes my hair wonderfully soft. I also don't get that ooky feeling I get after rinsing some other conditioners out of my hair when I'm in the shower - that feeling where I think I need to wash again because I have a thick film of conditioner covering my back. Bleh.

My hair is naturally wavy, bordering on a bit curly, but usually I like to style it smooth and straight. Because it's thick and tending towards waves, it's an involved process of blow drying, applying more styling creme to smooth out the waves, more blow drying, flat ironing, and sealing it up with a waterproof finisher. Frankly it's too much crap to do every day. Ideally, unless I really want to straighten my hair, I'd love to get out of the shower, comb the tangles out, put a product or two in, and let it air dry - sans frizz.

So that's why I tried the Rusk CurlSilk - I would totally go wavy if I could find something that calms the frizz, and doesn't make my hair weighed down. If I use the right amount of CurlSilk, it doesn't do a bad job - there's a little bit of frizz... but if I don't get the right amount my hair ends up feeling heavy and greasy.

So, on to my purchase today - since my bottle of CurlSilk was empty, I was browsing the shelves at the drugstore and I remembered that Tresemme ad I saw on TV about the smooth curls and all that crap, so I grabbed a bottle of Flawless Curls extra hold mousse. Yea, doesn't really make sense that I'm using bottles of shampoo and conditioner that cost $26 each on my head then use a $3.99 bottle of mousse, but I decided to give it a whirl anyway.

The bottle says:
"Sets curls so they behave come rain or shine. Curly hair craves hydration, and this mousse's conditioning formula - which includes keratin, gelatin, and proteins - quenches curls' thirst. This silky smooth mousse enhances your natural waves, adding definition without clumping."

Well, the chick's hair in the commercial (as she stood looking into the salon window laughing at a friend getting salon curls for much more money) looked lovely. After using this, my guess is that there's no way they used it to style that woman's curls in the commercial. What a load of junk. My hair has never felt less hydrated - it's almost a sticky, course sandpapery feel - it's frizzy, and I have absolutely no definition to any waves or curls in my hair. I feel like I have straw on my head. Well, that's $3.99 down the tubes.

I'm presently debating washing my hair again because of how crappy it feels.

I've decided tomorrow I'm heading back to the salon (even though I have another appointment next week) to try out Pureology's RealCurl Creme. I'd rather pay $20 for 5.1oz. of a Pureology product than the $3.99 for the 10.5oz. of junk. In my opinion, there's a clear line between cheap and inexpensive.

The Tresemme Flawless Curls Mousse? Cheap.

Yea, the IR filter wound up being like 40 bucks. I'm a moron. I don't know what the hell I was looking at when I saw it the first time. Maybe it was after one too many cocktails.

So I finally ordered it earlier this week, got it yesterday, and was all gung ho to try it out this morning. Well guess what? Today's forecast? Overcast. So what maybe would have been a cool picture if the sky was a nice blue with white fluffy clouds turned out to be a washed out mess with the blah overcast skies. The contrast between the trees and the sky would obviously have been so much better without all the damn clouds.

And guess what? The forecast for the next 4 days? Overcast! Sure, I spent over a week with gorgeous blue skies twiddling my stupid thumbs because I thought the damn filter was really expensive. Then I finally realize I'm a moron and order it, and now I can sit for another week twiddling my thumbs because of crummy weather. I guess that's the penalty I pay for being stupid.

Yea, I know, it's not like there's never going to be a clear, sunny day ever again. But the urge to play with yet another new toy is sometimes just irresistible.

I think I've become a woman obsessed. I'm sure the novelty will wear off eventually, but for now I just can't help myself. I went out in the back yard this morning with a tripod so I could test out longer exposure times. Unfortunately I think longer exposure times are mostly necessary if I'm actually using an IR filter. Since I just shelled out a bunch of bucks for the camera, it's going to be awhile before I can plunk down more on a filter. If anything, I'll be buying a new lens first.

I think I got more a more dramatic effect in this photo than the previous since the sun was almost directly overhead when I took the picture. In the last photo, it was almost 6:30PM when I took it, so the sun was a lot lower and the shadows were deeper.

So again, I post-processed the IR type effect in Photoshop - I'm not happy with the way the middle of the grass looks, under the tree - I had to clone out a brick fireplace we have sitting in the yard because I just didn't like the way it looks. Unfortunately my clone-brush skills kind of suck. Oh well, I guess I can't expect much from the 15 minutes I spent messing around with it.

Practice makes perfect, I guess. Or at least it makes me borderline obsessive.

I kind of fell in love with the examples of IR photography in the back. Since I still only have the lens that came with the camera and still know nothing about filters, I read up on how to duplicate the effect in photoshop. This is my first attempt, post processed in Photoshop from a photo of the front yard facing the street:

It's not perfect, and I'm still learning, but wow - I think I have a whole new appreciation for black and white photography. I think I might need a bigger SD card.

The third paragraph is what interested me:

"...users stood in front of a large screen and controlled a Windows computer with hand gestures: thumb left to go left, index finger right to go right, victory sign for Enter."

Does that mean giving the screen the middle finger is for CTRL-ALT-DEL?

Sorry, couldn't help it.

What prompted me to write today was Photoshop CS3 going all wonky on me. I just finished creating an image - the windows I had open were the image I created, a source file image (it was a large one, print-quality, about 250MB), and one other small file. As I was saving the image I created, Photoshop crashed. Pisser, too - I spent about an hour or so making it.

No biggie, though - I reopened Photoshop and did a File>Open to re-open my source image. Photoshop crashed again. After checking things out, I could no longer open any files in Photoshop. Well, that is a bit inconvenient, isn't it? So I went through the regular routine I usually do when things on my dear little mac are going wonky:

Force Quit Photoshop, and go to repair permissions - permissions repaired, Photoshop still won't open file.
Deleted com.adobe.photoshop.plist from User>Library>Preferences folder - still no opening files.
Restarted computer - still no files.
Logged into another user account - my admin account and opened Photoshop - Updater came up and I decided to run it. 10 minutes (!) later the updates were downloaded and 5 minutes after that they were installed. I opened a file and it worked fine.
Switched back to my regular account and it seems to be working ok.

I can't remember what versions of stuff were updated, but hopefully this will solve the problem (as in, it's working now, but for how long?). When I googled the problem, I found several other people running into the same thing, but most were running Windows and it had something to do with a default printer setting. I was hoping I wouldn't have to remove my default printer to overcome the problem, especially since it's been working fine for the last 6 months I've had that printer, so I'm glad it seems to be ok. I haven't gathered the courage to try and open my 250MB source file yet (usually takes a while to open when operating normally) - I wouldn't want to wake Dave up with my swearing if it doesn't work again. Maybe tomorrow.

So I thought I'd make a quick post just in case anyone else is having the same problem. I know it saves a lot of headaches when searching for an answer to a problem if you can actually find a little help.

Well, it's off to bed for now - I think the cron jobs are starting to run on my mac right now because the HD is making a bit of noise. Hopefully it's not Photoshop self-destructing.

The other thing that's been consuming a bit of my time is doing further reading on home-cooking for Cragar. Since I was initially fuzzy on supplementing Cragar's diet with vitamins, calcium and other minerals, I decided I needed extra help. I ordered Dr. Pitcairn's Complete Guide to Natural Health for Dogs & Cats - a excellent resource for home cooking for pets. I read the section on diet and nutrition several times to make sure I understood before venturing into the unknown depths of a health food store (I think I've been in a health food store maybe twice in my life). Who would have thought that I'd be buying kelp powder to make a nutritional supplement for my dog? And on the subject of the powdered kelp, I realize that it contains iodine and other minerals, but as far as I'm concerned it should be called powdered ass, it smells so bad. Whew! I thought for sure Cragar would spit his food on the floor after I added the supplements to his food, but apparently he likes powdered ass.

The book has several recipes and ingredient substitutions. I can make the "Doggie Oats" recipe a bunch of different ways - substituting barley, rice, bulgur, potatoes, or cornmeal. I can use turkey, hamburger, chicken, or even cottage cheese and eggs! There are so many variations!

Two weeks ago I made a weeks' worth of food with the oats and hamburger. Cragar loved it! I cooked the oats while I was browning hamburger, then steamed some carrots and green beans and mixed it all together. The oats made it all look like a gummy mess, but apparently Cragar likes gummy messes, too! Then I made the mini recipe with beef and barley, and one with chicken and brown rice.

I think there's more dog food than people food in my freezer right now.

The regular doggie oats recipe makes a lot of food. I wanted to make sure Cragar was going to be getting nutritional variety (and flavor variety), so I've recently been making the Mini Doggie Oats recipe two different ways. Different meats, grains, and veggies in each. Unfortunately, dietary variety means more time in the kitchen. Usually it was taking 2.5-3 hours from pulling the first pan out of the cabinet to putting the last little freezer bag full of food in the freezer (including all the cleanup). That's quite a chunk of time.

But then I was browsing the Dogster forums and I saw it right there: CROCK. POT.

How could I not have thought of this before? I can cook it all in a crockpot! Throw in the 1 part barley, rice, bulgur, or cornmeal to 2 parts water (or if using oats, use steel cut oats!, then 1 part oats to 3 parts water), raw meat, veggies, cover it up, turn it on, go do something else, come back 8 hours later and voila! What a genius idea. I don't know who thought of it to begin with, but cheers to you!

So the new routine is, add all the food (and appropriate water) to the crockpot and cook it up. After everything cooled down I add the extra bone meal the recipe calls for and the Vitamin E (mixed in with vegetable oil), and mix it all up. I did a little math on the recipe (which calls for Healthy Powder - the stuff that has the powdered ass kelp, lecithin, nutritional yeast, bone meal), and figured out that instead of adding the powder to the whole recipe, I can add just less than a teaspoon to each cup of food I feed him. That way I can add it fresh each time.

With learning all this nutritional stuff, I feel like I'm back in college! Heck, I even created a spreadsheet, based on the Doggie Oats recipe, where I can enter the amount of meat I have (i.e., 2 packages of ground beef totaling 2.25 pounds), and the other ingredients will be calculated automatically, even taking grain substitutions into account!

I'm such a geek.

But I think in the long run, Cragar will benefit immensely from it. He's already got brighter eyes, softer and shinier fur, and more energy than he's had in a long long time.

Now if only some of that would rub off onto me!

One thing that's been in the forefront of my mind in the last several weeks has been the pet food recall. From the contaminated wheat gluten to the contaminated rice and corn, it has just turned into a complete and total nightmare for pet owners. I can't imagine someone feeding their dog (or cat) something that is slowly killing them.

When the initial list of recalled foods came out, I (like many others) frantically scanned it just to make sure it was nothing we were feeding Cragar. I was worried because at that point, it was only "Cuts & Gravy" type foods, which happens to be all Cragar would eat. From the time he was very young, he turned his little puppy nose up at dry food. Even if we'd mix some kibble in with his wet food, he'd spit the kibble on the floor and eat only the wet food. From time to time, he'd even refuse wet "gravy" type food.

Luckily none of the food Cragar eats was on any of the lists. He was eating Pedigree pouches - mainly Butcher's Stew and Casserole Dinner - in addition to Little Ceasar's trays. He really liked those, and the flavors like Duck and Pork Tenderloin really drove him wild.

As the list kept expanding, I stopped giving him dog treats. Although there were no treats on the list (besides an entry for Jerky Strips), some of his favorites were the Nutriplan biscuits (what can I say, apparently he loved cheap treats!). Nutriplan food was on the recall list, and I wasn't going to take the chance that the contaminated materials didn't reach those, too.

Then, in true form, I became more paranoid. When was the food he was eating going to pop up on one of those lists? It didn't help at the time for some reason he was puking and had diarrhea. Coincidence, I'm sure, but that was the last straw. I said the hell with the dog food.

I boiled several chicken breasts and shredded them, then added some rice. When I ran out of chicken breasts, I browned some hamburger and mixed it with rice. Then of course the logical part of my brain started working (it doesn't always work, you know), and I realized that when I open a can of food, I can at least ensure he's getting proper nutrition. So my new mission was, how can I provide proper nutrition without using dog food?

A lot of non-pet owners would most likely call me crazy... for eons dogs have survived without a nutritionally balanced diet. They ate scraps, animal carcasses, whatever they needed to to survive. Ok, so I may be a little compulsive. But I'd venture a guess other pet owners would understand. I'd like to provide Cragar with the nutritional equivalent of opening a can, sans melamine.

So I started doing a little bit of research and quickly got way in over my head. I headed over to the great Globalpaw forums, where not only is there tons of information on the recalls, but a lot of other people who are starting to home cook for their dogs. I got some great advice, (Calgal, especially, thank you!) and I'm now feeding Cragar some pretty yummy, healthy food. It cost a total of about $9 to make, and it will feed him for about 8 days. It actually works out to be less expensive than feeding him Pedigree or Little Ceasar's trays!

My initial experiment was a recipe that Calgal provided, including natural hormone-free beef, brown rice, split peas, lentils, broccoli, carrots, and garlic. I was very tentative about the recipe since Cragar has been know to be picky (just in case you forgot about the whole spitting-the-kibble-on-the-floor routine, he's also been known to turn his nose at french fries, hamburgers, and other things "normal" dogs would do backflips for). I took a little bit of each ingredient (so I wouldn't have to waste 3 pounds of meat if he didn't like it), mixed it and gave it to him. After walking around the dish several times and lots of sniffing, he took a tentative bite. Then he started woofing (no pun intended) it down like he hadn't eaten in a week. When he was done he licked his chops, burped, then looked at me with those eyes that say, "May I have more please?"

So now feeding time is fun! I have the beef mixture in little freezer bags that I pull out every night and defrost in the fridge. When I put it in his bowl I usually stick it in the microwave for about 15 seconds so it won't be cold. Now, when he hears the microwave, he starts dancing around my feet or sitting by his food stand watching me intently. One time he almost had his face in the bowl before I even put it down! He's never been so enthusiastic about eating before.

Yesterday I mixed some plain yogurt into the food for his dinner - I thought he was going to eat his bowl after it was empty. He had yogurt once - on his first birthday I made him a puppy birthday cake and "iced" it with yogurt.

One thing I'm still a bit fuzzy on is supplements. Most people who home cook for their dogs add supplements like Flax seed, vitamins, crushed eggshells, etc. I may be a chemist, but when I start to get into all the supplements, I get a little worried. Body chemistry can be a delicate thing, and I don't want to screw it up. That's what was so good about using dog food (gross as it is).

A guy I work with uses Chicken Soup For The Puppy Lovers' Soul - an all natural food with a good reputation. He brought some into work today for Cragar to try. I added some to his beef mixture tonight and added some cottage cheese and blueberries (thanks again, Calgal, you rock!). He ate every. Single. Bite. So I'm considering "supplementing" the home cooking with good quality kibble like the Chicken Soup or Innova to make sure he's really getting everything he needs.

And tonight I had quite a revelation - Cragar is actually eating better and healthier than we are!