Moving Right Along

A proud, proud moment at my house

And it probably really will only last for a moment, but look at this:

Yes, it's true.  For now, and probably just for today, June 29, 2008, if you plug the words "blueberry pie" into Google, the second result listed will be my post from last year, the one I only wrote as part of a calculated procrastination project to help me calm down enough to sit down and write about how I finally got around to applying for Mass Health (which, incidentally, proved to be a very, very good thing to do).

We are laughing very hard at this, but at the same time my true love and I both feel a certain pride.  No, I haven't cured cancer or brokered world peace.  But apparently I have somehow become some kind of authority, just for a moment, on one very nice thing.

For today, anyway.

Procrastination 3: The Dream of a Downstairs Neighbor

Downstairs Neighbor B:  I had a dream about you last night.

Me:  Oh yeah?

Downstairs Neighbor B:  Yeah.  (Gestures toward stump where birch tree stood.)  I dreamed you fixed this tree, that you put it back together with wood glue. (Click to enlarge.)

Me:  HA HA HA HA HA -- Yeah, that sounds like something I would do, or try anyway.  Although it is a slight overestimation of my abilities.

Downstairs Neighbor B:  (Jerks head toward upstairs, and my true love)  When I told him about it, he just said, "Sounds right."

Me:  Oh, totally.  Dammit!  If only Landlord had left me the pieces!

Downstairs Neighbor B:  Right?  Of course, in the dream, I told you I didn't think it would work.  But you just said, "Hello-o?  I'm using wood glue?"

***

For anyone interested, it turns out it was not cold alone that killed the tree.  It was cold and bugs, hence the devoted interest of the woodpeckers.  It was also not older than me, as it was another thing my landlord and his wife planted when they first lived in this house.

Click the following picture to see closer up the pattern of infestation.

Procrastination 2: Blueberry Pie

Summer this year has put a crimp in my baking.  No cookies, no brownies, no yummy muffins, and all because the act of heating up the oven is also the act of heating up the entire household, including my studio next to the kitchen.  Usually, I bake even more in the summer than ever because of all the insanely wonderful, bakeable fruit, but last summer there was not enough fruit, and this summer, though it is cool and rainy as I write this, most days I have found the indoor heat after baking, shoot, after cooking dinner to be sickeningly oppressive. The heating continues long after the oven/stove has been turned off.

Still, some things are worth it.  Blueberry pie for example.

The organic blueberries at Hutchins Farm this year are exceptional.  Big, firm, sweet and acid in just the right amounts, a pleasure to plate preciously --

-- or gobble by the fistful.

I have not usually bothered with the plate thing.   I have usually started eating out of my tote bag before I've even paid for the berries.  I have been walking around with a blue mouth -- purple tongue and violet-specked teeth.

The thing is, as good as it feels to gobble them raw, they are also absolutely perfect baking blueberries. 

I have made two pies in the last week, the latest on Sunday.  This is how much was left of that pie on Tuesday, when I first planned to write this post:

Pathetic.

Perhaps you think the most pathetic part of this is that I didn't even make my own pie crust (which you can tell by the foil pan), although I did slice, lattice, and sugar the top.  Look, we each have our skills.  Pie crust is not among mine.  I have made Shuna's crust, and it was better, but oy, so much work (possibly because I have no Kitchen Aid mixer nor any space for such a thing on my counter), and look, a 9" pie with even a store-bought crust barely lasts two days in this environment.

I'm not even sure we chew when we eat it.

I do not like to waste time or effort.  Making pie crust by hand is not actually fun for me, nor am I skilled in the handling of it, nor are my results, even with an excellent basic recipe, significantly tastier than a decent store bought one.  So that's it; no more handmade pie crust from me, at least not until I have a kitchen and pocketbook big enough to operate every appliance that would make it not be such a production.

I'd rather spend my time concocting fillings.

The following is my version of yet another recipe inherited from my mom, which she called "Yankee Blueberry Pie."  I call it perfect -- especially after tweaking, of course!

Perfect Blueberry Pie

1 double 9" pie crust, your own or your favorite frozen one
¾ C evaporated cane juice
½ t cognac (okay if it slops over generously while you're measuring it, but don't go over 1 t)
4 heaping C raw, farm-fresh blueberries
¼ t cinnamon
1-2 T starch of some sort (e.g., tapioca or cornstarch, probably optional)
1-2 T butter, melted
turbinado sugar for sprinkling on top

1.  Preheat oven to 450°F.

2.  Line 9" pie plate with half your crust.

3.  Mix together other ingredients and fill crust.

4.  Top with other half of crust and sprinkle generously with turbinado -OR- cut other half of crust into strips; sprinkle/lightly press turbinado sugar generously over/into one side of each strip; lay strips across top of pie in lattice formation.

5.  Bake at 450°F for 10 minutes; then at 350°F for another 30 minutes.

6.  Eat when thoroughly cooled.

A note about starch:

I use tapioca in fruit pies because I simply love tapioca.  However, if you use tapioca in this pie, especially with a lattice crust, you may not get enough hot juice to cook it during the baking time.  Big, fat, farm-fresh blueberries do not turn to mush just because you heat them up, and pie with little rocks in it is a disappointment.

You can skip the starch altogether.  No matter what starch you use, this pie will have absolutely no structural integrity when even the slightest bit warm, not even at room temperature.  (Good luck getting it out of the pan in even little wedges.)  So unless you really like the taste or texture of a particular starch, I say don't bother.

"This pie is wonderful," said my true love between soup spoonsful, "but there is just one thing I don't understand."

"What's that?"

"It has no structural integrity."

"Yes.  That's because I just made it and it hasn't had time to sit in the fridge and congeal."

"So how come the berries do?"

"I don't understand the question."

"You know, in all the other blueberry pies I've eaten, the berries are just kind of purple soupy goo.  In this one, each individual berry is still clearly a blueberry and still kind of bursts when you pop it in your mouth."

"Ah, yes.  That is the miracle of using fresh fruit, fruit that was picked this morning.  I have not made this for you before, because I have never had access to quite so many raw, fresh, organic blueberries.  Now you know what I was holding out for."

"It's very, very yummy."

"Oh, yes.  It's a whole other thing."

Procrastination 1: Daylilies -or- The Cult of Hemerocallis

(Click to enlarge.)

I hope this won't shock you, but I have to confess:  I don't really like daylilies.  They are everywhere in summer, though, because they are so surpassingly easy to grow.  There is even a species which grows and thrives as a wildflower, the Hemerocallis fulva, but which originates in Eurasia and simply escaped cultivation.  (Click to enlarge.)

I do not like daylilies generally, and I especially do not like Hemerocallis fulva.  The worst daylilies are all like this one, weedy and thready looking even before they bloom on long, leafless stalks that just get longer as the month of July progresses, taking and needing little or no care but always looking like they need something, like they are just barely hanging on.  Scroungy looking.  (Click to enlarge.)

Of course, my rented yard is full of daylilies.  Of course, Hemerocallis fulva are the exact daylilies my landlord's wife planted most of, in a deep bank right up front and scattered amongst the shrubbery, 20 years ago when the two of them lived here with their young children.  (My landlord's son, recently graduated from university, has even told me he remembers when his mother planted them.)  So of course that means they are sacred and untouchable, all of them.  (Click to enlarge.)

I have found ways to photograph them that make them appear less hateable.  As with many other things, the trick is to narrow the composition drastically, to really close in on  some redeeming detail or other.  (Click to enlarge.)

Seen closely, all tunneled in, lots of things look more interesting, and even sometimes more beautiful.  (Click to enlarge.)

Or sometimes in order to reveal loveliness in something so ordinary it makes you want to scream what works is total deconstruction, accepting the happy accident of a little windy tossing, just refining it slightly with some creative cropping 'til all you have is a block of pure gradient exuberance.   (Click to enlarge.)

Fortunately for daylilies, most people don't seem to share my distaste for them, which, to be fair, is really just ennui born of oversaturation combined with a simple aesthetic preference for other forms.  There are even rabid daylily enthusiasts.  No accounting for tastes.   (Click to enlarge.)

As a result of the number of people whose passions are stirred by these simple plants -- which are called "day" lilies because each blossom blooms only for one day and then is enzymatically digested and replaced by another further up the stalk -- there are entire societies devoted to the adoration and avid cultivation of Hemerocallis.  As a natural result of that, there are thousands of species of Hemerocallis, with new ones being presented to the public every year.

I do not understand these people.  I see nothing remarkable about these flowers; I also can't seem to get away from them.

Or at least, that's how I felt until last Friday.

Imagine my surprise.  I never thought it would happen to me.

But it did.  Look at this:  (Click to enlarge.)

Understand that this blossom is nearly a foot wide.

So are each of these.   (Click to enlarge.)

"Ah, sweet mystery of life, at last I've found you..."   (Click to enlarge.)

I must have her.  I must.  Please, won't someone take pity upon me -- poor creature of lust that I have become -- and tell me her name?

Procrastination

So, I've been trying to write something about MassHealth since June 29, but I'm having trouble focusing because every time I think about insurance in any form I get a migraine (or something), and at some point I realize that hours have elapsed for which I can make no account, and that I haven't written a sentence.  Perhaps I have visited your blog and barfed loving ooohs and aaahs or a steaming pool of sarcastic bile all over your comments.   Perhaps a stack of warm and neatly folded towels has magically appeared atop the dryer.  Perhaps I have played stupid online games which shall not be named or linked.  I don't know.  I only know that I have promised myself that I will not blog about anything else until I get that freakin' post done.

And another week goes by.

And other topics pile up.

Today I'm trying something new.  Today I'm going to try procrastinating on my blog not yours.  (I have already failed, but this is like falling off the wagon; one must simply climb back on with no regrets and try to hold on tighter.)

I'm simply moving -- moving right along -- to other bloggy topics today.  Maybe this will free up my soul, or my blood pressure, to the point where I can dribble out a few thoughts on MassHealth every so often, in between conscientious procrastinations, and maybe at the end of the day there will be daylilies and blueberry pie here, Oscar Pistorius, ice cream balls, and mary janes, but also maybe a finished MassHealth post.  Maybe I can trick myself into doing something I really want to do but am having trouble doing if I can only distract myself with enough pleasantries -- here, though, not on your blog -- you hear me?  NOT ON YOUR BLOG -- not in the kitchen, not in the garden -- no really, I mean it -- not in Louisiana, not in front of the TV.

Let me just throw some more towels in the wash, and I'll be right back.