Open Faced Pie In Your Face

So, half way through studying for my fluid mechanics final, I realized I needed to write a blog post. And the only thing in my fridge is a jar of pickles, a bag of dried out baby carrots, and half a bottle of wine.

I did however have three very ripe pears...

Pear Tart

(yup, that's all the intro you get; it's finals time)

What you need:

• 1/3 c butter
• 1/3 c sugar
• 2/3 c flour
• 3 pears
• 1 tbsp wine

Okay, I thought I was being extremely clever with all of the threes until I realized I'd managed to lose my 1/3 cup measure. How the hell does someone lose a measuring cup?? And no, it's not buried somewhere in a stack of dirty dishes. I actually washed them all yesterday. :P

What you gotta do:

Preheat the oven to 400.

Make sure your butter is very soft. Cream it with the sugar.

If you wanted to do some fancy tricks with this, try a bit of lemon or lime zest in here. You could also replace up to half the butter with cream cheese if you have any. I didn't.

I really hate measuring dry stuff in my liquid measure. Liquid measuring cups are made for liquids. No, I'm not just being fussy. They're designed to account for the surface tension of liquids and how it affects how we see and perceive the level in the cup.

Mix in the flour until just combined. Your dough should be soft and sticky and you should need a bit of flour on your hands as you press it down onto the parchment.

Mine was a bit too dry. I'd like to blame it on the cup, but I may end up having to cut the flour down to 1/2 cup. Try it that way. Let me know how it works.

Peel and slice your pears. If you want to be all fancy with them, and try to segment the to get all the wedges the same size, that's your choice. Me, I'm okay with different sizes. It's "rustic". Yeah, rustic. We'll call it that.

Toss the pear slices in a bowl with the wine, or lemon juice, or lime juice. Lemon juice on the pears and lemon zest in the crust would work nicely, I think. I didn't have lemon. I had booze.

Pile the pears on the crust in as artful, or as "rustic" (not messy, rustic) a manner as you want or have patience for.

Bake this at 400 for about 20 minutes. The crust will be nice and browned, the pears soft and juicy and just starting to brown a bit on top.

Pull the parchment off the cookie sheet and onto a cooling rack. This giant pear covered cookie (really, that's kinda what it is) will be very soft. Let it cool to room temperature before you even think about cutting it.

(do some calculus while you wait)

If you don't have any cream to whip, a bit of thick vanilla yogurt works just fine.

What's your favourite kind of pie?

DIY Instant Breakfast

Last week of classes!!!

And not a scrap of food in my house. Well, there is food, but most of it is stuff like spaghetti sauce, and thai green curry, and chicken tortilla soup, and red beans all packaged in handy meal-sized portions in the freezer. Not much in the way of blog posts.

So, with finals looming and a mostly bare pantry, I thought I'd share one of my ongoing experiments with you: Instant Oatmeal.

You know those little packets of sugary powder that you just dump into a mug at work? Well, I'm determined to make some kind of home version of them that doesn't include preservatives and dehydrating chemicals.

I've made a few attempts now, and I think I'm getting closer. Here's what I've done so far:

Home Made Instant Oatmeal:

• 1 c quick cooking rolled oats
• 1/2 c dried fruit
• 1/3 c powdered milk
• 1/4 c cinnamon sugar
• 1 tbsp ground flax seed

I used my handy dandy jar of cinnamon sugar, but if you don't have one (why don't you have a jar of cinnamon sugar??) you can use whatever sugar you like best in your oatmeal and add a 1/2 tsp of cinnamon. 

Dump all the stuff into a container.

If you're using raisins in your oatmeal (you're weird, they're gross) you can just dump them in. I had som dried pears so I diced them into tiny chunks first. Dried apricots, cherries, or blueberries would also be awesome.

Mix everything up.

This is so much work.

Scoop about 1/2 a cup of the mixture into a bowl. (I only made 1/3 c but it really didn't seem like enough. 1/2 is probably just about right for a single serving; 3/4 if you're really hungry)

Pour in about 1/2 c of boiled water. This is one of the those times that a microwave is really handy. You can nuke the water in less time than it takes to put the coffee together.

At first, the mixture will seem pretty soupy, but if you leave it alone for 5 minutes while you go get dressed, do your hair, make the bed, whatever you have to do in the morning, it will thicken up by the time you're done.

If you do this in a go-mug instead of a bowl, you will have perfect oatmeal when you get to work.

Pour on a bit of milk or cream, or, if you're at work, a couple of those little creamer containers.

Sliced almonds are a nice bit of texture and protein.

It's not the prettiest breakfast, and I think I still need to work on my proportions a bit, but it actually kinda works!!

Home made convenience food!

What's your favourite convenience food? I wonder if I could make it at home...