Time Flies When You’re Having Fun

Hard to believe that I’ve been married for a month already!  I’m positive it was the fastest month ever.

Things I’ve learned (food related) during my first month of marriage:

1. I don’t have to do it all myself: This week’s menu is probably the one I’m happiest with yet and a large part of that is due to the fact that I asked my Man what he thought we should have.  He really is full of good ideas (eggplant parm being one of them) that just don’t occur to me.
2. All my cooking doesn’t have to be perfect: My husband isn’t opposed to eating vegetable tetrazzini that didn’t come out just right or curry that doesn’t take like much.  If it’s food, its probably edible.  Takes a lot of the pressure off of me.
3. Food shopping as a couple keeps us out of a lot of trouble: We’re perpetually talking each other out of items we don’t need.  The supermarket is a very tempting place, but usually one of us has enough sense at any given moment to talk the other out of whatever unhealthy/overpriced/unnecessary item the other is considering.

To celebrate our first month, I decided to bake a lime pie for my Man.  He’s really into key lime pie, so when this recipe for Key Lime (Or Not) Pie appeared in my Reader a couple weeks ago I had to find an excuse to make it.  I used regular limes (and actually cheated by using lime juice from a bottle for half the juice).

It was a little bit of a risk, as I’ve only made one pie before and never with a graham cracker crust.  In the end however, the pie turned out great, though a little yellower than I expected.  Still, it tastes really lime-y (the green flecks are lime zest, in case you were concerned).

The only imperfection in my pie (I think…my husband may have other opinions) is that the crust is really crumbly:

The theory is that the crust just needs more butter.  We don’t mind crumbly crust though…it still tastes really good.  Overall, this pie was really easy to make, though it does take some time, since the crust has to be baked at least 1/2 an hour before the pie filling can be added.

Another cool part of this pie:  I used the egg separator that came with our measuring cups to separate the 4 yolks I needed from their whites.  It was one of those things that we didn’t expect to ever use, but sure enough, it came in handy.  See what a good job it did:

Rhubarb Pie, In The Summer…

Once upon a time, there was a great song by the (now disbanded) band, Five Iron Frenzy:

Feeling that it was inappropriate to sing this song without ever having eaten rhubarb pie, my sister convinced me to make a rhubarb pie yesterday.  I have never made a pie. I have never had rhubarb.  But my sister has this strange way of making all her ideas sound like good ones, so we did some research.  We settled on this Fresh Rhubarb Pie recipe and this “Best Ever Pie Crust” recipe, both from allrecipes.com.

We made the crust, which needed to be refrigerated for 4 hours or overnight, last night at 11pm.  Way past by bed time, but the recipe was incredibly simple.  The 2 balls of dough were done and in the fridge by 11:30.

This afternoon we began making the pie.

The setup: Pie plate, my sister chopping rhubarb, 2 balls of dough, my mother’s pastry mat (I told my Man today that I need this one), and my laptop which provided us with the recipe.

I was very proud of the job I did rolling out this pie crust:

Then we filled the crust with the chopped rhubarb and sugar/flour mixture

The pie baked for 55 minutes total and this was the final result:

Beautiful, eh?

My sister and I were thrilled (but not shocked) to discover that rhubarb pie tastes as good as it looks.  I’m sure the cup and a third of sugar that’s in the recipe helps, but that’s beside the point.  Rhubarb pie is delicious, and you should make one while rhubarb is still in season.

And, when you’re done baking, put on some Five Iron Frenzy music and have a dance party in your kitchen like my sister and I did.