The Real Scoop

Today's entry is so named for all of the scooping I have done today. All kitchen related, I promise.

The menu today:
Baked Acorn Squash stuffed with mangos, Crasins, pecans, and topped with brown sugar.
Steamed Broccoli
And Mini Apple Pies

Feeling pretty damn accomplished.

But because I know all of you are such curious chipmunks, I thought I would document my culinary creativity for your benefit. I'm so nice. So here goes.

Thanks to this new-fangled thing called Pinterest, I have begun melting my mind by scrolling through this seemingly endless webpage of unrelated things and I have found some tasty recipes. Not the least of which is one for Mini Apple Pies. (http://domesticdilettante.com/2012/01/11/applepie/)

As you can see, they are indeed apple pies, MADE INSIDE AN APPLE. How brilliant is that?! That way you can eat all of it. Every single last morsel is edible. Except for the dishes you had to put them in, don't eat those, you'll get indigestion and die. Instead of giving you the play by play here about cooking and such, I'll just post some pictures so you can compare my relative success to that of the more professional looking blog where I found it. If I'm feeling witty, I'll include peanut gallery commentary.

Step 1: Carve out apples like you do pumpkins for Halloween. Hint: Grapefruit spoons are awesome.

If you're not paying attention, that's the four mostly whole looking apples sitting in the upper right hand side of the picture.

Step 2: Cut up a couple more apples and use some cinnamon sugar magic on it. That's the stuff in the bowl on the bottom left hand side. Just an FYI.

Step 3:  Put product of Step 2 into product of Step 1. And place in bowl thing.

Step 4: Make pie crust. Grandma's secret. 

Step 5: Make fancy pattern with cut up product of Step 4 and place over completed Step 3.

Step 6: Bake.

Step 7: To be continued. (HINT: It happens at the end of the next chapter)

So the next thing that had to be done is to make all of the rest of dinner. Woof. Good thing I had my newly acquired Madame Butterfly on vinyl to help my house wife tendencies emote/fumigate. (I'm not sure that's the right conglomeration of words, but I think you get the point.)

Next up to the chopping block was this pair of acorn squash. (I'm not sure how many different ways you could read that sentence with different emphasis, but it's got to be good.) And I won't lie to you. I had about 2 steps of this plan mapped out. Basically something like. Kelsey get gourd, Kelsey get mango.... And that's all I've got. Some how they were supposed to go together. Where's the recipe? Don't got none. This is what we call free styling it. Word.

When I began to refine my plan a bit more (basically after I went grocery shopping) and the next step involved something akin to King Arthur and Excalibur. What kind of knife/sword I was using is irrelevant, but the point was that I had a knife/sword stuck in a gourd/rock for a while. If you would like to picture me in armor and flailing madly in time to lyric arias, go ahead. Who am I to stop you? But it worked... eventually. 

Step 1: Win battle with gourd/squash. Do not squash gourd. 

Step 2: Pull out that nifty grapefruit spoon again and wield it against the squash. You've already done this with an apple, now you should APPLy your experience to the basics of squash.

This is just a picture of the vague idea ish. 

Step 3: Bake squash for 20 minutes face down on cookie sheet (note that the cookie sheet should not have cookies on it currently-that's a project for another day)

Step 4: While the first baking process is happening on the other side of the kitchen-Skin and mangle the mango.

Step 4: Flip vinyl of Madame Butterfly over. 

Step 5: Once those are out of the oven, place whatever you can find in the hollowed out hole of the squash. I happened to use the recently mangled mango, some Crasins, and some pecans. I threw on some brown sugar just because I'm so sweet, but that's not required. Nothing ever is.

Step 6: Bake. For some time.

Step 7: Serve and Eat!

The steamed broccoli was in there too, but much more conventional than my other two experiments for the day. 

Don't forget to complete Step 7 of chapter 1, which is a lot like Step 7 of chapter 2. 

Grandma was over for dinner (I mean, with that kind of meal, I'm shocked there weren't 25 people just sitting in my driveway). Always a treat. Having fun and finishing some knitting projects after dinner. 

Success-full day. 

Famous Drinking Songs and Epic Death Scenes

Do what the Romans do.

That was the advice I got from all kinds of sources-orientation, my parents, friends, people who like to quote random things on the internet. But as I began searching my memory for things that Romans or even more generally, Italians do, all I could think of is eat delicious food and sing dramatically.

As we officially enter month 3 (WHAT?!?!  TIME WENT WHERE!?!?!) I think I have successfully eaten at least my share of delicious food. And as of tonight, I have also watched people sing dramatically.  Hashtag winning.

Erica, Molly, and I decided that this was the perfect weekend to go and see one of those famous singy-things people keep talking about. So we did some research, and found an opera performed in All Saints Church a little north of us. We buy our tickets, and suddenly decide that we should go out to dinner instead of cooking. All right. Someone set the timer, 3 girls, getting ready to actually leave and go to an opera, 15 minutes. GO.

DING! Ok winners! We we traipsing out the door in plenty of time, and over to our favorite little pizza place. Had some grub and then managed to get on some public transportation that we assumed was headed in the right direction.

The good news is that it was, in fact, headed in the right direction. The bad news was that since it was Saturday, and since it was about 7:30 ish, that particular bus route changed. Just, changed. So when we thought we were going to one area of town, we kind of made a much smaller loop back to the area where we started. Unga Bunga. The minute we realized that, we jumped off the bus, and began walking instead. This would only begin our turbulent relationship with the 119.

So three girls wearing cute outfits and heels (remember how Italy loves cobblestones? I do!) clop over to the church. Now this isn't as simple as it seems. 1) Read the part about the heels (I really do miss them... and my suits.... but MN is only snowy, not cobblestoney.) 2) Highly trafficked pedestrian area. 3) Back tracking where the bus should have gone.  But like the tough women we are, we made it all the way to the church with plenty of time to spare.

This church was surprisingly, British. All brick with only the marble columns, and dark wood on the floors and the ceiling. The acoustics were solid, but there's a slight flaw in the placement of the performers. Due to the partition between the alter area and the rest of the sanctuary, there is not only a marble banister, but a very specific archway that separates the two. The problem occurs when the orchestra is in front of the arch, and the singers are behind it. So all of the acoustic wonderful-ness that the building offers, only really helps out the instruments, and not so much the vocalists. So that was a little bit of a bummer. Especially, when a simple dynamic change/regulation could have solved most of those issues.

Regardless, the church was pretty, the music was pretty, the friends were pretty, I had a great time. I would have preferred that the aisle lights in the back been turned off, and that the orchestra would have toned it down a bit, but all in all, I'm content.

So after the final dying notes dissipated (who said I couldn't write. That was punny too. Look up La Traviata and tell me I'm wrong) we trooped out the door and began walking home. Clever us, we thought we'd catch the bus back. LIES. The bus drove right past the bus stop and we walked allllllll the way to Argentina. Sad cobblestoned day.

And now we are back home. My feet will continue to yell at me, and I'm going to bed.