I Would Pie 4 U
I got home from pie making class at 10:30pm. Way past my bedtime. It wasn't really a pie making class it was a pie pasty class. We actually used tart pans for everything we made. (3 desserts, 3 quiches).

(Geez, how hard can it be to find a photo of a tart pan online? It took me three tries. Kitchen Kaboodle is the lamest kitchen store ever. No time to elaborate at the moment. Also when I put "tart" into the Target search engine it came up with a paperback called "Out of Body Experiences: How to Have Them and What to Expect." I had no idea that the world needed such a book or that it would be sold at Target. One of the authors' last name is Tart.)

The secret to pastry is obscene amounts of butter. I'm not sure I'm going to embrace this method. I don't love butter soaked crust. I'm going to experiment with the butter, shortening combo and also I found a recipe where the author swore by lard. I'm going to try it once.

In class he showed us this one thing and it has a name and I didn't write it down and don't want to turn this into a half hour research project when I try to track it down online so I'm just going to explain it. Once you've got your gobs of butter cut in to the flour mix (we worked it in with our hands)(you don't want it too fine) you turn it out on your work surface and do this sort of smearing thing with the heel of your hand. You're flattening out the butter. You just do it a bit, you don't want to work it too much, and then scrape it up and put it back in the bowl and add your few tablespoons of ice water and form your beautiful ball of pastry.

We all baked a tart and mine is at home now waiting to be filled. Photos to follow.

My colleague is going on vacation and I finally shamed him into cleaning off his desk (I have photos of this, too. Coming Soon.) It never fails that he's out of the office for a week and some emergency comes up and I have to "find something" in the mountain of paper on his desk and it makes me cranky and curse his name and wastes half my day so I'm hoping to avoid this scenario. The downside is that in the course of cleaning off his desk he discovered mountains of work for me to do. The point being that I'd really love to write more about tart class and the fabulous thunder shower we had yesterday and then start my public fretting about all the things I have to do this weekend and how will I get them done, but I don't have time.