blueberry pie
I guess I’ll keep it short today. I've been writing a lot more than usual the past several days.
No socializing to report on today: last night, right after work, I rode my bike up to SIFF Cinema at the Uptown to take myself to see the rousingly uplifting documentary Step, about a team of step dancers from a Baltimore charter school. It's a lot like the 2002 documentary Spellbound, only a bit less nail-biting and a bit more investment in the kids simply managing to ascend their lives beyond underprivileged circumstances. It's basically predictable, but that didn't make it any less worth seeing.
I rode my bike home from there, and Shobhit had made his first pie, figuring it was the best way to use up the large amount of blueberries we got at Costco last weekend, without having them go bad.
Although Shobhit is a tremendous cook, he did not grow up knowing anything about baking specifically, and I've struggled for years to get him to understand how much less room there is for improvisation in baking than on stovetop cooking. Ingredient proportions are a lot more important, and I honestly feared this pie would not turn out great. I asked if he followed a recipe, and he said yes, for the most part -- we don't have corn starch; there was not quite the amount of sugar called for. He even supplemented what little white sugar we had left with some brown sugar.
Well, that actually worked well for it! He thought it was a little sweet, but clearly he doesn't know how sweet most pies actually are. This was one of the least-sweet pies I've ever had, but it was still sweet enough: even for me, someone with a major sweet tooth, it was very well balanced. The crust was a little tough and a slight challenge to cut through with the serving knife, but I managed. I would probably be exceptionally tasty with vanilla ice cream on top of it, which we almost went to buy, but I nixed that idea, theorizing that it would be best to taste test it without ice cream first, and also we don't need the extra calories. Not yet, anyway. Maybe tonight!
He also had a large amount of dinner made, rice and a liquidy mix of potatoes, paneer and peas. We had that with some heated frozen parathas while we watched Last Week Tonight with John Oliver. And then I finally went to the bedroom to write the movie review, while Shobhit did the New York Times crossword puzzle on his own.
I started getting ready for bed soon after that, which was not long after 9:00, but I wanted to read in bed for a while, which I did for nearly an hour. I'm really loving David Sedaris's Theft by Finding, but am still struggling to read it quickly enough -- it's already been overdue for a few days, which means I'm racking up a quarter per day in overdue fees. My total in overdue charges is currently already $7, which means I'll probably have to pay that off before the library will let me check something out again after I return this book (this book's fees don't appear until it's been returned). I can't renew this book because, predictably with an author as popular as David Sedaris, renewals aren't allowed when other people are waiting for it. And I'm keeping 294 people waiting.
But, whatever. As always, I consider late fees my version of making extra donations to the Seattle Public Library. I'm doing a public service here!
We were supposed to watch Sunday's episode of Game of Thrones this evening, since for once Shobhit is not working and I don't have plans -- but then Ivan messaged me yesterday that he has to work tonight. That was disappointing. We'll just have to watch it tomorrow evening, just as we have on Wednesdays the past couple of weeks. Even tomorrow it will have to be after I get back from accompanying Laney to the first performance with the acapella quartet she formed, deciding to perform for nursing homes as a volunteer service. She invited me to come see it and I accepted. They called their group the B Naturals.
I just had my leftovers lunch out on the patio. Mostly sunny, but mercifully, not super hot today -- we're back to the seasonal seventies. That is idea for a Seattle August, not this nineties bullshit. I'm back in pants this week, for the first time after two weeks straight of wearing shorts every day. Other people love the heat waves and those people are clearly clinically insane.
Anyway. When we had this potatoes, paneer and peas dish last night, Shobhit immediately declared it needed salt. I'm never one to say such things, unless it's for something like French fries. Just to add some crunch, though, I added the last of my pretzel crisps. Well, that made it incredibly salty. Shobhit would have approved.
