Dan's 29th Birthday

Dan is 29 today!

I don't have lots of pictures of Dan, so I'll share what one that I think he wouldn't be mad at me for posting. :) No, we did not have lobster for dinner. This is from August in Maine, when his friends got married.


It's a low-key day. Rain coming down all day, cats sleeping on their various perches, music in the back ground somewhere.

Dan has finals this week, with his first being tomorrow at 8:30a, so staying in and having home-cooked things would be perfect. I was happy to oblige the request.

Breakfast was a spicy frittata with biscuits and bacon. Big yum here. The rest of the morning and early afternoon was making mom's tarts and an apple pie, as substitute for a birthday cake.

The tarts turned out to be a wreck, but I learned just how under-temperature our oven bakes at. I had a hunch with the pecan pies earlier, but I know for sure now. All the little pecan tartlets were raw on the bottom. No good.

Dan's pie ended up taking twice the recommended time to bake fully. It was nice having the house smelling like apples and cinnamon. Dad, I used the recipe out of the cookbook you gave Ciara and myself, The Farm Chicks in the Kitchen.


The cookbook is great! I altered the recipe slightly, as we had limes on hand instead of lemons, but the rest is:


2 1/2 punds mixed apples (I used 3 machintosh, 3 golden delicious, 1 granny smith)
2 TB flour
3/4 C sugar, plus 1TB on top for garnish
1 Ts ground cinnamon
1/4 ts ground nutmeg
1/2 ts salt
1 TB fresh lemon juice

Oven at 375, 50 to 55 minutes or until insides are bubbling and crust is golden brown.

I used two different crust recipes for this one. I had left over crust from the Thanksgiving pie marathon (super flaky and delish!) and I made a small quick top out of shorting, flour, water and salt. I didn't expect the color to vary so much between the two.

We'll eat it later after dinner digests and I'll let you know how it turned out.

Other fun shots from today are of my ever present audience throughout my baking and cooking adventures, Kodak and Baxter.
Our dining/craft/mail/catch all table is set right next to the island I mix things on, and the boys have learned to sit patiently there, instead of in my ingredients. A happy compromise I think.

And after my run in with Copper this weekend, my mittens smelled like dog, and it was gross, so I washed them and hung them over one of the heaters to dry.

It's not quite like having all of our winter gear steaming dry next to the fire place, like when I was a youngin', but it brought back nice memories nonetheless. Dan teased that he never knew his binder clips would find so many uses in the house.

Dan is still sitting in his chair studying, making outlines, and slowly memorizing. There is a cat on the arm next to him, computer in lab, and he looks to be balancing his constitutional law book on the other side. Last year finals were on his birthday. It will probably happen next year too. He says he isn't one to get super excited about all of it, so he isn't bothered by the overlap. He did mention last night, just as the clock hit midnight, that it isn't so much the getting older that bothers him, but the end of being his former age, 28 or any previous.

I've been thinking quite about about that comment today. I'm still thinking about it, actually.