Category: Old Posts

Posts before 2022

New Year, New Skill

Here is the journey I made making a gluten-free apple pie.  It wasn’t easy because gluten-free dough is ridiculous to work with. The pie looks a smidge burnt, but tastes amazing!

I started with this crust:

mix

Let’s be real, I wasn’t about to make the crust from scratch the first time I’m making a pie *ever*.  It’s from The Gluten Free Pantry brand and I bought mine at Health Hut, a local hippie store.  I’m sure other places have it, too.  I just followed the directions on the package… it was pretty easy. Not a big deal.  After I made the dough, I placed it in the fridge.  Cold dough is much easier to work with than warm dough (at least for gluten-free).  So I balled up 2 halves and wrapped them separately in plastic wrap.

This is when you’d want to start peeling and slicing 6-7 apples.  I recommend Granny Smith.  I put my slices in a bowl of cold lemon water to prevent browning.

pie-apples

After an hour or so, I took out one ball out and attempted to roll it out.  Not only was the dough tough to work with because it was hard and cold, but it was falling apart because it’s g-free.  Even after it warmed up a bit, the falling apart only got worse.  This is when my crabbies started.  I had to use a lot of rice flour to keep the counter and my rolling pin from even sticking in the slightest.  One small pull would cause the dough to fall apart.

pie-rolling

pie-flour

I used Ener-G brand rice flour because that’s what the hippie store had on sale, but I think any g-free flour will do.  After greasing a pie dish, I gently placed a half circle of rolled-out dough into the bottom.  The whole circle of dough will not lift off the counter without falling into pieces.  I pinched together the seams.  It’s a little messy but not terrible…

pie-bottom

Next, is the apple layering inside.  It’s hard to measure it out since I guesstimated with my mom’s recipe.  I started by cutting up a few Tbsp of Butter and putting it in the bottom followed by a few Tbsp of Sugar and a sprinkling of Cinnamon.

pie-layersapple

pie-layers

On top of that goes a layer of apples, then a sprinkling of 1 Tbsp of Rice Flour.  This gets repeated until the pile of apples is heaping over the pie dish level.  Arrange slices if needed so that mostly rounded edges are facing up, as to not poke through the top layer of dough.

This is the point of more crabbies.  By now, my 2nd ball of dough was too warm to work nice.  When I rolled out the pieces, it fell apart a lot more than before.

pie-ready

The top of my pie looks like a patchwork quilt…

The picture  is a little dark, but you can clearly see this is not pretty.  After sealing the edges and trying to press together the top, I brushed an egg white over the top.  Then sprinkled sugar all over it.  This seals the dough, makes the top shiny and also allows the sugar to stick.

The pie gets baked at 400* for about 20 min, then 350* for 10-20 more.  I baked mine a bit too long…

nastypie

That’s my beautiful sister gnawing on the edges.  She & my New Year’s Eve guests didn’t seem to mind the minor burns.  Overall reviews said it was tart, but in a good way.  I personally prefer sweet apple pie with lots of goo in the middle.  I had a medium amount of goo, so I will probably add more flour to the center layers next time.  I highly recommend this brand of pie crust – couldn’t even tell it was g-free!

Il Cucchiaio d’argento::fagiolini gratinati

In my quest to be Italian-American housewife of the year, I decided to crack open my Italian cooking guide, Il Cucchiaio d’argento, for dinner tonight.  For those English-only folks, this “bible” of recipes is The Silver Spoon, now available in English!

The main course was my magical beef pot roast. I LOVE the slow cooker.  I love that we eat pot roast for a week after I make it. And I love that you throw some stuff in there and it cooks in a few hours!

My favorite recipe I use is a random Google find from about.com.

Pot roast doesn’t photograph well, but it looked and smelled delicious.

The important experimental dish in tonight’s meal was a green bean dish.  I chose fagiolini gratinati (or green beans au gratin). The recipe serves 4, so I cut it in half as we are 2 – and if it turned out horribly, I didn’t want leftovers!

mm pretty green beans

First, I washed and snapped the beans (2 cups worth) in halves.  Then I boiled the beans in salt water for about 10 minutes.  The beans were drained and cooled a bit while I heated 2 Tbsp of olive oil in a pan.  In the oil, I cooked the already roasted garlic (1 clove) with some chopped onions covered on low for 5 minutes.  The recipe says to discard the garlic but I’m Italian so I left most of it in! It’s delicious! I’m not about to throw that away… But after I removed SOME of the garlic, I added 1 Tbsp of flour.

Then I gradually poured in ¼ cup milk and seasoned with salt and pepper.  I added the cooled beans, ½ cup of white wine and that simmered for 10 minutes, covered.

simmering looks ugly but tastes yummy!
simmering looks ugly but tastes yummy!

While that’s simmering, I preheated the oven to 350° and buttered  baking dish.  When the beans are done simmering, I poured all of the mixture into the dish.  Before sticking it in the oven, sprinkle Parmesan on top (recipe says 2 Tbsp but I love cheese so I used a lot) and dot it with 1 Tbsp of melted butter.

Bake it for 15 minutes or until it’s golden and bubbling as seen below.

cooked
finished cooking and missing a serving :)

Something interesting I learned was that you should boil green beans with the pot cover off to keep them brightly colored.  Also, you should use 4 cups of water to every 1 ½ cups of beans.  I followed both of those new rules and I think it definitely helped the beans turn out perfect.

Beans were fresh, courtesy of Nonna’s garden. And thanks to my almost-sister-in-law for supplying the wonderfully roasted garlic that she made and packaged up!

B u o n   A p p e t i t o !

Buon Compleanno A Me!

My 23rd birthday is finally when I feel like an adult. I’ve been a working, bill-paying, independent-living “adult” for a few years now. Even when I got married, I didn’t feel much like a grown-up. I was still in school and my dad was paying for part of my car.

Well now, at 23, I feel like a grown-up…. I’m done with classes. All the bills are on me. I found *several* gray hairs yesterday (no lie!!). I’m spending my birthday cleaning (to impress the family with my house-wifing skills when they visit this weekend).

I think this transition into adulthood makes me feel especially Golden. According to the UW-Madison Center for the Study of Upper Midwestern Cultures, the term “Golden Birthday” originated in Wisconsin. They define it as, “the day on which your age in years matches the day of the month on which you were born, ie turning 21 on the 21st day of one’s birth month.”

As highly regarded as this university may be, I think they lacked in their research quite a bit. My entire Italy-born family knew what a Golden Birthday was before they immigrated to Milwaukee. Despite being a big fan of Milwaukee (and Italy) I don’t think either can take credit for the term. Sorry, UW-Madison CSUMC- you failed.

For birthday celebrations, today I’m buying pre-sale tickets to my favorite musical group of all time: Hanson! And then tomorrow, my husband is taking me to my favorite restaurant: The Melting Pot. More gushing about the both of those in another post.

As a side note, I do have to say the Wisconsin Englishes project is quite fascinating for anyone interested in regional dialects.

Officially A Fitz

It’s official, I no longer use my maiden name. The one place I haven’t changed it on record is at my university because I’m waiting until I get my diploma for my BA. After that, I will use my married name and apply with that for grad school.

Even before I changed important things like my Social Security card and my bank accounts, our mail started being addressed to me as Fitzgerald. I was ok with that.

It was a bit unsettling though, when I changed my name at work. I got a new mailbox file in a new location because I’m no longer in the A’s. Of course, no one told me so I thought maybe someone removed it because I was being fired (not likely but I’m far from being a valued employee). Even after I asked about my mailbox, no one decided to tell me that my log-in information had changed. We sign in using an ID that has part of our last name in it. They changed mine without warning me so I couldn’t log in properly. Maybe it was the lost feeling at work that made me upset, but I really didn’t like the change.

After a week of working with my new mailbox and what not, I was starting getting used to writing my new name over and over for things. It wasn’t until the attendance sheet at school that we have to sign, that I forgot which name to write. I’m still Azzarello at school, and it was a little sad that after today, I won’t get to write that anymore. (Today is my last day of classes.)

A lot of women are excited for their new last name. I would have been if I married into an Italian family but I didn’t so it’s definitely more traumatic than exciting for me. My name tells people where in Italy my family is from. Azzarello isn’t a common last name so that’s special too. If it were a perfect world, sharing last names wouldn’t be the norm and husbands taking their wives last names would be acceptable.

Side notes: I do like what my initials spell now and it was the inspiration for my tattoo. I want another leaf tattoo soon. And my new signature looks cool with the F instead of A.

Blog-aissance

As this blog has proved (Exhibit A), one of the traits I’m cursed with is starting projects and never finishing them. I have no good excuse for this.

Exhibit B: 6 months after my January wedding, I finally printed photos and filled the empty frames in my apartment. Said frames also still had the price stickers on them. Again, no good excuse.

Exhibit C: my summer goal list. I have a great excuse for not completing this one – summer school. With 9 credits to finish for my BA, I had to take 3 classes this summer, all staggered over 2 months.

Turns out, school this summer was more work than I thought it would be. Of course, I didn’t hesitate to use my great skipping & BSing skills to get through it.

I *did* read half of the “Comics” book for my pending review. I also squeezed in reading some Michael Crichton because he’s a literary genius.

Most of my free time this summer has been spent playing Word of Warcraft with my husband and spending time with my best friend/sister who is home from college. On Luciana’s list of priorities, the spouse&sis and WoW always come first :D

Summer isn’t over yet, though! Tomorrow is my final day as an undergrad. After that, I’ll work on my grad school application, finding a “grown-up” job and reading poolside. Life is tough.