I cooked Pistachio Cardamom Sea Salt Brownies.

Last year, when Matt, Malachi, Keiko and I made a trip to Portland for Stumptown, I was 7 months pregnant and in need ofsomething with protein, something with chocolate, and something that would be commemorative of that particular need in that particular place on the particular trip.

And that is how I managed to sniff out some arbitrary (however highly pretentious and forgettable) coffee shop that sold the illustrious pistachio cardamom sea salt brownies.
It seems only right that on the anniversary of this discovery last year, I endeavor to recreate the awesomeness that is the pistachio cardamom sea salt brownie.

Now, having made and enjoyed the entirety of a single batch in one night, I do have some added notes:

1) I'd cut the salt in half or at most 3/4 of what is called for IF you intend to sprinkle salt on top.

2) Sprinkle SOME pistachios on top before baking and some AFTER if you want the pretty green color in your final product

I made an Elf Yourself movie.

Its not Christmas without dancing Sheean elves!

Honey Pumpkin Date with 'Mallow Topping

In a nutshell: 1) Thoroughly blend all the ingredients together, taking care that the dates are cut to bite-sized bits. 2) Pour into your prebaked graham cracker pie crust, distributing date pieces evenly 3) Bake at 350 F for 20 min, rotate pie, bake for 25 more min at 450 F 4) Remove, let cool, place in the refrigerator for at least 3 hours just before serving, 5) cover chilled pie with mini-marshmallows and place in the broiler for 2-3 minutes - MAKE SURE YOU WATCH THE MARSHMALLOWS AS THEY BROWN!! If you take your eyes off for even a few seconds, you'll end up with an ugly burnt mess.

Pumpkin, dates, eggs, heavy whipping cream, full-fat sour cream, honey, molasses, cinnemon, ginger, nutmeg, and cloves!

One thing I am learning about pies is that for all their variety in flavor, filling, crust and occasion, they are pretty darn straight forward to make.

However, one thing I underestimated is the value of some TLC. This pie, relatively simple and easy in writing, required a significantly greater amount of time to prepare (and practice). And I am a lazy person - if I had planned a little better, I might have been a little less frustrated, but perhaps you can benefit from my strife and discovery:

Stuff I learned this time around:

1) Let ingredients (like eggs) reach room temperature
2) Your own squash puree is easy! But not instantaneous...
3) Cool a pre-baked pie shell in the fridge OR unthaw a frozen one in the fridge before using
4) If the recipe says the pie should cool -

MAKE SURE YOU HAVE TIME TO LET THE PIE COOL!

A little about each:

1) Letting the ingredients, like eggs & butter & even milk, really does help mix and bake the filling to the proper consistency!

Room temperature ingredients allow for the emulsion of fat and liquid which cannot otherwise mix. If you add cold ingredients, like eggs from the fridge, to a room temperature filling, you may end up with not-so-yummy descriptions of your mixture like curdled, chunky or grainy. This is particularly annoying if you are mixing or whisking by hand.
Also, your mixture will likely not hold its form as well - a good looking pie is even across the surface and not cracked or sunken. Sinking is a particularly disheartening result of chilled ingredients.
(PS I know the FDA says this isn't true, but you can leave eggs out of the refrigerator for up to two weeks, depending on how fresh they are. It's true! That's how they do it in EVERY OTHER COUNTRY except America. Ask you European or African friends (I did). There isn't an in-between for a good egg and a rotten one and so long as you aren't storing your eggs in the top cabinet with the California winter-heat beating on them, they'll do just for for a while.)

2) You can cook any squash like this:
Cut in half, de-seed, put in the oven in a half an inch of water (any way you like) with some loose foil over for about 35-40 minutes at 350 F. That's it. Pumpkin, Delicata, Spaghetti, they can ALL be cooked this way. If you want to forgo the canned pureed squash you stick the results (without skin!) in a blender. VIOLA!

3) Once again, don't be lazy like me. Prebaked pie shells are the bomb! And easy. So just do it, you don't need to always buy pie shells... but you do need to cool them and not use them straight from the oven. If you do, you might make a mess of your pie in one or several of theses ways: cooking the outside filling faster on the hot crust, crust can absorb the filling and get mushy, the taste might change, the exposed edges will likely cook more & dry out than the covered ones and ultimately, the crust (depending on the kind) can really lose its shape - refrigerating it keeps it firm.

4) This is probably the singularly most important experience I had during the baking of this pie.
The filling for this pie used a lot of liquids and had a very low viscosity (rather runny); in addition to this new factor in pie-making, the recipe called for this pie to be baked at two different temperatures in the first half and last half of its time in the oven. I did my best to follow the recipe to the "T" (after not doing so and creating delays as I ran into the aforementioned discoveries) and baked as instructed. But at the end of the 45 mins, the pie still seamed to be quite liquid. I baked for an extra 20 minutes, just to be sure, but the consistency did not change much. I didn't want to risk over-cooking, so I removed the pie and let it cool to room temperature.

This pie is best served chilled with freshly warmed marshmallows. Prepare this pie the night before or very early in the day to alot time for cooling...
Allow the pie to cool thoroughly; then place the pie in the refrigerator for 3 hours or over night.

Despite the hold-ups and a little bit of cheating on the instructions - the pie was incredible. So delicious and so vacant of any processed foods (san marshmallows!). The ingredients DID NOT include sugar except what was in the dates and honey! Another successful Pie of the Week.

The party we attended was pretty fantastic, too! The treats were especially fun:

Potato Brains!	Mummy Dogs!	Baby Burrito!

I learned that the taste map is a LIE!

(illustration by everevese - whoever it is)

Yesterday we got back from an impulsive, weeklong stay at the in-luvs (in-laws) in Paso Robles. Again! It was a great week of industry for both Matt and I: he went to APE in San Francisco with Malachi to exhibit their new comic, EXPANSION [buy it here!], while I stayed in Paso and was waited on, hand and foot, by his mommy. I dunno what he was doing up there but I was cooking pies, crocheting & knitting, quilting, birthday-ing, and I even got to meet my sister-in-law-in-law's mother (who is an amazing artist) and learn a bit about wet- & needle-felting! I left with my head so full of ideas (not to mention a car full of vegetables from the Sheean garden), I could help but come home with the domestic-midas touch.

Last night, I made dinner with the produce we came home with. I didn't really have a plan, but all the pie making has given me the chance to work with all kinds of whole foods, see how they cook, and understand their complimentary tastes. The last two pies where apple and squash based. Seeing as how I had both at my disposal, I decided to make a soup.

There doesn't seem to be a huge difference between soup and pie fillings...

Pie filling	Soup base
bake/puree ingredients add some cream if desired add flour & sugar spice	bake/puree ingredients add some butter if desired add chicken broth & milk spice

I could be totally wrong, but all-in-all, it seems that soups are just liquid-y-ier pie fillings!

In any event, I cut up a butternut squash and some apples, baked the butternut squash in butter and the apples in brown sugar, boiled the almost-soft butternut squash in some chicken broth and half-&-half while the hot apples sat in a couple cups of orange juice, and finally pureed the whole dang thang. It was already tasty, but the seasoning had yet to be added!

And this is where I learned of the LIES!!!! As I taste tested, adding a bit of salt and some left over butter from the butternut squash pan, I pulled out my brain (iPhone) to see what parts of my tongue were wanting for stimulation. I definitely nailed the sweet/sour balance by adding more broth and butter to tone down the sweetness - but I wasn't quite sure what my tongue (between the edges and the center) wanted. SO I looked up a taste map!

Much to my dismay, the image I chose came with the following article from LiveScience explaining the myth of the taste map. Christopher Wanjek, the columnist and author of Bad Medicine, explains that basically the taste map has persisted because no one has taken the time to really refute it. The map was developed based on some loose and subjective data (D.P. Hanig, 1901) and then arranged into graphs (Edwin Boring, 2942) that translated to the map (Virginia Collings, 1974) decades after the initial study. But apparently (and, I must admit, somewhat obviously), the whole tongue and other parts of the mouth can taste every flavor.

The article didn't really give much information concerning how taste actually works or present any alternative maps or interpretations of how taste is process, but I suppose that isn't really the its point... if you want real information on the debunking and exploration of tastes, check out this article by Cathy Pelletier.

So how did that effect my soup?
I basically decided I didn't care and tried to forget the information I read. I knew that even though the map is outdated and inaccurate, I was still trying to stimulate that certain part of my mouth, right around the salty/sour area. I pulled out all the complimentary spices I could think of and added them in different quantities to test bowls of the soup base I set aside. Like a good scientist (maybe), I repeated my taste testing until finally I had my solution: a dash more of salt and a buncha ginger. YUM! The completion of my make-shift recipe left my whole mouth tingling with delight.

Still, my mind is reeling a bit from the news of this faulty map. Would you judge me harshly for saying it feels a little like when they said "Pluto's not a planet"?