nirvana's Profile

As silly as it seems for accomplished cooks, I'd love to get one of these gizmo's for my adult son for Christmas. He doesn't have a laptop and the desktop is too far away from the kitchen. Isn't there some way you could slide one into your giveaway package, and since no one else wants it, the contest could be rigged for me?

Did I miss something? When do the Original Pies get picked?

I've been on both sides of the fence at one time or another. We lived in two different small New England towns, and yes, while I agree that it's aggravating as hell when everyone sees your dirty laundry, it's also comforting in a family sort-of way.

I was one of those bakers you speak of. I had a retail bakery in NH and a small wholesale bakery in VT. I traded baked goods for fine furniture. We both kept a running tab. I traded chocolate chip cookies for chiropractic care and chicken pot pies for auto parts. One year we raised and slaughtered 900 organic meat birds and we traded some of them for medical care, fabric, honey and produce.

Everyone knew each other. We shopped at the same Farmers' Market, dined at the same French restaurant and got sandwiches at the same deli.

One day, there was a fire at the bakery. Some losers set a fire in one of the apartments over the bakery. We had just gone home at 1:00am after packaging hundreds of loaves of bread and almost 200 pies. The volunteer fire department called and said they had to break down the door to get in. What could we do? When we got there later, we noticed they moved all the bakery racks over to one side so there was no water damage. They dosed the rest of the building until it was soggy, but not over our bakery. No! All the pies, bread and cookies were fine. They didn't smash in the windows or ruin anything else. Come to find out, they couldn't do anything about the smoke damage. So, in an effort to say "Thank You for Caring", we had a big "Free Fire Sale", and everyone in the neighborhood came by for smoked pie and cookies.

A few years later, I broke my ankle and with no medical insurance we had no way to pay the hospital. The town rallied round and paid the huge bill. You just can't get that kind of community spirit in a big city with neighbors you don't know.

I picked up a bunch of heirloom tomatoes at the farmers' market last week and needed to do something with them quick! I made an Heirloom Tomato Galette with Red Onion Jam in a flaky pie crust. It was so easy!

http://spatulascorkscrews.typepad.com/my_weblog/

I don't have an ice cream maker yet, but if I did, I would make Butter Pecan!