Three Things That Freak Me Out

Things that freak me out a little:

1.  Spiders - actually spiders freak me out a lot.  But recently I bought some grapes from the grocery store, typical red seedless variety.  We had used several of them already and I was going to wash up the rest to put on the table for dinner one night.  There was a freaky South American spider in there, this was definitely not your average Midwestern species.  I had put the grapes down in the strainer and was running water over them when I discovered the freaky South American spider.  Well, I tried to drown him but evidently they get a lot of rain in South America because he was unfazed.  So I quickly threw a plate over the top of the strainer so that the South American spider would remain trapped in with the grapes until Jeff got home.  We are very clear in the house that any spider found must be dealt with in a decisive manner by my husband.  He came home and released the South American spider back into the wild, which I think probably killed him because although it does rain a lot in South America I don't think that they have temperatures below 50 degrees.  It took me a while to build up the courage to buy more grapes.

2.  Extra growths inside of green peppers.  When I find an extra baby pepper inside of a large perfectly honest looking green pepper it looks like the honest looking pepper actually isn't honest at all and decided to eat its twin green pepper.  It is very cannabalistic looking when you cut into an honest looking green pepper and then all of a sudden you discover the twin of that green pepper inside its belly.  I am very squeamish about touching the dead twin pepper that has been eaten and usually have to use a knife to scrape the corpse into the trash (I definitely never use the dead twin green pepper in my salad, blech).  Bet you never look at one of those dead twin green peppers again without thinking of this story.

3.  Mushrooms - I actually eat a lot of mushrooms.  Love the taste, especially when grilled or sauteed.  Mushrooms and butter, very tastey.  However, when mushrooms spring up in my yard for no apparant reason it freaks me out.  Last year we got so much rain that the mushroom community in my yard tripled.  All of sudden we had mushrooms in a wide variety of styles and colors springing up from no where.  Where have these mushrooms been the whole time I lived here, how have they been hanging around without any above ground activity and then a particularly wet summer makes them come out of the woodwork, or the groundwork whichever the case may be? 

There are a whole myriad of bodily fluids that freak me out, but we really don't need to go there.  I went a large portion of my adulthood without having to deal with anybody else's bodily fluids except for mine; and then we got a dog.  I was still pretty exempt from cleaning up most of those because clearly one cannot be asked to clean up dog vomit if one will very soon have to be cleaning up ones own vomit.  (I have a touchy gag reflex not to be messed with.)  But after children it was all over.  There pretty much is a constant clean up on aisle 9 with an infant, toddler, small child and so on.  Maybe in the teenage years I will have a need for fewer wet wipes. 

I am sure that everyone has something weird that really freaks them out, its not just me, is it?

Yes, I am blogging about pot pies

I have loved the store bought frozen pot pie for a very long time.  Since childhood and my mom served us Banquet pot pies I have been a fan.  I love the crust, the gelatinous broth, the overcooked vegetables and the schmeat that they call chicken.  I love the fact that you will always burn your mouth on a pot pie.  I love that the suckers take close to an hour to cook.  I love that they are $1.25 or some absurdly low price. 

I have done a lot of work on my family's diet.  We eat organic meat, for the most part.  About half of our produce is organic, and in the summer I try and grow some things on my own.  We eat whole wheat everything and I even try to bake with whole wheat flour where possible.  I use olive oil religiously, organic eggs, organic milk and the list goes on. This is not a competition - but in one area I fail miserably is the frozen food section.  I love POT PIES! 

Now, there is a very specific art to the pot pie.  Every person I have talked to has a preference for how their pot pie is served or presented to them.  (In the lingo of foodies everywhere, we all care how our pot pie is "plated".) 

I have a distinct memory of living with Jeff in a teeny tiny apartment and digging into our first pot pies as a married couple.  We were both excited.  I had baked them and they were beautifully golden brown waiting patiently on the cookie sheet.  Jeff being the loving, doting husband that he is promptly threw them each into a bowl and poked a whole in the top of each.  My heart stopped, I think I might have yelled.  Why did he just go and ruin my pot pie like that!  He stabbed the top of the pie like it was going to attack us, why would you do something like that to an innocent pot pie?  And then the realization hit me, we eat our pot pies completely different, maybe this wasn't a match made in heaven?

After that fateful night when I realized Jeff was a "leave it in the tin and poke a hole in the top" pot pie eater, I knew my only hope was to teach the children how it was done.  I myself eat pot pies correctly.  I gingerly and quickly (because as previously discussed those things are hot) flip the pot pie onto my plate and lift the tin.  Tin removal is an absolute necessity, it is the difference between receiving third degree burns versus first degree burns.  Then I poke a hole in the bottom, which is now facing up, to let the steam out.  I then proceed to eat all of the insides.  Mama always told me to save the best for last, I love the crust the most and therefore I eat all of the filling and side crusts and then at the end when everything is gone there is a perfect circle of top crust that I can then enjoy.  Lovely.

This year we introduced the pot pie to Jac and Mia.  Of course it went over fantastically, why wouldn't it?  The problem is the plating.  First we tried it my way, the correct way.  However, functional as it may be for steam releasing and crust eating, it isn't as pretty as Jeff's way.  We all know how important presentation is to the young ones.  So then we tried it Jeff's way and after letting it cool for what seemed like hours, they both still cried from the burning!  Jac has now seen the error of his ways and insists on having his mommy's way.  Mia however, very difficult to convince.

The last time we had pot pies we introduced a hybrid method.  Here goes.  I flipped Mia's pot pie out of the tin and upside down, then I flipped it back over so that it was sitting upright, but out of the tin.  Perfection.  She was thrilled that it looked like daddy's, but now she wouldn't scald herself.  Of course there were some tears due to daddy trying to help pull off her crust which resulted in her absconding mommy's pot pie which hadn't been touched yet. 

I am proud to say that I am raising two children who love pot pies!  How do you eat yours?