Flat Apple Pie

The Pinks and I watched The Pioneer Woman on Food TV last weekend. The story of how Ree Drummond met her husband is just adorable. Ree baked a flat apple pie that had us all drooling. We had friends over for dinner Sunday night and this was very easy to make for dessert.

We served it with whipped cream (real whipping cream + vanilla + granulated sugar) and Ree's caramel sauce, which we upped the ante on by subbing whole cream for half and half.

This recipe makes two so be sure to make two pie crusts (or buy them at Trader Joe's, the perfectly acceptable easy way out). Each pie feeds four generously or six conscious eaters.

Ingredients:

5 Granny Smith apples, peeled and sliced

1/2 cup firmly packed brown sugar
1/2 cup granulated sugar

2T all-purpose flour

juice of 1/2 lemon

1/2t salt

6T butter

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F.

In large bowl, stir together the apples, brown sugar, granulated sugar, flour, salt and lemon juice.

Put pie crust on baking sheet. Place half the apple mixture on one crust and the other half on the other crust. Fold over the edges of each crust so that it covers 2 to 3 inches of the apple mixture. No need to be artistic - the more rustic the better. Dot the tops of the pies with chunks of the butter.

Bake until the filling is golden and bubbly, 30 to 40 minutes. If the crust appears to brown too quickly, cover the edges with aluminium foil for the remaining baking time.

Allow to cool slightly, then slice into wedges with a pizza cutter.

Back to the future

Liberty and I went to LA Dance Magic last night. It's a dance convention, one of many Paris and I used to attend during the years that she danced competitively.

Liberty loves to dance. She loves music. She loves performing. And she wants to audition for dance team this year. It's clearly a passion of hers and a constant conversation topic in our house. She has taken dance classes since she was three and this year is in three classes: intermediate jazz, intermediate / advanced jazz, and ballet.

Last night took me right back to that parallel universe, now chronicled on Lifetime in Dance Moms. It was so many of the same people, doing the same thing, while we'd spent our winter weekends skiing and sleeping in. While we were doing theatre and playdates, they were doing leaps and turns, and homework in the car between classes. I looked carefully into the faces of The Next Step dancers, searching for traces of the five-year-olds that Paris began dancing with. I found poised teenagers.

If Liberty makes team this will be our reality again. And I will have to figure out if I fit in with the younger team's dance moms or the ones I've known for years, the ones who greeted me with big hugs and surprised faces last night. Or perhaps I will remain a misfit.

There's a new gun in town.

Watch out suburbanites. Tori is armed and dangerous.

Three years ago she helped Jill clean up her mom's back yard. The process involved the use of a leaf blower, which Tori was too young to use at the time and has coveted ever since. Apparently Tori is now old enough and Jill and Wally got her her very own leaf blower for Hanukah this year. She was shocked into silence when she opened it. Big, big eyes. Literally speechless.

Fast forward to last weekend when she had her first chance to use it.

The fall leaves are long gone but we did have a bit of toilet paper in our yard Saturday morning. The funniest part of us being TP'd is that the 10-year-olds who did it started at 10:30pm and we busted them in act. We thought it hilarious. I wonder if they peed their pants during the dash from the crime scene.

Thank you Oakland Fire Department!

Our neighborhood supports JDRF, the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation. One of our neighbors is on the San Francisco Chapter board and a few of our neighbors have family members with Juvenile Diabetes.

Dave joined two tables' worth of neighbors and several hundred other people at this year's local JFRF fundraiser. I was sorry to have missed it but happy to celebrate a friend's simcha that night instead.

During the live auction Jan and Jon Fernandez bought the Oakland Fire Department planting 1,000 daffodils in their backyard. A month later four hunky firefighters showed up to plant them while the neighborhood ladies had a light lunch on their terrace. Such fun and such a good cause! The firemen were great sports, posing while Jon documented the event. As it turned out, one of the men was a soccer dad from a few seasons back. Awkward.

S'mores for Sale

The Pinks are not Girl Scouts so they don't sell Girl Scout Cookies. They don't sell magazine subscriptions. Nor wrapping paper or frozen cookie dough to benefit the school. They don't set up lemonade stands when I'm on duty.

I'm uncomfortable with them selling things. I'm happy to buy from your child when he or she asks but I don't want my kids selling things to people who may feel obligated to buy.

That all being said, I did let them sell s'mores at Tahoe. We figured out how much the supplies cost and then deducted them from the amount they took in. We discussed pricing options and how they would affect their profits. One for $3? Two for $5? One for $5 on Christmas Eve after the Squaw Valley Torchlight Parade? Into a red-ribbon-tied cellophane bag went two marshmallows, one square of Ghirardelli chocolate and one graham cracker. Once someone bought a package they used our marshmallow skewers to make the gooey treat. One thing we did not consider: marshmallows freeze and become hard to attach to a skewer when it's very cold outside.

As we thought might be the case, The Pinks provided a valuable offering and were met with enthusiastic buyers. There are several fire pits at Squaw and we discussed why it would not be appropriate to sell s'mores near the ice cream shop, the crepe shop and the roasted corn truck. The Pinks seemed to understand that we want to support the local economy, not take from it.

I'm glad we did this. Tori is tenacious. And I'll never see those buyers again, anyway.

Ho Ho. There's no snow.

We're at Tahoe this week. It's tradition. We come as soon as school breaks for the holidays then stay until Christmas. The crowds descend on Tahoe the 26th and by then we're on our way home, watching the cars creep up Hwy 80.

This year is different. The air is still crisp. Our neighbors are here. The shops and Village buildings are done up in their seasonal best. But one thing is missing: snow.

It's been a nearly dry year. There are three chair lifts open thanks to aggressive snow-making efforts. The ski teams dominate them. It feels a little bit off, like when you accidentally put your shirt on backwards.

The new facilities at Squaw are beautiful. I spent one morning working in the Olympic House. There are new cushy pleather chairs, strong wifi and an expanded menu at Wildflower that now includes a hearty, mountain-style breakfast and lunch. Man cannot live on those cookies alone, as addicting as they are. There are big screen TVs and a children's play area. And big, clean windows looking out on the now-barren mountains. The KT-22 deck has private cabanas and three large fire pits with Adirondack chairs.

The Harvey clan just departed after two days with us. I'm glad they skied with us; this proves we're not fair weather friends as the last time we met up with the whole entourage was in the record-breaking temps in Villa Bartolomea last summer. My parents came up last night. My brother and his family arrive this afternoon.

We skied at Alpine Meadows yesterday and the conditions were better than I'd envisioned. There was a fair amount of open intermediate terrain and, although we shared it with the crazy snowboarders, we had a good day skiing as a family. Squaw and Alpine are now co-owned so our passes work at both resorts and there is a shuttle bus connecting the two until the chair is finished next summer.

Now if only it would snow.

It's started.

Paris came home from middle school and handed me a school-generated form letter. It offered us the opportunity to allow her to read the required high school Health class text this fall then test out of the course, which she'd otherwise have to take a year from now, as a freshman.

This threw me.

Why is this an option? What are the advantages and disadvantages of doing so? And where was the contact information on said form letter so I could ask these questions?

I tracked down the course syllabus and learned that the curriculum includes discussion of STDs, mental health, prescription and street drugs, eating disorders, alcohol's impact on the central nervous system and those movies that show how black your lungs become after using tobacco. Bring it on. I want her to sit through an extended explanation of this instead of glossing over it on her own.

It took me a while to track someone down at the school district to answer my other questions.

Apparently testing out of the course is an option because some parents don't want their teens exposed to all of the content. And by self-study, one can skip sections and still pass. Great. Freedom of choice and all that.

The very nice lady at the district office told me that there is no academic advantage to testing out of the class; the only other option a student has during that period is be a teaching assistant. The easy decision became that much easier.

The thing is, I didn't plan on thinking about high school course options until it was closer to high school. And to do this, one needs to know what it takes to get into college. My blood pressure started rising.

This brings me to the next task I didn't plan on doing so soon: going to some college web sites and seeing exactly what the requirements were. Ugh. I got through the UC System and NYU before I felt a panic attack coming on.

I went into my daughter's room late that night and watched her sleep. It's when she looks youngest, the most innocent. I'm hanging on to that.