black tea
pumpkin pie
mocha
salad with honey mustard dressing, which was sort of gross.
waffle fries, some sort of cheesesteak sandwich, a chicken wing, a few nachos...

black tea
yogurt with granola and honey
coffee
cinnamon bun
sausage, pepper and onion pizza
lemonade
chocolate covered ginger from my parents
skittles (i love halloween)
chicken taquitos, yet again.
pumpkin pie

black tea
pumpkin pie
chocolate
cioppino and toast
peanut granola bar
grilled cheese sandwich
banana
cool ranch doritos
burrito from trader joe's
cranberry juice

english breakfast with coffee from the chip shop (toast, bacon, sausage, tomato, mushroom, egg and beans)
pumpkin pie
green tea
yogurt with granola and honey
brie and crackers
cranberry juice

black tea
pumpkin pie
mashed potatoes
brie and crackers
popcorn
cranberry juice
bits of granola i made (granola's not very photogenic, however.)
buttered toast
cioppino (also from trader joe's)

i like polygons, okay?

i can feel your disappointment. i'm disappointed in myself, really. but i tried! i tried to find a sugar pumpkin to make pumpkin pie from scratch with. i went to three stores! so, you (and i) should really be disappointed in new york city and their terrible supermarkets and groceries.
so, i went back to my old tried and true friend, libby's pumpkin. which still took me four stores in my neighborhood to find.
this is also a story about how i can't, for the life of me, roll out a pie dough to fully cover any sort of pie dish. i think this may have to do with the fact that my chopping board is too small, the width of saran wrap is too short, and cookbooks don't actually know what 1/8" actually looks like. however, i should also know to just make a recipe and a half whenever i make pie dough. whatever, at least i actually had shortening (helloooooo crisco) to put in it this time.


as for the filling, i deviated from my normal libby's pumpkin side-of-the-label recipe, because, as i said, i was GOING to eviscerate my own pumpkin. alas, there's always thanksgiving. i used this recipe, which is probably still the same as most other pumpkin pie recipes. and turned as just as delicious. it made a bit too much for my pie tin, so i put the overflow in its own ramekin. because if there's anything i love, it's ramekins, squirrels, and geometric shapes, all neatly represented in the next two pictures. again, i know, we're all disappointed in me. i should have tried to get them all in one shot.

mmmmmuffins.
actually, not so much, which is probably why i've taken so long to post this. i think i wanted something more fluffy and not as moist and dense as these. they weren't bad, but i didn't eat about half of them. i may have been picturing one of the most perfect muffins i had at my high school cafeteria and was also orange and chocolate.

but pictures, anyway.

black tea
buttered toast
coffee
pumpkin bread
cashews
burrito from trader joe's
cranberry juice
mango lassi, meat samosas, mulligatawny soup, poori and chickpeas from the indian place across the street.

cranberry juice
beef vegetable soup
chocolate chips
mashed potatoes and meatballs (look, i seriously need to go grocery shopping, okay?)
cheese and crackers
egg and bacon sandwich

black tea
leftover chinese
jalapeno chips
fried rice with bacon and onions
m+m cookie
garlic bread
beef vegetable soup
cranberry juice

black tea
graham crackers and peanut butter
coffee
walnut pastry roll
falafel sandwich from pita grill, not very good
iced tea
potato chips
leftover chinese

black tea
oatmeal
animal crackers
pasta with meatballs
granola bar
takeout chinese general tso's chicken and rice

black tea, dutch baby and bacon
jalapeno chips
grilled corn and tacos from chavella's
mango popsicle

also, i had a dream (this gets exciting guys, really) wherein i was teaching a baking class at...john jay? they were making bread. and then i went to a restaurant that showed movies, but as we were waiting, i mentioned something about forensic baking, and someone gave me a cookie to try and figure out how to recreate. (this reminds me of a top chef episode, now that i think about it.) Anyway, it was a thin chocolate cookie shell with peanut butter cream and whipped cream inside, and there were 'chocolate crispies' in the cookie, as pointed out to me by another friend who was eating it.

turkey sandwich
orange vitaminwater
crackers, chocolate cookies, jalapeno chips
black tea
macaroni and cheese on top of shepard's pie filling from the chip shop

black tea...and probably hummus and crackers
coffee
apple fritter
pesto pasta
grilled cheese and tomato soup from bouchon bakery
potato chips

peanut butter toast
black tea
pesto pasta
fruit salad
oatmeal raisin cookie
pepperoni pizza

black tea
hummus and crackers
latte and pain au chocolate from le pain quotidien
thai curry and rice
hot dog
cranberry sierra mist
chicken pita from the famed platters of 53rd and 6th

black tea
peanut butter on toast
pumpkin spice latte from starbucks (good, but not as good as everyone says it is.)
everything bagel with butter
salad from john jay
cranberry juice
lau lau
chocolate cookie
raspberry sorbet

black tea
rice pudding
red curry with rice
orange vitaminwater
chocolate cookies
BLT
grilled cheese
hummus and crackers

black tea
crackers
pork butt hash with scrambled eggs and biscuits with coffee at little d eatery
chocolate eclair from colson patisserie
orange juice
chocolate cookie
jalapeno chips
rice pudding with leftover rice and coconut milk

black tea
yogurt and honey
chicken taquito
peanut butter hagelslag
chocolate cookie dough, from making these cookies
thai red curry (with chicken and broccoli, made with the spices from asian home gourmet. it was alright. i might buy it again, i guess) and rice

black tea
hummus and crackers
yogurt and honey
coffee
pesto pasta
burger and fries at corner bistro. good, but no where near the best burger in new york city as has been claimed by others (the running's really between royale and shake shack)

black tea
hummus and crackers
yogurt and honey
lau lau
cranberry juice
pesto pasta
jalapeno potato chips
chocolate covered macadamia nuts
raspberry sorbet

black tea
hummus and crackers
chocolate orange muffin
orange
leftover chinese
sour cream and onion potato chips
lemon pound cake
granola bar
jalapeno potato chips
hagelslag, but with peanut butter (which i know i'll get yelled at for)

hummus and crackers
iced coffee
chocolate orange muffins
leftover chinese
orange juice
more leftover chinese
cranberry juice

black tea
rice with leftover duck, pork and chow fun
cranberry juice
orange chocolate muffins
"ran" 1.85 miles in 30 minutes (i'm really not obsessive about exercise or anything, obviously, but i like numbers and since i have no sense of distance, figuring out my route is very useful.)
hummus and crackers
mango popsicle

coffee and chicken and waffles at deacon blue
leftover steak, fries and calamari, and caramels from landmarc

spinach, mushroom and gruyere crepe, coffee, and part of a butter and sugar crepe at la palette
xxx vitaminwater
tea, peking duck, roast pork, dumplings, beef chow fun and shrimp fried rice in chinatown
lychee ice cream at the chinatown ice cream factory

coffee
toast with peanut butter
animal crackers
berry smoothie and BLT at the flame diner
green tea, miso soup, california roll and some sort of seafood tempura roll at aoki. and gyozas and seaweed salad.

black tea
yogurt and honey

(n.b. my mother and middle sister are in town, so more expensive/stranger food)

currant scone
cassava chips
a sip of surprisingly good chicken soup from whole foods
tortilla soup and a chorizo torta at chavella's
iced tea
dinner at landmarc- bread, beef marrow, fried calamari, strip steak, fries, salad, steak tartare, caramels. good, but not as good as i was expecting. i have ridiculously high standards. (we also ordered calf liver, but i couldn't bring myself to try it.)

black tea
cheese toast
hagelslag
chicken taquitos
apple cake
extremely spicy chicken wings at lincoln park with a yuengling
due to oversharing classmates, some m+ms, fritos and peanut butter chocolate cookie
cheese and crackers

black tea
yogurt and honey
coffee
insane pumpkin cream cheese muffin from starbucks
grilled chicken pesto panini from strokos
cranberry juice
stuffing (not very good)
chocolate
cheese and crackers

black tea
mooncake
oatmeal
boston chicken frozen dinner, turkey and mashed potatoes with green beans and carrots
dark chocolate m+ms
lemon snapple
animal crackers
chicken taquitos with salsa

Sweater Weather

Ah, fall. The air grows chilly, the wind is brisker, the leaves change colors, rainstorms abound.

Almost...none of this has happened. We had rain yesterday, but it felt more like a quick summery shower with some thunder and lightening thrown in. In my desire to hasten autumn along, I made this apple cake, which is less like a cake and more like an explosion of apples barely held together by a custard-like cake binder. The recipe is from the New York Times, and for some reason, I have a paper copy of it. Thanks to the good people at the Times, who have recently seen fit to open their archives to all, we see that it was published September 22, 2004. This all leads me to believe I probably bought the paper in the airport on the way back to the start of my third year of college. Which why would we be talking about now, since I made the cake a few days ago? Right. Here are all the apple slices in a bowl. This was sort of a pain. Here are...all the slices in a pan! (Not to be confused with previous photo.) But really, this is much more apple than cake. It is also...slightly too full, as I discovered when I was settling down to read my chemistry textbook while it was baking, only to be interrupted by the smoke alarm going off. Repeatedly. The very high ceilings of the apartment mean that this involves me jumping up and down a lot trying to wave the smoke away. Thankfully, roommates were not home. Although the smoke alarm did go off the next two times the oven was used, when they were here. On to other things that probably appall my roommates, this is the carnage leftover from peeling, coring, and slicing five apples. Which I cleaned up promptly, of course. And, the finished cake. The issue with the smoke alarm meant I took it out of the oven about 10 minutes before I would have normally, but the apples are nicely caramelized, and the cake was halfway between cake and custard. All persons partaking of it approved.