Sundays Are for Travel

At the start of this school year, one of my professors gave us a bit of advice.  Read, work hard, and keep Sundays for travel.  Taking her up on her advice, we began investigating some places to check out in the area.  With fall setting in we decided to hit up a local apple orchard before it got completely picked over.  Or so we thought.

The Olive One, The Yellow One, The Lollygagging One and I headed out one fine Sunday afternoon into the eastern Iowa countryside. After a ten minute drive north, the Garmin requested we turn right.  Onto Dingleberry Road.

This is why you don't let your 15 year-old son name anything. Ever.

Upon arrival we were greeted by a beautiful view of rolling hills filled with apple trees.  And the smell of apple cider donuts.  And screaming children.  After grabbing some apple baskets, we headed off to the area of the orchard we were told would be filled with delicious, juicy apples.  Not so much.  But at least it was away from the screaming children.  And looked like this.

So the actual picking of apples was kind of a bust.  But that didn't stop us from enjoying a fine fall afternoon.

In search of apples.

Olive fakes a photo op.

Pink pretends to pick a sour apple.

After giving up on finding edible apples we headed back to the farmhouse.  There we bought some pre-picked apples so we could at least make some apple-based treats.  We also picked up some apple butter, a caramel apple, and a bag of apple cider donuts.

I don't know how these made it to the morning.

So we took our goodies home and started making apple pie and apple crisp.  And by we I mostly mean Yellow.  She shared the secret to her easy pastry crust here.  But here are some photos of the process.

Stabby stabby! - Yellow

Slicey slicey!

She has too many apples in her pie, if you know what I mean.

Om nom nom nom.

Over all, a wonderful Sunday afternoon away from the books.  Plus, now The Guv'nah smells like Christmas!

- The Pink One

3.14

Autumn time is apple pie time. I'm a huge fan of making as many things from scratch as possible, but up until recently I was always afraid of trying to make pie crusts - my OCD-like tendency to overmix things into submission didn't seem like a good fit for the light hand that crusts need. However, my mother recently directed me to the secret to perfect pie crusts: vodka! It has to do with the alcohol evaporating out to keep the crust flaky so you don't have to worry about the gluten building up and becoming it tough or something along those lines... Who cares, all I know is BOOZE SCIENCE = PIE MAGIC.

ALAKAZAM!

The biggest drawback is at some point during the process I always inevitably end up tasting some of the dough and wondering why it tastes so awful until I remember there is booze in it. The crust recipe I always follow is here. PRO TIP: the dough comes out extremely tacky and difficult to roll, so I usually roll it out between two pieces of saran wrap so it doesn't stick to my rolling pin (which was always a wine bottle up until recently - The Pink One supplied a real rolling pin and part of me was mildly disappointed). For these pies I added some cinnamon, nutmeg, ground ginger and allspice to the crust as well. The assembled pie (made from apples from a local orchard) is currently in the oven and two of our Bros are on their way to The Guv'nah to bring mulling spices for our cider, eat our food and generally tell us how awesome we are. Happy Sunday!

- The Yellow One

Welcome to The Guv'nah

At some point in every academic's life, there comes a realization that studying is not everything.  Sometimes its after your first grad school fail.  Sometimes it's after your first stress-induced panic attack.  Sometimes is when you realized you don't recognize anyone on Perez Hilton.

He seems like a nice young man...

This creates a need to step back from the textbooks, step out of the stacks of the library, and find something worth while to do that can not be placed on a CV.  As such, we have decided to document our shenanigans* and shindigs in a shared blog. We share a love cooking and good food, Harry Potter, and whiskey. We are three graduate students sharing a house and attending a Big Ten university.

Guess which Big Ten.

Along with our cohorts, we plan on making graduate school as exciting as possible, and you are welcome to follow us as we navigate our programs and earn our degrees.  We hope to share our favorite food and cocktail recipes, our favorite party ideas, and insight into surviving graduate school.

We welcome ideas for recipes, inexpensive activities, and party themes.


- The Pink One


*Edit from The Yellow One - according to teenage rom-coms, we would have WAY more shenanigans if we lied more. We need to start telling people that our fathers know rock stars and we'll be onstage for their next concert, or that we have hot dates to the big dance tomorrow when we really don't!