Pie Crust.

My grandmother made excellent pies. Of course, the secret ingredient was lard (much to the continual dismay of my great-auntie Maxine... "You make your pies with lard?!?!" I say "continual" because she had dementia, and this conversation happened on a fairly regular basis.)

I was probably about 8 the first time I made pies with my grandmother, and I still use the same recipe she did. It's pretty fool proof, and works for all your short-crust pastry needs. The best thing about it is it makes enough for about 3 large pies (or 4 smaller ones, depending on the size of your pie plates) and freezes very well, so you can make crust and pies on different days. The original recipe called for 5 cups of flour, but I always found there was not enough egg-water mixture to go around.

4 1/2 C flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
1 lb lard
1 egg
1 Tbsp vinegar
3/4 C cold water (mixed in with egg and vinegar)

Mix flour, baking powder, and salt in a large bowl. Cut in slices of lard. Using a knife (or pastry cutter) cut into small chunks, then use your hands to work until it's crumbly (Remove jewellery!)

Beat egg, and combine with water and vinegar. Pour small amounts over flour mixture, incorporating with a fork. Don't overmix! This will make the crust tough. (As discussed here...)

Gather dough into bottom of the bowl, and divide into three parts. Roll and wrap in plastic wrap. Refrigerate until needed or store in an airtight container in the freezer.

Saskatoon Pie

Christmas Cactus.

I have recently acquired a Christmas Cactus (really, I'm plant-sitting, but it's taking up enough of my kitchen.. this thing is huge!) and it seems to be happy. Over the past week, it's started churning out buds, and some of them have opened into gorgeous orange blossoms.

Like this one.

The flowers of a Christmas Cactus are specially adapted for specific pollinators. Nectar is produced and stored in a chamber at the base of the bloom, which is very long. A hummingbird must stick it's long beak down the flower to get at the nectar, and while doing so will brush it's head against the pollen covered stamens sticking out of the flower. Pollen from another plant will be deposited on the bright pink stigma from the top of the bird's head.

Side view.

Good Books.

I love reading books. However, I cannot read all the time. If a book is good, I get sucked in and can't put it down. I love good books, but they tend to ruin my productivity; I have to wait for specific times of year to allow myself to be absorbed by a good book.

From here.

During exam break in January, I got completely engrossed in Deborah Harkness' A Discovery of Witches. I'm not really a vampires kind of girl, but this book completely blew me away. First off, the protagonist is a science historian (history of science being my favorite subject) which meant I pretty much wanted to be her, and secondly, the fantastic elements were presented in a very believable and accessible way. I started reading the novel around 8 pm, and didn't look at a clock until 2 am when I decided I needed to pee. If you like a little romance, a little history, a little suspense, and a little science mixed in with some magic, this book is all that and more. The science parts could get a little overwhelming if you aren't well versed (the male lead is a vampire/geneticist) and the history very detailed (I found myself going to wikipedia a couple times afterwards to remind myself which one Christopher Marlowe was again...) but that only adds to the book; at no point does any of this feel dumbed down. My only problem with the book is that it is the first of a trilogy - I have no idea how I am going to wait until July for part 2!

From here.

A couple of days ago, I got sucked into another book. This one I'd intended to last me all of Spring Break, but once I started reading, I could not stop and ended up reading the whole thing in one sitting. The Night Circus, by Erin Morgenstern, is also a suspenseful fantasy-romance, but from a different angle. The magic in this novel takes a different form from A Discovery of Witches supernatural; the protagonists are illusionists whose illusions are real. I loved the descriptions of the scenery, clothing, and acts in the traveling circus that forms the main setting for the novel. I found some of the characters under-developed, and the ending a bit weak (everything ended a bit too well tied together, and certain plot points left unexplained... things also seem to be set up for a possible sequel?) but it was a delicious read. The romance is not overwhelming (the lovers pretty much don't meet until half way through the book) but the narrative jumps around from different points of view, and different points in time. This book would not be for everyone (if you're not a fan of fantasy, I wouldn't go near it with a 10-foot pole) but it was a great bit of escape-ism. Just what Spring Break called for.

For the rest of Spring Break, I also picked up Bill Bryson's At Home, which hopefully will last me a bit longer.

Baking Adventures.

Well, it's Spring (even though it's snowing buckets here) and that means wedding season is around the corner!

I am once again making cupcakes, this time for my friend Gina's wedding. Her colors are yellow and grey, and I had a stroke of inspiration to make lemon cupcakes (and the perennial favorite, chocolate) in foil liners.

I didn't have a lemon cupcake recipe, so I tried out this one (but added about two teaspoons powered lemonade and a hint of yellow food coloring) with Dominique and Amy last weekend, and it was GOOD. Super lemony, very moist, and overall delightful.

The icing doesn't look too yellow here, but my plan is to ice both the lemon and chocolate with yellow icing.

The challenge at this point is going to be making and getting them to Calgary looking pretty, since the wedding is the day after the last day of school!

Photo taken by Dominique!

St Patrick's.

St Patrick's Day never ceases to confuse me.

St Patrick was a British man, was captured while in Wales, and brought to Ireland as a slave. After escaping, he returned home, joined the Church, went back to Ireland, became a bishop, died, became the patron saint of Ireland, and now has a Feast Day that is celebrated worldwide by mostly non-Irish people with copious amounts of green beer. Oh, and somewhere in there supposedly banished the snakes from Ireland.

One of the few specific facts I remember from my university ecology classes casts some doubt on St Paddy's holy deeds... Snakes were absent from Ireland long before good ol' Patrick got there in the 5th AD.

More likely, the most recent Ice Age was to blame. When the glaciers expanded and covered Ireland and the UK, snakes and other reptiles (and pretty much everything else) retreated to warmer places in Europe. When the glaciers retreated, most animals and plants recolonized, but the snakes never returned. Didn't make it before the sea cut off the island. Britain was re-colonized due to a land bridge, but Ireland stayed blissfully snake-free.

(This is the same reason that England has far fewer wildflower species than mainland Europe.)

Fun fact about shamrocks: the three leaves of the shamrock symbolize the Holy Trinity and was apparently used by St Patrick to teach the Irish doctrine.

National Geographic does a much better job of explaining this than I can. And probably better researched than me trying to recall what my professors told me. In all likelihood, "driving the snakes from Ireland" was an allegory, as snakes are representative of evil (and paganism) in Christian symbolism.

And this is my favorite...

Talented Friends III.

Poster seen in the Remedy Cafe on Whyte.

Life is good.

On Thursday night, I headed to Metro Cinema in the old Garneau Theatre to catch a screening of part of my dear friend Jamie's documentary. So exciting to see her vision realized on the big screen! A twelve minute segment on bison played before a screening of Avatar as part of the U of A's Educated Reel film series.

It was mind-boggling to see footage we shot together at Elk Island Park of Plains Bison, and hear us giggling like school girls over a particularly fuzzy buffalo wiggling his ears in the outtakes. Equally crazy to see my name roll across the credits.

So intensely proud of J and all she's accomplished so far. Things only look up from here!

Pi Day.

Yesterday was Pi Day.

For those of you who are not math geeks like myself, pi (π) is a Greek letter that is used as a symbol for the ratio of the perimeter of a circle to it's radius. π is an irrational number, which means it cannot be expressed as a fraction, and it's decimals go on forever without repeating. Since this is not very handy, π (3.14159265358979323846264338327...) is often rounded to 3.14 which is a good enough approximation for most intents and purposes.

Pi crops up everywhere in science and math. As such, it makes mathematicians and scientists fairly excited. And we celebrate it on March 14 (3/14... get it?).

Math and Science departments at schools are no different. Yesterday we had some Pi Day festivities in the gymnasium with prizes on hand. There was a challenge to see who could memorize the most digits of π (winner was the winner last year.. this year's was a school record of 517 digits with no mistake), a pie-eating contest, and a raffle to pie a teacher in the face.

And yes, I got pie-ed in the face. 

Along with 7 other teachers, I volunteered to take a cream pie in the face. My skin felt remarkably smooth for the rest of the day. But the sprinkles got caked in my hair. 

The things I do to get teenagers interested in math and science!

An Apple Pi(e) I made a few years ago.

Breaking News.

Kinda. It broke last week. I'm behind!

...Oh technology.  Thou art a heartless bitch.

And those silly neutrinos!

Remember this?

Update courtesy of  Sixty Seconds.

From Nearing Zero.

Full Moon.

So there is a full moon today. A BIG one. Nice and big and yellow hanging just above the horizon.

Why does the moon look so big when it is rising? No one ever tells you to go look at the giant moon when it is high in the sky. The key thing here is that the moon only looks big.

While the distance the moon is from the Earth varies slightly in its orbit (this is why some tides are bigger than others), on any given night the radius of the moons orbit does not change significantly. The moon is no bigger when it is high in the sky than when it is low on the horizon.

The main reason for this is perspective. When we see objects at a distance, they look small, but knowing in our minds what their true size is, the brain compensates and interprets the objects size accordingly. 

When the moon is high in the sky, we have nothing to compare it to, so its size means nothing. With no reference points, we perceive it to be closer than it is. When it is low on the horizon, however, we see it in relation to buildings and trees, and it looks absolutely huge.

Apparently, one way to un-trick your mind is to bend over, and look at the moon upside down through your legs.

I suppose you could also take a picture, but I loaned out my tripod... unfortunate since there is supposed to be some awesome auroras coming up!