Writing group week 12: An extra week

Hi folks!

I got so caught up this morning in posting my pumpkin cobbler recipe that I forgot about week 12. But ADM and I chatted, and decided that, what with the holidays and travel and all, it would be a good idea to postpone week 12 check-ins until next week. So: I'm going to put up the final post next Friday, to give us all (yes, me included) a chance to recover from the holidays and get those last few things taken care of on our projects. I hope you all had a good holiday, and we'll see you next Friday!

My favorite breakfast of the year

... is pumpkin pie and strong black coffee, in the quiet of the morning the day after Thanksgiving.



You may have noticed that what you see there is not pumpkin pie. That's because I decided to try something different this year and go for a pumpkin cobbler. Why not, right?

Turns out, pumpkin cobbler is excellent. So, here's how you make it. Or rather, here's how I make it, because I've discovered that, while I'll go for the for-serious from fresh ingredients while cooking, I tend towards the quick-and-dirty approach when baking, and this involves processed ingredients. Feel free to go all from-scratch gourmet all over this thing, if you want* -- I'm sure you'll be rewarded with some excellent results. But the way I made it, it takes only 15 minutes prep time. Can't beat that with a stick.

1. Preheat oven to 425.

2. Make cobbler crust:

• 1 box yellow cake mix (set aside 1 c. for topping, step 4)
• 1/2 c. butter, softened at room temperature
  
• 1 egg

Cream together these ingredients, and pat into a lightly oiled 13 x 9 inch pan (you may want to lightly flour your hands for this step)**

3. Make filling:

• 1 large can pumpkin
• 1 can condensed milk or evaporated milk (the former will be sweeter; either one can be a low-fat version if you want)
• 3 eggs
• 2/3 c. (packed) brown sugar
• 2 tsp. vanilla
• 2 tsp. pumpkin pie spice

Mix together filling ingredients and pour into pan on top of (unbaked) crust. Put the whole thing in the oven, close the door, and lower the heat to 350 to bake for the next half hour. While that's going...

4. Make topping:

• 1 c. reserved cake mix
• 2-3 Tbsp butter
• 1/4 c. (packed) brown sugar
• pumpkin pie spice to taste

Cut together topping ingredients -- or give them a few quick pulses in a food processor -- until you have a nice crumble (if it sticks together on the sides of the food processor, you probably need to add a touch more flour; if it won't hold together into crumble bits, add more butter). Once the cobbler has baked for 30 minutes, take it out, and sprinkle on the filling, then immediately return it to the oven and bake it for another 30-45 min., until a knife in the center comes out clean.

Remove pan from oven and cool at room temperature for an hour before cutting (I think that 15 portions is about right for this size of a pan, but YMMV).

And now, between snapping that picture, and editing this post, I've already finished my piece this morning. And it was everything I'd hoped it would be.


[UPDATE: Historiann has tried this out using stewed fresh pumpkin, to rave reviews, though she finds it a bit on the sweet side, and decided that next time she'll use less sugar in the crumble. True enough: the cake mix used for the crumble has its own sugar, so you may not need to add more, but you'll likely want to add a tablespoon or two of flour instead to get the right texture. I also found that using condensed milk instead of the evaporated milk gave the filling a slightly fluffy texture, which I liked, but it did make it extra-sweet, so I'll probably reduce the filling sugar by half.]


*Fresh pumpkin? Cream rather than canned milk? Make your own batter for the crust? Grate in some fresh ginger? It's all good.

**The picture above makes it look like I patted the crust into the bottom and sides of the pan. I didn't. It would actually be impossible to do that, because you're working with a thick batter rather than a dough. But somehow, mysteriously, the crust creeps up the sides during the baking stage. I always knew that baking involved a lot of chemistry; now I see that physics also plays a role. Amazing.

Counting My Blessings

1. I'm healthy, more than I deserve to be.
2. I'm employed, and make a salary that allows me to pay down my debts, little by little.
3. I have both my parents, both my siblings, and some ridiculously wonderful nieces & nephews that remind me about joy in life, in case I forget.
4. I have the privilege of making most of my own life choices, with only a few constraints, and I think I've fashioned a life that suits me well.
   
5. I find my work personally satisfying.
   
6. I have friends who care and appreciate me for who I am, and a comfortable distance from those people who do otherwise.
   
7. I have enough coffee to last me through the long weekend, a fridge full of food (mostly nutritious), and will be making a pumpkin cobbler tonight. And I haven't had to worry about running out of these things for many years.
   
8. I have several days before I need to be back at work, with my grading completed.
9. I don't have everything I want, but I have everything I need.

Happy thanksgiving, everyone. Here's a picture of a fish:

How Dragons Changed My Life

Another Damned Medievalist has a post up about the recent death of fantasy author Anne McCaffrey. I'm glad she did, and she says it beautifully. I'm just reprinting here (with a couple of small edits) my own comment that I left over at her place, because reading ADM's post made me realize how much of an effect McCaffrey's books had on me:

I read the McCaffrey's Harper Hall series when I was… oh, eleven or twelve? And I was completely taken with the young female heroine. I hadn’t thought of the “damaged outsider” angle [NB: see ADM's post for an explanation of this], but it makes complete sense.

Sure, her books are a far cry from being "great literature." But they didn't have to be. If we exclude the work of Butler and LeGuin (a bit too heady for most twelve year-olds), there wasn’t a lot of that genre at that time that featured female protagonists — and especially not female protagonists who were valued for their skills rather than their beauty. For the young adult series, you can throw in the fact that the female protagonist was a young adolescent, and you've got some pretty powerful stuff for a girl my age. When I read these books, I felt like McCaffrey was writing for me, and (though I couldn’t have articulated it this way at the time) that there might be a place in the world for an awkward and kind of homely smart girl who never new what to say, how to dress, or how to fit in.

When I tell my students how I became interested in medieval history, I tend to point to the historical fiction on the Tudors and their ilk that I purloined from my mom’s library piles. But the more I think of it, the more I believe that it began with Menolly and all those bitty fire-lizards.

So: Thanks, Anne.

Week 11 is up!

...over at ADM's place. We're coming into the home stretch, folks!

A Professor's Prayer for Mid-November

To whatever gods may be,

Please, let me get through this week. Let me survive three more days of nearly back-to-back meetings and student conferences and frenetic grading to make sure that I'm prepared to give feedback in those conferences. Let me remember to finish the half-dozen 15-minute administrative tasks that I keep forgetting about, and that are way past due.

Let me keep my stress and anxiety relatively contained, lest it spill over into my interactions with students and colleagues and department staff. For lo, at this time of year they are all mightily stressed out as well, and none of my shit (well, very little) is their fault.

Grant me 5 minutes of grace every day so that I might shower. Let me not leave the house having forgotten to don pants.

Most importantly, let me hold it together just enough so the students don't see how close I am to dropping every last ball I have in the air. Let my colleagues who know damn well how close I am to dropping every last ball I have in the air forgive me, even as I forgive them for doing the same. Help me to maintain a semblance of competence until Friday at 6 p.m.

And I'll be fine then, I promise.

A Special Message for the Writing Group as We Approach the Finish Line: