How Do You Make The Best Chocolate Chip Pie Ever?

Here it is folks: The Chocolate Chip Pie Blog****Seriously, this is one of my signature dishes and there is absolutely NOTHING fancy or gourmet about it; it is just simply scrumptious! Of course, I can't claim this recipe; it is THE official Nestle Toll House Chocolate Chip Pie recipe. I'm actually not even sure where I first saw it, but I have been making it for probably about 20 years.
Unlike some of my other pies, this one is so homey and humble that it gets a frozen pie shell rather than one that I make from scratch. The pie is so sinfully rich and delicious that it doesn't mind one bit that it has a store-bought crust. I also think I added the vanilla and doubled the recipe...but otherwise it is pure NESTLE.
I use my handy dandy stand mixer ('The Lime Green Machine") when I make this at home, but when I'm visiting friends (and the urge for pie strikes) I have easily used a little hand mixer.

Ingredients:
2 unbaked deep dish pie crusts (Don't skimp! Buy the best frozen crusts available at your market)
4 large eggs
2 1/2 sticks unsalted butter softened
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup granulated sugar
1 cup dark brown sugar
1 tablespoon vanilla
12 oz. semi-sweet chocolate chips
Vanilla or Coffee Ice Cream to top it off.  

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees and then crack the eggs into the mixing bowl and blend until foamy.

This would be the perfect time to GENTLY soften the butter in the microwave IF you've forgotten to leave it out for awhile at room temperature.

Next-- SLOWLY add the flour, sugar and brown sugar to the mixing bowl and blend all ingredients.
If you've softened the butter in the microwave, don't add until it has had a chance to cool down.
Once completely cool, slowly blend into the rest of the batter. Add the tablespoon of vanilla at this stage as well.

This is what the yummy batter looks like BEFORE you stir in the chocolate chips. DON'T use the mixer for this step. Gently stir the chips into the batter by hand with a rubber spatula.
Now the batter is ready to fill the pie shells. Put the 2 shells on a baking sheet (in case of spillage) and try to evenly split the batter between the two shells.

Are you still with me???? We are almost there! Put the pies into the 325 degree oven for about 60 minutes and then let them cool down a bit before you serve!

GORGEOUS!!!! Now comes the hardest part of this whole endeavor: You and your lucky guests have to decide whether or not you are HOTTIES or COLDIES.  This pie has a very different texture depending upon whether or not you serve it warm from the oven or chilled in the refrigerator. 
I am a HOTTIE (that was fun to type!)...I really like the pie best when it is warm and gooey and topped with coffee ice cream. However, I am well aware that pie lovers come in all shapes and sizes and there is definitely a very vocal contingency who much prefers the pie cold. When chilled, it has a very solid, firm consistency and can even be eaten without a fork--like a giant cookie slice!
One more note for all the HOTTIES out there: If the pie is chilled and you are yearning for it warm, it heats up really well in the microwave--one slice at a time!


Bon Appetite!!

What Would You Consider Doing that Really, Really Scares You?

I have to give credit where credit is due, and my bff, Beth, came up with this post idea. She and I were in NYC for three days this week with her youngest son, Ben (age 7), and we had a wonderful time visiting with my oldest son, Josh (age 25). (NO--THAT IS NOT JOSH IN THE PICTURE!!!)

NYC is a carnival ride on steroids (note the Naked Cowboy strutting his stuff in Times Square), and when I told Beth that I wanted to write something using photos from our trip, she suggested this topic. Plenty of people in Manhattan seem to be pushing boundaries that most of us won't ever cross (check out  both of the photos included in this post), and the topic definitely resonated with me because I have grappled my whole life with the issue of fear.

As a child, I was incredibly shy and many things scared me. My sister Amy would eagerly offer to do all the things that I found scary. If my parents asked me to run into a store and pick up mouthwash  for them, I'd hesitate and Amy would jump up and run in ahead of me. As a teenager, my social life suffered significantly because of my fear of unfamiliar social settings and risky(read: NORMAL TEENAGE) behavior. Most egregiously, my aversion to risk made me a prisoner in a bad marriage for too many difficult years.

Which leads me to one of the most significant moments in my life, a dream that specifically addressed my paralyzing fears. I was riding a bicycle in a strange town that was undergoing massive construction. At one point, I made a sharp turn to avoid something (a truck, a pedestrian, I can't remember), and I ended up riding suspended over a giant chasm. Since this was a dream (isn't our sub-conscious amazing?), I was aware that I was literally hanging in mid-air about to drop down to my death. At that moment, a person appeared on the other edge of the pit and proceeded to try to guide me to safety. His words have served as a sort of mantra for me in the ten years since I had that incredible dream. He yelled, "Lunge Forward!" When I woke up the next morning, I had an epiphany; I understood that shifting all of my weight in a new direction would actually move me away from danger. It saved me in the dream, and it saved me in my life as well.

I am a work in progress trying each day to expand the limits of my comfort zone. Like me,  Noelle Hancock, a young writer on the brink of turning 30, realized that she was being held captive by her fears. Hancock decided to take Eleanor Roosevelt's advice and "do one thing every day that scares you." Ms. Hancock proceeded to catalog her adventures in a new memoir entitled, My Year with Eleanor, where she recounts taking fighter pilot lessons, swimming with sharks and doing stand-up comedy. I don't think our risks have to be quite so dramatic; we might try a food we used to hate, learn Italian, take a Spinning class, etc. You never know where you will go (or how you will grow) if you push past your fears! Please comment about something that scares you that you are working to overcome and don't forget to LUNGE FORWARD!

How Can We Learn to Lose Well?

Welcome back dear Angels of Accountability….See, it worked! Knowing there were people out there, whom I did not wish to disappoint, made me keep my promise to return this week with another question.

Now, this week’s question may seem odd to more than a few of you; afterall, American culture focuses much more on winning than on losing (just ask Charlie Sheen). However, the reality of life is that we will all lose things (both big and small) from time to time. The trick, it seems, is learning how to handle loss well. Part of that comes from being resilient, like the boxer who keeps getting back up time after time after time. We often tell people (kids especially) to get back on the proverbial  horse as soon as possible after a fall, and there is wisdom in that. But sometimes, a loss is too large or too devastating for us to jump back up and return to the saddle. Sometimes, we need to sit and breath in the sad reality of the moment; we need to feel the emptiness. 

One of my favorite Elizabeth Bishop poems speaks incredibly eloquently of loss. In her villanelle, "One Art," Bishop lists a catalog of losses until finally leading the reader to the loss that feels at the center of the poem...even though we only learn of it at the end.

One Art
by Elizabeth Bishop
The art of losing isn't hard to master; so many things seem filled with the intent to be lost that their loss is no disaster. Lose something every day. Accept the fluster of lost door keys, the hour badly spent. The art of losing isn't hard to master. Then practice losing farther, losing faster: places, and names, and where it was you meant to travel. None of these will bring disaster. I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or next-to-last, of three loved houses went. The art of losing isn't hard to master. I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster, some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent. I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster. --Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident the art of losing's not too hard to master though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster. In the wonderful book Edgar Allan Poe & The Juke Box, Alice Quinn has collected Bishop's "uncollected poems, drafts and fragments." There are 16 versions of "One Art," so it appears that even Bishop struggled a bit  with understanding and describing loss. In Judith Viorst's seminal text, NECESSARY LOSSES, she writes in the introduction: "When we think of loss we think of the loss, through death, of people we love. But loss is a far more encompassing theme in our life. For we lose not only through death, but also by leaving and being left, by changing and letting go and moving on. And our losses include not only our separations and departures from those we love, but our conscious and unconscious losses of romantic dreams, impossible expectations, illusions of freedom and power, illusions of safety--and the loss of our own younger self, the self that thought it would always be unwrinkled and invulnerable and immortal." I imagine that we can all relate to some of the losses that Bishop and Viorst describe.I think that my life has taught me to understand, and even to appreciate, loss. It is the inevitable price we pay for this miraculous gift called LIFE. Having to lose the dream of a happy, intact family was almost unbearable for me. But then I grew and changed and learned that with that pivotal loss came many unexpected gains. I am a much better role model for my kids now than I was then. I stand (and leap and lunge and skip) on my own two feet. One of the things I craved for years and years is now a happy reality: my insides and my outsides match. So, if loss frightens you, or if you are having trouble letting go of something that you do not need because the loss of it scares you, think about Hugh Prather's wise words from his aptly titled book, The Little Book of Letting Go. "Some things are simple, and here's one of them: You can either relax and let go of your life, in which case you will know peace. Or you can try to control your life, in which case you will know war." Let's let go and choose peace, friends! Until next week, Rachel

Why write a blog?

This is the very beginning of my year-long experiment in blogging. I've wanted to try this for quite some time, but I haven't been able to settle on the focus or format. Then yesterday, on the plane home from my cousin's Bat Mitzvah, somewhere in the sky between San Francisco and Houston, it came to me: I want to ask questions! Like George, the mischievous monkey, I am curious. I am a high school English teacher, a creative cook, a Food Network addict, a sometime writer, a voracious reader, a single mom of almost-grown kids, a lover of crafts and creativity in all its guises. I am an observer and a thinker, and if you care to join me, I want to take you with me as I ask--and attempt to answer-- a different question each week for one whole year.
So, I think it only fitting that the very first question I pose here should be: WHY WRITE A BLOG?
Are you a reader of many blogs? I am, and they range from wonderfully casual but creative blogs about quilting, to professional food blogs, to blogs that have been stepping stones to books/memoirs. My own desire to write a blog is something I've been questioning for the past year and change. After much perusal, I've come up with the following five reasons.
#1--I am a professional procrastinator. I can find a million and one things to do INSTEAD of writing. Sadly, there is no magic pill one can take to cure them of this ailment. However, I have found one surefire remedy: accountability. If I know that someone is expecting to read something I've written, I'm all over it. I'm fast. I'm efficient. My creative juices are flowing like lava from a volcano. Its an amazing thing. So you, dear readers (all two  or three of you?) are the Angels of Accountability. I will imagine  you, sitting eagerly at your computers awaiting each new weekly post, and that will hold me to my goal of writing a blog entry each week for a year.
#2--I turned 50 this year and am rapidly heading toward 51. YIKES!!! Something about that number made me spend the year questioning everything. What have I accomplished so far? What do I still need/want to do? How can I be a better person than I've been for the last half century? What have I learned so far? What can I teach to others? Where is the journey going to take me next? It is common knowledge that age brings wisdom. Maybe it will --after a few more decades--but right now, I feel filled to the brim with questions; hopefully, as I share them with you, we can find some answers together.
#3--A small life vs. a big life. What do I mean? OK, so I am not making a value judgement here, just an observation. Some people lead BIG lives: they are known by many, they have experiences that few are able to share, they have fame or infamy, they live life on the big stage.
Others of us--most of us--lead small lives. Our lives play out in a circle with a much smaller circumference. We are known to a select few...other than that, we are relatively anonymous. Thanks to the internet, that is changing a bit. Sites like YouTube have introduced a radically different kind of experience; I call it the democratization of fame. Blogging is another avenue for people to dip their toes into the bigger world; it is a tributary that leads from the lovely stream of PRIVATE to the wild and wonderful ocean of PUBLIC. Since I'm about 80% introverted by nature, this toe-dipping experiment is kind of scary. However, my grandma Fanny used to say to me, "Nothing ventured, nothing gained," and I believe her. So here goes!
#4--Since I am a teacher, I have the summers off. Before you send the evil eye of jealousy my way, let me explain that I believe the summers are a crucial time for teachers to reflect about their teaching practice, to hone up on their knowledge of their subject area, and to push themselves to learn something new, if only to remember how and why we learn. Of course, I want to rest during the summer; I honestly feel the need to recharge my batteries so that I can perform at my highest potential for the upcoming school year. However, I also feel that this precious "off" time needs to be used to accomplish something other than the myriad doctors appointments I've scheduled or the home repairs awaiting my attention. This blog will be a perfect summer project for me, and I am hopeful that the momentum it generates will keep me going during the school year as well.
#5-- Sometimes I rue the fact that I am so fickle when it comes to my hobbies and interests. Reading and writing have been the constants throughout my life, but so many other passions have come and gone. And--if truth be told...(and I intend to tell the truth here), my writing passion has waxed and waned throughout my life as well. I've been on the brink of publishing some of my children's books and then--when the winds shifted in the other direction, I've abandoned those projects/goals to try my hand at something else. Over the years, I've been an avid scrapbooker, beginning quilter, needlepointer, knitter. I've made fabric and felted purses. I've experimented with bread machines, food processors, juicers, stand and hand-held mixers (basically any kitchen gadget known to woman). I've challenged myself to learn to decorate cupcakes or make the perfect macaroni and cheese. Nothing earth-shattering here folks. I am well aware that I am not trying to cure cancer (oh do I wish I could), or solve the Middle East crisis. I am just a 50-year old English teacher who lives in Texas and wants to learn more about life than I already know.

So---this is my goal: over the next 52 weeks, I will ask --and attempt to answer--a different question each week. These questions will range from the silly to the serious, from the small ("Why was I given the name I was given and does it suit me?") to the deep ("Why are we here?")....from the culinary ("How do I make brioche?") to the literary, ("What is my favorite book and why?"). Feel free to comment abundantly. Feel free to pose questions of your own that you would like me to attempt to puzzle through. Feel free to aid me in my search for answers if you feel that I've missed something or gotten off track. All I ask is that you recognize that I am NOT pretending to have all the answers (or even all the questions). This is an experiment/experience, and I hope that we will all enjoy the ride together and maybe even learn something new.
Rachel