Apple Pie

Pie is scary. It is just too much to take in and make sense of. I have come to terms with pudding based pies and will admit to actually liking chocolate and lemon pies. From these pies I have discovered that I love pie crust. This has me warming to pie in general, since you can't have pie crust without pie.

However, apple pie is still scary, but not scary beyond all reason, since I have a very good reason: cooked apple! I can't get beyond that. It is just plain wrong. It's like biting into fruity leather and that is not for me, no way, no how. I don't mind the spices mixed with the apple taste, but the cooked apple ruins that. Maybe if it was puréed. More like an applesauce pie. If I wasn't afraid of applesauce I just might like that.
I think it is sad that cooked apples have ruined pie for me to the point where I am just recovering now. It's not like I dislike anything else in pie. If apple pies were just crust and crumble I'd have them everyday. It's the cooked apple that's tainted my view. I don't like it in pie, in apple crisp, in anything else it is used in.
I have tried apple pie a few times over the years and it is always the same. Not even à la mode can help it. When it is an option I just ask for ice cream, if I'm very lucky I can score some whip cream à la mode. Apple pie can never match that!
VERDICT: Gross, while I've had it to be polite those tastes have just confirmed my dislike for it.

photo borrowed from http://www.colleenhammond.com/blog/2009/07/apple-pie-recipe/

Sugar Cookies!

I was never afraid of eating sugar cookies. I could eat sugar cookies morning, noon and night. They have always been one of my favourite cookies and in honour of Christmas approaching (and my flight home being less than a day away) I am featuring them here.
I like sugar cookies without icing. I like sugar cookies with icing. I like sugar cookies with too much icing.
I remember making sugar cookie candy canes growing up with the red and white dough you would twist up and than shape. They were so good and are one of the reasons I have sugar cookies on my Christmas post. The soft sweet cookie taste is so addicting. I wish I had one right now.
Another reason is a Fiel tradition I was introduced to through my wife, Kristin. Sometime before Christmas (its hard to tell what day it will be in post-secondary age) all of Baba's grandchildren come together at her house and sit down at her table and decorate cookies like there is no tomorrow. It's a very accurate description if you know how many cookies a Baba can bake ;) Everyone has a different decorating style, but rested assured if it is possible to use to decorate a cookie Baba has it ready to go on her table. There are gingerbread men cookies (the only non-sugar cookie of the bunch), circular, wreath, tree, holly, heart, bell, and star shaped cookies. Oh, and with breaking cookies or creative reimagining of what a shape represents the options are literaly endless.
I have made a plaid-heart cookie (using icing and a lot of sprinkles), a nativity cookie, an alligator (out of  the legs of a gingerbread man), and a pirhana plant just to name a few. I once made a gingerbread me as well. Some people peter out and just start slapping icing onto cookies distractedly, but I could decorate all day long. I love it. I love it all the more because I get to decorate fabulous tasting treats.
VERDICT: Favourite!

photos borrowed from http://kidscooking.about.com/od/christmascookies/ig/Christmas-Cookies/Sugar-Cookies-Recipe.htm

Strawberry Banana Yogurt

11/25/09 - Yogurt could be a category unto itself of things I don't like. It can be liquified, regular or frozen and I'm afraid of it. I've tried it on multiple occasions and every time it is the same. It's a sticky, mushy, paste sort of thing that I just can't seem to get off my tongue. Yogurt just sits there with it's gross texture like it knows what happens to it after it gets swallowed. The latest flavour I tried was strawberry banana and it was like whipped medicine. I had less than a spoonful and had to quickly find something to wash the taste (and memory) of it out of my mouth; I'm pretty sure it was carbonated.

There is one form of yogurt I am no longer scared witless of: frozen. Now, I'm not saying I like it, but if someone served it to me without telling me it was yogurt I probably wouldn't realize it unitl the second or third bite and would continue to eat it anyways without saying anything. I feel that frozen yogurt tries to hard to be ice cream though, so much so that it somehow tastes creamier than ice cream, which is weird. Also, it tastes like chemicals much more often that ice cream does.

I don't mind things made with yogurt, like butter chicken sauce or naan bread, but straight-up yogurt is a no, except for authentic Grecian yogurt when I'm on vacation since Kristin says it's very different.

VERDICT: yogurt = gross, frozen yogurt = polite

photo borrowed from http://www.danone.ca/en/products/silhouette.aspx

Pumpkin Pie

10/12/09 - I have always shied away from pumpkin pie. It's pumpkin! In my mind pumpkins are solely for decoration and I blanche at the thought of eating one. Mix this attitude with pie and it's no wonder that it took my wife's intervention for me to try a slice.
I just can't get over the mushiness. The last time I tried it, it was one of the desserts for Manitoba Thanksgiving in PEI. I haven't made a habit of eating it so I still get nervous. It's okay, I guess. I never remember the spice and am always pleasantly surprised by that. However, the pie mush will keep it on my Owen List: I don't mind pumpkin pies, they just don't agree with me.
VERDICT: Polite

pictured borrowed from http://img.foodnetwork.com/FOOD/2006/10/17/Pumpkin_Pie_lg.jpg