Say hello to Mr. Philena!

[philena]

Daniel has a new name now. We were married on Monday, and are now proudly sporting our matching wedding bands that I described so happily in our last entry. I hope to post more pictures soon, but right now all we have are the ones we took ourselves, and those are all documentations of the preparations the day before. Actually, it's only one preparation, but the most important one: the construction of the wedding pie! Daniel has always dreamed of having a nice wedding pie on his wedding day,* and since the farmers' market peaches I bought with my parents the day before were so lovely, we made a peach pie. See the steps below.

First, you must construct the pie dough. We did not takes pictures of that step. It was fairly boring. But then, the next part is rolling it out! It was very difficult, because it did not cohere as well as it has in the past. So first, you roll it out, as Mr. Philena demonstrates below:





Then, you pinch together all the rips and cracks that result from the rolling:



Then you roll it out some more.



Eventually, it is big enough to line the bottom of the pie plate. In the past, we have rolled it out on top of aluminum foil, which helps immensely the transference of the very thin, delicate, pie dough layer into the pie plan itself. Since we did not have any aluminum foil, we had to use our hands and spatulas and pray that it wouldn't fall apart. We were not entirely successful, but it was close enough for government work:




Then we cut Xes in the bottom of the beautiful peaches, so that when we blanched them, the skins would come off smoothly. Here we are cutting:









After that we put them in boiling water for thirty seconds or so, to loosen the skins. Here I am removing them from the water. (I really like this picture: notice the steam! How artistic!)



Then we waited a few minutes for the peaches to cool, and ripped off their skins, as Mr. Philena demonstrates below:



Then we cut them into nice slices. I must admit quite a few slices did not make it into the pie.



Then we sifted a combination of sugar, cornstarch, and cinnamon over them:





And stirred it in. It looks like the burner is on, but that's actually the thick coat of rust on the plate underneath the burner which is responsible for the ruddy glow:



Then we rolled out the rest of the pie dough to make a lattice to cover the top. For pictures of the actual rolling, I refer you to the first few images above.The process was much the same. But then, instead of lifting it up to cover the peaches in the crusted pie pan, we cut strips. I must also disclose that this image is a bit artificial. Daniel cut the strips while facing the other direction, but I made him pose for this picture because the real pose didn't look good.



Then, we laid the strips over the top of the pie, and wove them into a lattice. It looks really nice when the strips don't keep breaking on you, but we managed to make this work after a fashion.



See?



Unfortunately, the pie did not like being tilted for this pose, and showed its discontent by dripping juices all over the table. We, alas, did not notice until much later, but the image caught the perpetrator in the act.

I will not post pictures of the wedding for two reasons: first, the pie pictures probably took up all your patience, and second, we do not have any. The parents were responsible for taking them, as Daniel and I were busy getting married. As soon as we have images from the parents, I will post them. It will not be for a few weeks, however, because we are going play-watching in Ashland; camping in Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park and in the Lost Coast, aka the Sinkyone Wilderness State Park; showering and sleeping in a cute hotel called the Stanford Inn by the Sea, in Mendocino; and then a brief stop for laundry before going to Sacramento, where Daniel will do his teacher training for AP Calculus whilst I explore my state's capital. The first part is sort of a honeymoon, but we started planning it before we planned on getting married as a birthday trip for Daniel. (July 8th, everyone! Don't forget to send presents!) Until we leave on this honeymoon, though, we have been doing very un-just-married-like things. Tuesday and Wednesday we packed up much of the apartment, and Thursday we rented a U-Haul and moved everything that cannot be ferried over by little car. I had been envisioning disasters that result in the rest of us crippled with slipped disk and lumbar hernias and so on after failed attempts at couch moving, but my wonderful sister and two wonderful friends** helped and everything went very smoothly, without injury, and we celebrated by having lunch at an excellent Indian restaurant in our new neighborhood, called Breads of India, at 2448 Sacramento St.

Today we also tested out our camping stove! It involves a lot of liquid gasoline being poured around and lit on fire (I quote from the instructions: "A soccer-ball sized ball of flame is not uncommon") but no eyebrows were singed, so we're willing to declare it a success.

Stay tuned for marriage entry with images!







*He also has always dreamed of marrying a cellist or a librarian, he says. But, of course, that was before he met me.

**Who apparently despise moving so much that they always volunteer to help friends move, because they know how horrible it is. I can't say I understand the logic, but it works in our favor, so I won't pick faults with it. Anyway, the practice they have thus acquired in moving resulted in much-needed expertise in U-Haul and couch maneuvering.

Comments

[philena.livejournal.com]

Thank you! I am impressed at your fast response, and so is Mr. Philena. He says, "Toodle-pip!"