I had a webcast from the Medical Library Association at the University of Kentucky Medical Center Library today and got to see some of my fellow medical librarians and speak to the former chair of the committee I'm chairing now about upcoming events at the annual meeting in Seattle in May. I'm not able to go, but she is, and she volunteered to take care of the booth and man it during on of our activities, for which I am very grateful, as it's during the same time as our section meeting and I wasn't sure I could find someone to do it.
I have a pedometer that I wore today. I knew I'd be doing a lot of walking around UK and wondered if I could reach the magic '10,000 steps' they talk about. Well, I made it past 12,000! Woo-hoo! This meter measures passive walking (that is, steps I take walking across the room or through the hallways as well as exercise-style walking. Not all of them do. So all the steps counted. It also kept total time walking, calories burned, and distance walked.) I walked about four miles today. Now obviously, today wasn't a normal day. But I'm going to try to wear it and figure out what is normal. I do walk to and from the bus stop, and then around the hospital several times a day, plus occasional attempts at going for a walk.
After the webcast, I took the bus into the transit centre and changed back to my normal bus, then stopped at Liquor Barn for a teensy, tiny bottle of Buffalo Trace bourbon and then walked over to Kroger (again with the walking) and shopped for the ingredients I needed for the pie. It was relatively straightforward. I needed flour, sugar (I got a small bag/box of each), vanilla, nutmeg (I think I have some somewhere in my cabinet, but didn't want to chance it, and it's probably years old anyway), eggs, unsalted butter, and some whipped cream (I'm making everything else from scratch, except this...but it is from real cream and not that oil stuff). I also got a package of pie pans WITH LIDS, something I need for taking a pie to work with me on the bus, which should be an adventure in and of itself.
Anyway, we'll see if this turns out to be an absolute disaster or not. I'm going to eat some more Indian food with the rice I cooked yesterday (I think I'll try the chickpea curry this time) and then cut up my butter and get it really cold to start the process. There's a lot of freezing and refrigerating in this recipe to produce a really flaky crust. Both recipes, however--the crust and the custard--are pretty straightforward. The only real question is the bourbon. In the original recipe I found, 1 Tbsp of bourbon was used, but then I realised it was a recipe for a bourbon custard and not a pie at all. The custard is cooked and then the bourbon is added when it cools. But I'm going to be baking my custard in the pie shell, so I thought I might need to increase the bourbon because it's being cooked and presumably the alcohol will cook out, leaving just the flavour. I did find one recipe that involved a custard pie with bourbon in it that used 3 Tbsp. (although it also had bacon in it, which sounds disgusting, but I guess for meat eaters it would be okay). So I think I'll go with that and see how it turns out; if it's a bit strong, well, at least we're not going to get drunk off it. I'll take the whipped cream with me and put it on right before the contest, sprinkling a little nutmeg on it.
This sounded interesting, and I asked several people if they thought it or a transparent pie would be good for the contest, and everyone voted for bourbon (except A and YKWIA, the latter of whom I think didn't give an opinion one way or another and was just amused that I was trying this). But I really did spend three years, albeit long ago, baking in Future Homemakers of America, even though I never really learned to cook. But the ironic thing is between my dislike of bourbon (at least in bourbon balls, I'm just not a fan) and my diabetes, I don't actually plan on eating the pie, except maybe a little taste just to see how I did. So there you go.
While I was at Kroger I also got some generic Claritin. 10 pills of Claritin are almost $11. 10 pills of Kroger brand are $1.99. I got a bottle of 60 for $7.96. 45 Claritin tablets were something like $30. Go generics. I don't care so long as they work, and my allergies have been so bad, this week especially. A co-worker gave me some Advil Cold & Sinus earlier today and it helped. But before that my breathing was very wheezy and I actually had to use my inhaler, which is usually a once or twice a year thing and I've been using it maybe once every two weeks, and probably should more than that. With the early spring, the grass and tree pollen is happening at the same time. I think that's my main problem. I'm allergic to all sorts of grasses and trees as well. I think I'm okay around evergreens, but I'm not sure they checked for that. But oak? Bleh. I start having trouble the moment those buds on the maples start, which this year was back in January.
Okay, time to go get something to eat and then start the pie process. Wish me luck.
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