Blueberry pie disaster

I made my first pie this week.  Notice that the title of this post is blueberry pie disaster.  That about sums it up!

This sure doesn't look like a pie.

I made the crust from scratch.  I made the filling from scratch.  It came out looking like a mutant pie that no one should eat.  It didn't taste any better than it looked.  I used a recipe from Martha Stewart.  I'm not sure what was wrong.  I kept the crust ingredients cold.  I could see the little dots of butter in there when I rolled it out.  The filling smelled delicious when I mixed it all together.  It had to stay in the oven for a long time because it wasn't browning, and yet I had the oven at a high temperature at first and then turned it down to bake the rest of the way.  Usually I can figure out what went wrong with a recipe or what I didn't like about the finished product, but with this one, I'm stumped.  It went wrong and tasted bad, and I don't know why.

mutant pie

The blueberry filling ended up bursting out all over the pie, even though I vented the top.  This pie looked very pretty and had fluted edges when it went into the oven.  It came out looking terrible.  Hopefully, the next pie I bake will be better.  This is not my last pie.

Doctor Who: The Mind Robber

"The Mind Robber" is a story from the tenure of the wonderfully fantastic 2nd Doctor.  His companions in the story are Jamie and Zoe.

Zoe, Jamie, and the Doctor in the TARDIS

Jamie and Zoe are two of my all-time favorite Doctor Who companions.  Jamie is a Scottish Highlander from the past, while Zoe is a genius from the future.  Jamie is lovable and funny and somewhat excitable.  He went from fighting the Redcoats to travelling with the Doctor.  Zoe is brilliant, with an intellect that rivals the Doctor's at times.  She also kicks butt.  In this episode, she gets into a fight and uses Judo to beat a man twice her size.  She was downright Emma Peel-like.  

This story is sort of an oddball for Doctor Who.  It branches out into fantasy rather than the traditional sci-fi of the show.  It starts off immediately after the preceding serial, "The Dominators," ends.  The TARDIS is buried in lava, and they move the TARDIS outside of space and time to get out.  Does that make sense?  Not really.  But, they had to have a reason to get the TARDIS outside of space and time, so there it is.  The thing about this story is that it was originally supposed to be four parts instead of five.  The story before it was going to be five parts instead of four.  That was changed at the last minute, so the first part is kind of filler.  Also, they had no budget for it, so it took place entirely in the TARDIS control room and a strange, white, outside of time and space netherworld.  This was so they wouldn't have to spend money on sets.

The second part gets to the meat of the story.  The three travellers have arrived in a very strange place.  It's a land of fiction.  Jamie climbs what they think is a tree.  When he gets to the top, he looks down and sees that the trees are instead words in a book.  They run into Gulliver from Gulliver's Travels, the Minataur, a unicorn, Rapunzel, and Medusa, among others.  I really like what they did with Gulliver in the story.  He only speaks in lines from his book.  The Doctor says that because Gulliver is fictional, he can only speak the lines that were given to him.  It's very clever.  

Gulliver

The actor who played Gulliver, Bernard Horsfall, has an interesting history with Doctor Who.  This was his first appearance on the show, but he would be on three more times.  The next time was in another 2nd Doctor episode, "The War Games," in which he played a Time Lord.  This was the first time any Time Lords other than the Doctor were seen in the show.  His third role was in a 3rd Doctor episode, "Planet of the Daleks."  His final appearance was as another Time Lord in the 4th Doctor story "The Deadly Assassin."  Horsfall played four excellent parts in four strong episodes of Doctor Who.  (Okay, many Whovians think "Planet of the Daleks" isn't that great, but I like it.)  

Something very characteristic of the 2nd Doctor is demonstrated in the above screenshot.  He is always doing something with his hands.  It can be seen in the screenshot below, too.  The 2nd Doctor can be a bit fidgety.  He can also come across as not having a handle on the situation, but many of the Doctors are like that.  There is a scene in which Jamie is frozen still and his face becomes a blank slate.  The Doctor has to choose from different sets of eyes, noses, and mouths to get Jamie's face back.  He chooses wrong (he chose...poorly), so a different actor plays Jamie for a little while!

I haven't said much about the plot of this episode.  I don't want to say there isn't much of a plot, but there really isn't.  They need to get back to regular time, the Doctor wants to find out what's driving this land of fiction, and that's pretty much it.  The fun of this episode is the interaction with the fictional characters.  

I like "The Mind Robber."  It's unusual.  I'm an avid reader, so the idea of fictional characters coming to life is intriguing to me.  I'd like to meet some fictional characters myself.  

Soft and chewy chocolate chip cookies

I made chocolate chip cookies tonight.  The recipe came from a holiday cookie magazine Martha Stewart published in 2005.  They're called soft and chewy chocolate chip cookies, and they live up to their name.

They are quick.  They are easy.  They are yummy.  I used a cookie scoop to scoop the dough onto the cookie sheets.  It helps make them all the same size, and it's easier.  I also put the bowl of dough into the fridge between scooping.  This raw cookie dough is good.  I may have eaten too much of it.  Nope, I definitely ate too much of it.  Delicious.  I made these cookies for some friends of mine.  I hope they like them.

Milk Chocolate Frosted Layer Cake

Yesterday I made the most complicated cake I've ever baked.  Looking at the finished cake, it doesn't look like it should be complicated.  The recipe for milk chocolate frosted layer cake came from an issue Food & Wine published in February of 2009.  It's one of a ton of recipes that I've torn out of magazines and put away for later.  It only took me four years to get to it!

It's a two-layer cake, made with cake flour instead of all-purpose flour.  Why complicated?  You whisk the dry ingredients together and set aside.  You melt the butter into the milk.  Then you separate eggs and mix the butter/milk mixture, egg yolks, and half of the sugar.  The dry ingredients get added.  That sits while you beat the egg whites until they get to a certain consistency.  Then you gradually add the rest of the sugar and beat until the egg whites are stiff and glossy.  Finally, you fold those egg whites into the chocolate mixture and divide the batter between two cake pans.  None of these steps are hard, but it isn't exactly dump and stir.  It isn't even cream the butter and sugar and add the dry ingredients.  I had to check the recipe a lot while making this.  A handy tip- if the recipe says to butter and flour the cake pans, and the cake is a chocolate cake, use cocoa powder instead.  You won't have a bunch of white powder all over your dark cake.  The cocoa blends right in.

cocoa instead of flour

Granted, that's Valrhona cocoa powder, so I didn't want to waste it, but it doesn't take much to coat the pans after they've been buttered.  If I had to guess, I used maybe a tablespoon's worth for two pans.  Okay, how did the cake taste?  Not good.  The icing was overwhelming.  I could hardly taste the cake itself.

The layers were surprisingly thin.  This whole cake was about the thickness of the one-layer pumpkin cake I make.  I don't have much more to say about it other than I won't be making it again.  I will say that this failure doesn't mean I won't keep trying new recipes.  I like trying new things.  If you don't try new things, you'll never know if you're missing out on something great.

Doctor Who: Destiny of the Daleks

"Destiny of the Daleks" is a Doctor Who classic.  It's a fourth Doctor story with Romana and featuring the Daleks.  There are many, many shots of them wandering around quarries (a typical classic Who location for representing other planets).  It even has Davros, creator of the Daleks.

Look behind you!

The story begins with a scene that has caused Whovians some consternation over the years.  The Doctor's traveling companion, Romana, is a Time Lord.  She decides to regenerate and tries on several different bodies before settling on a copy of someone they met in the previous episode.  How can this be?  That's not what happens when Time Lords regenerate!  Eh, this doesn't bother me.  Doctor Who is filled with continuity problems, as this episode demonstrates beautifully.  There is some precedent for being able to choose a regenerating Time Lord's new body.  In the episode "The War Games," the Time Lords force the second Doctor to regenerate before exiling him to Earth.  The second Doctor gets a choice about what he will look like.  When he can't decide, the Time Lords decide for him.

the Doctor, Romana, and K-9 in the TARDIS

After Romana chooses her body, she and the Doctor leave the TARDIS to explore the unidentified planet on which they've landed.  At the end of the previous episode, the Doctor fitted a randomizer to the controls of the TARDIS so that they wouldn't know where they were going.  This was to prevent the Black Guardian from hunting them down because they had thwarted him in the season-long story arc that just ended.  I'll go into detail about that when I blog about the Key to Time season.  All they know about this planet is that it is highly radioactive, so they have to take radiation pills.  Or do they?  The Doctor has a timer that beeps every so often, alerting them that it is time to take the pills.  This plot line lasts about twenty minutes into the episode, and then the pills never appear again.  Oops!

The Doctor and Romana observe a spaceship landing and watch some exhausted looking humans bury someone.  They end up separated when there is an earthquake and debris falls on the Doctor, pinning him to the ground.  Romana heads back to the TARDIS for K-9.  They left him on board because the Doctor had been fiddling around with his circuitry and sort of broke him.  

What's that he's reading?

The Doctor passes the time with some interesting reading- a book by Oolon Coluphid.  Oolon Coluphid is mentioned in Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, although his name is spelled differently here.  Douglas Adams was the script editor of Doctor Who at this point in its run.  The Doctor is rescued by the Movellans.  

Movellans

It was the Movellans who the Doctor and Romana saw landing earlier.  The Doctor ends up getting some interesting information from them.  They are on Skaro, homeworld of the Daleks, and the Daleks have been using human workers to mine for something deep beneath the old Kaled city.  Meanwhile, Romana goes back to where she left the Doctor and gets captured by the Daleks.  What are the Daleks looking for, and why does there seem to be more to the Movellans than they let on?

inside the Movellan ship

Continuity mistakes jump out right here.  First, when the Daleks question Romana, she claims not to know anything about the Daleks, which their machine confirms as true.  Not only is there no way a Time Lord doesn't know about the Daleks, but later on in the episode, she is full of information about them.  I'm just going to think she fooled their machine and not think that someone didn't think this part through.  The second mistake is espcially nit-picky, but what are Whovians, if not nit-picky?  The Daleks are searching under the Kaled city for Davros.  Except, when the Kaled city was destroyed in "Genesis of the Daleks," that's not where Davros was.  These aren't biggies.  The biggie is when the Doctor refers to the Daleks as robots and talks about how Kaled mutants used to be inside them.  Kaled mutants are still inside them.  Daleks aren't robots.

Daleks

Nit-picking over!  I love this episode, if that wasn't obvious by my tearing it apart.  The Doctor finds Davros first but has to hand him over to the Daleks so he can escape.  Why do the Daleks need Davros now after they left him for dead centuries ago?  That has to do with the Movellans' secret.  The Movellans are robots.  The Daleks and the Movellans have been at an impasse in their war because each side is perfectly logical.  The Daleks think that Davros' illogical mind will help them break the stalemate and win the war.  The Doctor isn't about to let either side have an advantage over the other, but I'm not going to spoil how it all turns out.

finding Davros

This was the first story broadcast with Lalla Ward playing Romana.  Fans refer to her as Romana II because someone else played Romana during the previous season.  Romana II is my favorite companion.  She is smart and funny and a Time Lord.  She is presented as the Doctor's equal.  Doctor Who's main weakness, for me, is that throughout the show's history, many of the female companions have been, well, weak.  They scream too much or are kind of dumb.  The best female companions end up being the ones who buck this trend- Leela, Zoe, Sarah Jane Smith, Romana I and II, among a few others.  

Time Lords play Rock, Paper, Scissors, too.

Romana is a younger Time Lord than the Doctor, but she holds her own.  There are times when she seems to know more than he does.  The Doctor and Romana II have a great relationship.  It reflects their deep friendship and mutual respect, but it isn't so serious that they don't tease each other and goof off together, too.  Romana is like a female version of the Doctor, and I love her for it.  

Longwood Gardens in May

I went to Longwood Gardens a few weeks ago.  I love Longwood Gardens; I used to go more often when I lived closer.  It's a great place to visit any time of year.  

I never went while the Garden Walk was blooming with tulips, though.  That occurs during only a few weeks every year in the spring.  It was amazing.  Thousands upon thousands of tulips in many different colors were in bloom.  

I happened to like these pale pinks ones.  (I like pale pink roses, too.)  White daffodils are mixed in with the tulips here.  

I think the pale pink tulips come in second to these beautiful white ones, though.  (Okay, so I like white roses, too.)  

There were quite a few yellow tulips...

...in several different varieties.  

I had never seen tulips quite like these.  

There were traditional red tulips, too.  

These flowers are also tulips.  

Enough tulip photos.  Here's an arbor.  That's wisteria to the right.  

This goose was wandering a path near one of the lakes.  He let me get close enough to pet him, but I thought better of it.  

Longwood Gardens is on over 1,000 acres.  I was there for hours, walking around the grounds and the large conservatory building.  But this time, I was there for the tulips.  I was not disappointed.