What's Making Me Happy

// Crustless pumpkin pie. In my book, pie crusts - for filled pies, fruit pies, cream pies - are fun to make* but superfluous. (Exception: ground Oreo crust for chocolate cream pie... but I will always make an exception for Oreos). But cherry pie, lemon meringue, pumpkin - who needs the crust? Less work, less time, fewer calories, less expensive. MORE PIE.

*Did you know the secret is VODKA? 

// Learning how to whisk properly. We attended America's Test Kitchen Live last night at SA's fabulous new performing arts center. The show, hosted by my guru Chris Kimball, was a mix of behind-the-scenes footage from the TV shows, blooper reels, reader questions/comments, and audience participation taste tests and demonstrations (of gluten, sous-vide cooking, whisking). Turns out my stirring-as-whisking technique is all wrong, you've got to whisk side to side.

// Reading Lena Dunham's Not That Kind of Girl this week. Really enjoying it. A few sentences I liked so far:

At Quaker school I had been a vague irritant, the equivalent of a musical-theater kid, only I couldn't sing, just read the Barbra Streisand biography and ate prosciutto sandwiches, alone in my corner of the cafeteria, relishing solitude like a divorcee at a sidewalk cafe in Rome. 

From the chapter Fifteen Things I Learned from my Mother: Respect isn't something you command through intimidation and intellectual bullying. It's something you build through a long life of treating people how you want to be treated and focusing on your mission.

// Signing up for the Alamo 180 fitness challenge! This is the honeymoon period, the I'm-going-to-work-out- so-much-starting-on-Saturday-but-for-now-I'm-going-to-eat-these-peanut-M&Ms-for-breakfast. $249 for 6 classes (5 circuit training, 1 yoga) for 8 weeks with assessment at the initial, mid, and endpoints. I'm sure I'll have more to say about this when the program begins and my life revolves around getting to bed by 9:30 so I can be up by (gulp) 4:30 ante meridiem. (Or 5:30 when I'm not covering a clinical service).

// This face.