Category Archives: Life

Marshmallow Mermaid and other delicious adventures in Waitress pie making

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Some friends and I decided to have a Waitress night where we made some of the pies Jenna creates in the movie Waitress and then ate them while we watched the movie.

Waitress is a movie starring Keri Russell about a woman who works at a pie diner (It also features Nathan Fillion, Jeremy Sisto, and Adrienne Shelly). Jenna (Keri Russell) has a terrible husband and a wonderful gift for making pies. She escapes her world by creating pies in her head. It’s full of memorable characters, some great quotes (both funny and sweet), and mouth watering pies.

We found someone who had already collected copy cat pie recipes for the movie (check it out here) so all we had to do was gather ingredients and start baking. We decided to each make a different pie; Emily made I don’t want Earl’s baby pie, Courtney made the Lonely Chicago Pie and I made the Marshmallow Mermaid Pie.

You know dinner is going to be excellent when your cart looks like this, haha.

You know your night is going to be excellent when your grocery cart looks like this, lol.

Now we knew we wouldn’t want to eat all three pies in one night and we wanted it to be easy to share so Courtney and I made our pies in tiny little chicken pot pie tins. One regular pie recipe made three mini pies. I was a little nervous because although I love cooking and baking I haven’t made very many pies. But all the pies we tried ended up coming out great, even though we were pie novices.

Me putting on my best Betty Crocker pose!

Me putting on my best Betty Crocker pose, bahaha. It’s not Martha level unless you pull out the kitchen aid and the cardigan set ;)

I made the Marshmallow Mermaid pie. It was very delicious, but very sweet! It was good we made it in mini size. It’s not too crazy. Basically you make a graham cracker crust, add a marshmallow filling, offset some of the sweetness with unsweetened chocolate shavings, and top it all off with colorful mini marshmallows. Here’s the recipe I used:

9 graham crackers
1/2 C. sweetened, flaked coconut, toasted
5 Tbs. butter or margarine, melted
34 lg. marshmallows (8 oz.)
1/2 C. whole milk
1 1/2 C. heavy or whipping cream
1 oz. unsweetened chocolate, grated

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Combine coconut and graham crackers in food processor until coarse crumbs form. Combine crumbs and butter with fork. Press to bottom and side of 9-inch pie plate. Bake 10 minutes and cool on wire rack. Heat marshmallows and milk in 3-qt. saucepan over low heat until smooth, stirring constantly. Remove saucepan from heat. Cool completely (30 minutes.) In large bowl with mixer at medium speed, beat cream until stiff peaks form. Fold marshmallow mixture into whipped cream with grated chocolate. Spoon filling into cooled crust. Refrigerate pie at least 3 hours or overnight. Top with mini marshmallows, maraschino cherries and rainbow sprinkles.

A tiny marshmallow mermaid pie.

A tiny marshmallow mermaid pie!

The other pies were amazing too. The Lonely Chicago was a delicious mix of chocolate and berries. I Don’t Want Earl’s Baby/ Bad Baby pie was a savory quiche with ham and brie (Emily gave tips for those recipes in her blog, MoviesnMayhem). A round two is definitely in order. This was so fun and there are many more pies to make.

Currently: Enjoying see my apartment decked out for Christmas and watching Jane by Design

P.S. All the pie recipes in this post came from here and here.

Halloween

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Lessons I learned from Halloween this year:

Emily as Red Riding Hood and Me as Lucille Ball in I Love Lucy

Emily as Red Riding Hood and Me as Lucy (Lucille Ball) My hair looks a little tousled here, but it was actually in a cute retro pin up roll. Woohoo Youtube hair tutorials!

My friend Jenni also celebrated Halloween with me. I just loved her Day of the Dead makeup! So fun.

Beware Super-Bright Hair Spray Dye:

For the first part of Halloween I was Lucy (of I Love Lucy). This was a fun, fairly simple costume. I had the dress, I did my hair in a little retro style, and sprayed it red.The only thing is once it was sprayed red it wanted to stay red. I did this costume on Saturday night and their is still dye I’m trying to get off my scalp! Not only that it got on towels, clothes, bathtub, my hands… everywhere really. Thankfully it’s mostly gone, but I’ll be ready for it be completely out of my life, haha. It was worst after the first wash (despite vigorous scrubbing); thankfully I have a lot of hair so I could style around the red parts for work and church.

Zombies are Waaaay Too Friendly:

Ben was the least scared of all of us. He led the way through the whole thing and nothing caught him by surprise. I was a little more… scare-able… haha.

I went to my first haunted house and visited Nightmare on 13th. It was a lot of fun. The zombies liked to breathe right down your neck. Yikes! The haunted house had three themes: haunted circus, zombie apocalypse, and something about beasts. I think the zombie apocalypse decoration were my favorite/most creepy. Although the circus part did have this rotating tunnel that was pretty fun.

Hitchcock is Boss for a Reason:

I filled my quota of scary movies this Halloween season, but the Hitchcock ones were my favorite. I watched The Birds, Dial M for Murder, Rear Window, and Psycho. All great, but my favorite was probably Rear Window.

The Bigger the Hair the Better the Reaction:

Jenni, me, and Courtney. We want to a party  at the U, and it turned out to be a lot of fun. The DJ played thriller remixes every hours; plus massive costume parties are just great people watching.

For one of my costumes I did a posh 60s socialite look. I got a pink dress (at Decades, one of my fav Salt Lake places), long white gloves, and did my hair in a beehive updo. The hair was half the fun (I’d wish I’d taken a close up! The back has a little twist and a roll at the base) . I’d never done this style so I just looked up a YouTube tutorial and went at it. If you’re interested in trying it yourself I suggest this video.

For my work costume I took the beehive to a higher level and added a tiny tiara for emphasis.That day I was a tacky beauty queen with a bunch of other girls at the office. This was a lot of fun! I did it with all the girls at work. We all wore sashes that played on words starting with Miss. Miss Educated, Miss Behaves, Miss Ing, Miss Spelled, etc. I was Miss Taken.

Beauty queens gone wrong! haha You can’t see it here but I also had some black platform heels (courtesy of Natalie’s closet), a candy necklace on my wrist, and long white gloves, and tons of plastic rings.

I even kept the beehive after I ditched the costume Halloween night and even wore it to dinner at the Lamb’s Grill (Utah’s oldest continually operating restaurant).

The only disappointment of Halloween was the lack of trick or treaters at my door. Not a single one! Granted I wasn’t home all night, but I even left a bowl out for awhile and nobody really touched that. I think the front of our apartment is uninviting or something, haha. Hope everyone had a great Halloween!

Currently: Enjoying hanging around the apartment and eating Mac n’ Cheese.

Let’s Vote

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Hey friends, early voting is open and I thought I’d share a couple helpful links I found (I’m a nerd, haha).

rockthevote

If you’re a Utah voter…

Here is where you can find your Voter Information Guide:http://vote.utah.gov/elections/location/ 

You find your specific voting information by looking up your voting precinct (Don’t worry if you don’t know this offhand you can search for it by using your address and name that’s on file with voter registration). This website will also tell you where you go to vote on election day.

Your voter information guide includes a sample ballot, as well as candidate profiles, and other voting resources. The candidate profiles include links to their websites and a short paragraph about the candidate (I think this is something the candidate submits to the county, but I’m not sure).The sample ballot also includes information on proposition and amendments you’ll be asked to vote on. So if you’re like me and don’t recall anyone every talking to you about county proposition one, you can look it up and go prepared to the polls.

Here is where you can find your information on early voting: http://vote.utah.gov/early-voting/location/ There are a lot of places you can go if you want to beat the lines on election day.

Here is your guide to what you’ll need to vote aka identification requirements: http://vote.utah.gov/elections/requirements/

If you’re voting outside of Utah…

Try this, it’s a map that links to each state’s voter election website:

http://www.eac.gov/voter_resources/contact_your_state.aspx

Or if you prefer Rock the Vote’s map:

http://www.rockthevote.com/rtv_voter_registration.html?source=rtv.com-homegraphicmiddle

Well that’s it. Happy Voting!

Currently: Trying to progress in some goals and realizing I have some catching up to do!