The Day of Many Pies

  As anybody who knows me is aware, I LOVE to cook. On my recent birthday, I was given a mini pie maker, and today was the first chance I had to use it. Let me tell you, the results were pretty spectacular!
  Facing many choices, I decided to make three different kinds of pie. Chicken Pot Pie, Apple Pie, and Cherry Pie. I didn't have any particular recipe for the chix pies, so I just made it up:

  I started with some regular chicken breasts...

  Cooked 'em up in a skillet with some spices...

  Chopped up and cooked some carrots, onion, and potatoes...

  Mixed in some condensed Cream of Chicken soup and a little milk...

  Added some peas...

  Mixed up some dough and cut out my crusts...

  Put my crusts in the piemaker and filled 'em...

  Slapped the top crusts on 'em and cooked 'em.

  The result! They came out perfectly and tasted amazing. Turns out I didn't really need a recipe after all. The crusts cooked a golden brown and were light and flakey. You would swear they were from a restaurant. So, then I moved on to the dessert pies...

  The cherry filling was straight out of a can (cheater!) so it didn't require prep, but the apple filling I made from my apple pie recipe. Usually, it just goes into the pie raw, of course, so I had to assemble the ingredients and then reduce them in a saucepan. Easy breezy.

  The apple pies came out beautifully, but as you can see, the cherries didn't fare so well. I made lattice tops for them, but I overfilled them, so the filling burbled up and singed. They were ugly, but they were delicious. For the first time in my life, I was able to say that I ate four pies for dinner.

  Can't wait for more culinary adventures with this new kitchen gadget!

Getting older ain't no drag

  As is usually the case around birthdays, people tend to ruminate about their advancing years. Unless, of course, you're ten and every year takes an eternity to go by. No, I'm talking about us folks that are in the "Good Lord, it's already 2012? What happened to 2011?" bracket.
  That wonderful image above is from a movie I did in 1996. What made me think of it was a trip to the local multiplex to see "Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol." (By the way, if you haven't seen it, go see it. It's the most entertaining action movie I've seen in ages. Even if you don't care for Tom Cruise and his insanity, do yourself a favor and go see it. But, I digress.)
  Seeing the film made me think about seeing the first Mission: Impossible movie way back in- you guessed it- 1996. It was an amazing summer; one of my favorites in fact. My friends and I were busy all summer filming "The Price of Truth VI: Final Mission," but we squeezed in a lot of movie viewings when we could. Mission: Impossible was one of them. It was a great time, and helped to keep us all in the action-movie mindset during filming. It made us push our action sequences further, including the above, which culminated with me being dragged down a gravel road for several weeks to get all the shots we needed. We had quite a variety of injuries on that film, but the result went on to become one of our favorite projects ever.
  So, thinking about that on my way to see this new movie, I realized it had been sixteen years. SIXTEEN YEARS, in case you didn't hear me in the back. That's insane! Quite a lot has happened in those sixteen years. Quite a lot.
  Then there was my birthday on the fourteenth of this month. The age/time thought train continued to steam ahead in my mind. I was gifted a fantastic new watch this year, and retired my old watch to the sock drawer. That watch itself had been a birthday gift exactly five years prior. Had it really been five years? I thought about all that had happened in THOSE years, and everywhere I had been with that watch strapped around my wrist.

  Time really does fly.

  But you know, it's nothing to be down about. It's an exciting time. Goals I have worked for all my life are within my grasp now. It's been a struggle out here so far, I can't lie- but things are constantly improving. New opportunities, networking, new projects. It's what's AHEAD that's exciting; not what's dragging along behind you like some battered action hero clinging to the bumper of a Chevy Suburban.
  Time to make some new memories.