For years, I’ve been making apple pie with Second Thanksgiving. I make it the day before, it’s an easy recipe, it’s good. Very straightforward.

But I’m always left with apple peels, because I peel the apples. And I like apple peel, but not that much of it, so I’ve experimented a bunch of times with the leftover peels, trying to see what I could make. And it’s never been worth mentioning. I’ve tried toasting them, I’ve tried sautéing them in brown sugar, I’ve tried a lot of stuff.

This year I finally pulled it off.

Peelings Managed

Apple-peel tarts. One eaten; other four in the fridge for the morning. Surprisingly tart with softened peels. Recipe:

• Flatten leftover crust dough on parchment paper, very thin. Cut into strips and lay a couple into each tart cup.
• Get a long spiral of apple peel, and lay across bottom of cup. Add a few leftover apple pieces from the pie filling, and wind in the rest of the spiral.
• Add pieces of leftover apple, again from the pie filling. It’s important that the apple and peel mingle, I think.
• Put in oven with pie, after the initial higher-temperature 10 minutes are over. For me, this means as reducing the oven from 450F to 350F.
• After 10 minutes, move to a second oven (or toaster oven) at 300F.
• After 20 more minutes, add about 2 tablespoons apple cider. (New and critical!)
• Allow to bake for 10-15 more minutes; judge it by eye, you want the cider to boil down a bit in the oven.

The peel came out soft and tart and delicious. The apple chunks (about half of it) retained their shape and were sweet and yummy. The crust strips add a third texture and also absorb candied cider flavour.

I’m really hoping it holds up in the morning. Fingers crossed.

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I’m queueing this post for overnight, because given the weather forecast, I’ll be more surprised if we don’t lose power than if we do. So! Our website may be down because of a major storm, but if you’re a member of the Recording Academy looking for Bone Walker, the music portion of the site is on Bandcamp and will be up:

Bone Walker, by Crime and the Forces of Evil, on Bandcamp

And if you want to enter the drawing for any downloadable thing from the band website, go like this post on Facebook, which will also work even if we’re down. Or, if we’re up, you can drop a comment here.

See you on the other side!

I did not know that Beirut was also attacked, some hours earlier, with the same techniques and also by ISIL. The death toll was smaller by raw count, but much larger by population.

تضامنا مع أهل بيروت

Hey, check it out – the Free Court of Seattle books are on sale – ePub only 99¢, and print $5 off for the two novels! Pretty swank.

Also in hey news, the Facebook band page hit 200 likes! That’s awesome, so let’s celebrate with a giveaway of any download you want from the Bandcamp site, including the apparently-we’re-now-allowed-to-say-Grammy-nominated album, Bone Walker. Apparently we’re allowed to say that now!

(Being me, I will of course remind people it is the long list, not the short list that most people think about. Still, we made it past the jury, and apparently that counts. We’re nominated! Yay! (ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:・ﾟ✧ )

Anyway, We’ll do it as a drawing. Hit “Like” on this post on the Facebook band page to enter. Everybody who does that is entered.

Alternatively, since most of you aren’t reading this on Facebook, you can drop a comment right here on the official blog to enter. I know that’s an extra step but it’s a Facebook achievement, right? So they get it easier this time.

You’ve got ’till, oh, Wednesday. How’s that?

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Getting Up an Hour and a Half Early for a Phone Call That Doesn’t Happen makes Solarbird Go Something Something.

(There is supposed to be a rather substantial delivery. Actually two, because aside from Fallout 4, there’s several large boxes of materials. Okay, a couch. But that’s not supervillainy enough and it’ll come in several boxes. AND I DON’T KNOW WHEN BECAUSE THEY DIDN’T CALL.)

(Damn I’m sleepy.)

So what’s up with your day?

eta: godDAMMIT

We’re writing about the order(s) XXXXXXXXXXXXX

We wanted to let you know that your package may not arrive on time due to extreme weather conditions or an unforeseen natural event. Shipping carriers in the area of your delivery address or cities along the delivery route are reporting delivery delays because of these conditions. UPS will deliver the package as soon as possible. We are sorry about this unavoidable delay and we appreciate your patience.

The package tracking number is XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX. The items listed below are included in this package:

1. Fallout 4 – PlayStation 4

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

eta2: The “extreme weather conditions” are LIGHT FOG.

Wow, the LDS church hierarchy are going after their own kids. That’s pretty vile.

Not only are non-celebate LGBT people now going to be automatically “apostate” and called up for excommunication – there was a new announcement of policy about it, if you missed it here’s the link – but they’re requiring children of LGBT couples to denounce their parents to stay in the church.

From the article linked above:

Under the new rules, a child of a same-sex couple may join the church only after age 18 by meeting these conditions: commits “to live the teachings and doctrine of the church and specifically disavows the practice of same-gender cohabitation and marriage”; not live with a parent who is in a same-sex relationship; and receives approval from local church leaders and the church’s First Presidency — the uppermost leadership of the church.

That’s that kind of family-denouncement shit that came out of the Khmer Rouge regime, and was encouraged by Stalin. Orwell wrote about that in 1984. I’m not even exaggerating, those are the other actual examples I can think of.

Well, that, and freaky fundamentalist cults which try to isolate members from other support systems, like their families. They do that sort of thing. Not that the Mormons have any history of that.

Being queer but not mormon, this doesn’t directly affect me. I’m disappointed – no, repulsed – but I don’t take a direct hit here.

But nonetheless – how horrible.

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I feel again like I’m playing catch up, but I’m feeling like I’m actually getting a bit caught up. I’ve started nailing down timing on a special song I’m doing for Conflikt in January; I’ve mostly got past a lot of life-and-business maintenance things that built up while I was out playing a lot this summer (and then got further behind on during the Four Week Flu); I’ve been taking Poison Ivy’s advice on houseplants (also NASA‘s, given that Harvard study); I’m not where I want to be, but it’s steps.

Yesterday’s tech rehearsal for tomorrow’s show at Shoreline Community College went pretty well; that’s 4-6pm, several bands, Shoreline campus, there are a bunch of bands so we only get like 3-4 songs each. We’ve been rehearsing four. What finally happens will depend upon what it’s like at the show. Visitor parking is free after 4pm, apparently, so that’s fun.

Hydrophobic

Jeri Lynn – Leannan Sidhe’s cellist – is starting to dip her toes into effects pedals. She’s got at least one new trick she’ll be doing live at the show. Should be fun. See you there!

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I’ve had a couple of people trying to get me to enter music/songwriting contests that have entry fees. Maybe it’s just my fiction and nonfiction writing background that’s saying “these are always bullshit” – and that’s because in writing, they are always bullshit – but that’s the reaction I’m having.

Still, this is music, where everything is worse for the creator than in writing. And so what do I know, anyway?

The two contests that people are trying to get me to enter are The Akademia Music Awards and International Songwriting Competition 2015. The Akademia people want $10 for a song entry or $20 for an album entry, and the ISC people want like $35. I’d never heard of either of these before people started trying to get me to enter both of them.

Like I said, in writing? Entry fees stink of scam and bullshit. But it’s music and songwriting, so I don’t even know. I have a number of musician followers – anybody out there have a more informed opinion?

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Dotted Maple

Bigger at Flickr, as usual.

I hope everybody had a fun Halloween! The air here smells of snow – there’s none at our altitude, but it’s started falling in the mountains, and even in the passes, and it smells wonderful.

I love this time of year, I really do.

Even if it turns out that no, I haven’t fixed the Safari problem that keeps me from being able to do things like edit comments and dates and sometimes keeps me from scheduling posts. Nothing works, and when it does work, it doesn’t work for long – it just won’t stay fixed.

Moving bookmarks across browsers is such a pain in the ass. Oh well.

Looking for the Grammy Awards Long List nominee post? Thank you for listening, and for your consideration.