All roads lead to cemetery

In rural Oklahoma and many parts of Kansas, the smaller roads off of the small roads have an official road sign pointing the way to "CEMETERY".  In our travels the last few years, the Mister and I have joked, over and over again, "All roads lead to cemetery." [In Colorado, similar roads are similarly labeled, but "All roads lead to sanitary landfill," doesn't have quite the same profundity.]

Great Sand Dunes, June 30 2017

As with most years, we've been travelling a great deal this summer, although we covered a smaller swatch of the country.  Unlike most years, death was more on our minds, even when we weren't passing the cemetery signs.  I visited with two friends with hard-to-treat cancers, and I'm going to meet another tomorrow (the new husband of my good friend J whose "chemo crew" I am serving on).  I may very well not see them again.  I certainly hope to see them again, and life is full of uncertainties both miraculous and dreadful. Still the 44-year-old has a death doula and the 73-year-old has outlived an early prognosis already. The father of another dear friend is in palliative care and one of mom's long term friends has moved to a memory care unit for the rest of her days.  All roads lead to cemetery.  Visiting such friends it is hard not to see those roads and remember that the cemetery roads are not just for them, but for all of us.

Cheap nachos not nearly as exciting as the $1 ice cream
Or the final score Grand Junction 17, Orem 8

I was in his sights and his father was soaked

And somehow the travels were still amazing.  Dianthus learned to swim.  I baked nine pies. Dianthus and Aster added 5 new Junior Ranger badges to their collection (Great Sand Dunes, Chimney Rock, Mesa Verde, Black Canyon and Colorado National Monument).  We saw both sets of grandparents at their homes and in the mountains, the German cousins, a minor league baseball game, a professional soccer game, quite a few rodents, three waterfalls, one bear, and a lot of stars.

All roads lead to cemetery, but there is sure a lot to see on the way.

Yes, that is my mother zip-lining with no hands

Creek playing at 9,000 feet-- cold.

Pie Party

Last weekend was the annual croquet party at my parents' house.  As per recent tradition, we didn't actually play croquet.  In keeping with longer-running tradition (this is the 30th year of the party), we had great food.

The theme of the party was PIE (in all caps) and I baked a great variety: coconut cream, plum, lemon meringue, beet, chocolate chess and a gluten and dairy-free plumberry meringue.  My mother baked a key lime and other friends brought strawberry rhubarb, fruit pizza, ice cream pie, another key lime and rhubarb with a crumble top. It was my kind of event.

Plum prior to baking

For those following recipes-- the chocolate chess, an overall hit, is from the first or second recipe that pops up on google (the one that calls for 5 Tbs of cocoa).  The lemon meringue from Art of Pie is slightly easier (no double-boiler required) and slightly more lemon-y than that from Susan Purdy's As Easy as Pie (which my mother had baked a week prior to almost instantaneous devouring from my family).  The beet, which was a beet-forward rich custard with lots of beets, from Martha Stewarts early 1980s Pies and Tarts, was the best sweet beet pie I've ever had, but it wasn't great and I'm not that interested in beet pie to figure out how to make it great. The coconut cream is from the Magpie book, as were my crusts. The plum was made following the basic recipes in Art of Pie and the Plumberry included all sorts of fruits left in my parents' kitchen, cooked with some sugar and folded with microwaved marshmallows and placed in an almond flour-coconut-pecan-date crust.  Indeed, I made that one up.






As I am keeping records, I should add that I baked a rhubarb-blackberry with a twisted lattice earlier in June while we were still in Oklahoma.  For it I made the cream cheese crust from Rose Levy Beranbaum's Pie and Pastry Bible.  It was flakier than the Magpie crust while warm, but didn't necessarily taste better and the texture did not hold to the breakfast leftovers.