Ugly pie, ugly day

Today is a lousy day. My whole body aches, has ached since yesterday afternoon, probably a side effect from the tetanus-diphtheria-pertussis vaccine I had to get for Lesley. My stomach is all messed up and I'm afraid to eat anything for fear of setting it off. And every little thing seems to just be going wrong. The way things are going I'm going to feel too lousy to go to ballet today, which would really be the icing on the goddamn cake.

I made an ugly pie yesterday. To use up more of the homemade feta, I made a bowl of spanikopita filling out of cheese, spinach, onions, and nutmeg and spread it out in a pie plate. Then I laid a probably improperly treated piece of puff pastry over it. I tried to watch the Good Eats on puff pastry to figure out how I should handle it, but by that point I was feeling so out of it I couldn't really focus. I just kind of threw it together in hopes of getting it done. All I could manage was to try to smooth the seams together, dock the top a little, and lay it over the filling. I didn't even bother to trim it. Tasted okay, I guess, probably a little more gooey inside than I wanted, but it looked particularly ugly.

On another pie-related note, the other day on a whim I bought a pie bird. They're supposed to help prevent the problem of when your top pie crust sets before the filling inside completely cooks down, leaving you with a big empty dome. I guess the bird is supposed to support the filling up close to the top. It also vents steam through the hole in its little beak. Alton Brown endorses the use of them. Cute little thing, don't know if I'll actually use it.