Hindu Girl’s Favorite Apple Pie
Posted by: Christine on: 21 January 2010
host mom, dyana & tour guide at Forest Institute in Dehradun
Dyana, the beautiful and very smart Indian woman who lived with me 2006-2007 while she was at Harvard School of Education and who I traveled with on a goodwill mission in India adored this pie. So I made it for her today; she is arriving in Boston after a long flight from Delhi which had many mishaps and delays.
As you know from past post, Dyana loves sweets. The sweet in this pie is supplied by the fruit and a bit of raisin, maple syrup and a dribble of cognac. It’s easy to make. As you can see from the photo, just fold the crust over into the fruit without pinching the rim.
I am famous in Cambridge for hosting international students who lose weight rather than gain weight while in the USA. And they eat a lot while losing weight. This was true with Dyana.
Preheat the oven to 350
- Prepared crust
- 4 cortland or macintosh apples
- 1/4 cup apple cider, apple juice, orange juice, or pomegranate juice (whatever juice you have but….please, never V8 or tomato juice)
- 1 1/2 T flour
- 1/3 t cinnamon
- 1T Grand marnier, cognac, whiskey, or grappa. If you don’t have or believe in liquor, add an additional T of juice or water.
- 1 T raisins
- 1 T maple syrup (optional)
- 1/4 cup water
Place the crust into 9-inch pie plate.Wash apples and slice into thin wedges. I cut right through the middle of the apple and carve out around the seeds after slicing. It’s less work & waste than coring first. Put apples in a bowl with juice, flour, cinnamon, raisins, maple syrup. Mix well.
Arrange apple slices inside the pie plate. Gently fold crust in towards the fruit. Place a loose foil “lid” over top of pie.
Bake at350 for one hour, turn down heat to 300 and bake another hour. Depending on the water content of the apples ( fresh fall apples have a lot of water, Jan-February apples have less water) you may add an additional 1/4 cup water to the pie after an hour. Check after the first hour.
I sometimes glaze the pie for gloss. Here’s how: Melt 1 t jelly and 1 t water in the microwave for 33 seconds. Brush it on the top of the pie. If you don’t have a food brush you can use the back of a teaspoon.
NEW YEAR WISHES FROM KIKI
Posted by: Christine on: 6 January 2010
I rec’d this email from Kiki, a big-hearted Indonesian student who lived with us for several years.
Kiki in Indonesia
HANDBOOK 2010
Health:
1. Drink plenty of water.
2. Eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince and dinner like a beggar.
3. Eat more foods that grow on trees and plants and eat less food that is manufactured in plants.
4. Live with the 3 E’s — Energy, Enthusiasm and Empathy
5. Make time to pray Read the rest of this entry »
Biscotti for a Hindu Girl
Posted by: Christine on: 16 December 2009
Me & Dyana in Jaipur
Years back we were blessed with a beautiful Indian homestay student, who lived with us during her year as a Ford Fellow at Harvard. Dyana and I developed a strong friendship that holds on tight to this day. In 2007, we travelled through India together, visited holy and tourist sites and drove deep into the Himalayas on an educational/humanitarian jaunt to give away writing supplies to children who didn’t have any.
Today, while I was making cookie dough for Christmas, I thought about Dyana. Being raised Hindu, Dyana anticipated celebrating Christmas for the first time–with Christians– and particularly looked forward to the sweets that were coming. My mother-in-law Betty was also coming. Dyana seriously expected I was a nervous wreck. “Do you want me to help you clean the house?” she asked. “You have to have everything perfect for the mother-in-law.”
An American mother-in-law is but a whisper compared to the powerful tsunami of an Indian mother-in-law; she blows especially hard in the household of her eldest son. Indian TV is ripe with soap operas & prime time shows featuring wicked mother-in-laws who bestow beatings, food deprivation and forced floor scrubbing on their beautiful Read the rest of this entry »
MORE ON THE AVOCADO: SECRET MEXICAN GUACAMOLE INGREDIENT
Posted by: Christine on: 19 July 2009
Dani filled me in on the secret ingredient!
Dani, a dark-haired black eyed, dutiful beauty, came to Cambridge to study English so that she could please her large family and get into Harvard Law School. They must not have realized her English skills were so basic and that to twirl around in the halls of Harvard Law required a quickness of tongue that Dani wasn’t going to learn in two months or two years. Her personality was more suited to human rights and labor law–which her well-to-do family didn’t want her to pursue– and she was dedicated to Mexico, her home country. Dani couldn’t understand why her aunts, uncles, grandparents and cousins raved about the United States. “I don’t like it here. Read the rest of this entry »
ROBERTA: THE ITALIAN AVOCADO EATER
Posted by: Christine on: 13 July 2009
An Italian who looked like a cheerleader
Not many Italians apply for homestay. Part of the reason may be that in Italy it is unheard of–or at least very rare–to share your home with strangers. Home is for family; immediate family, not cousins, aunts, uncles. So it works both ways: odd to stay in someone else’s house. When our daughter went abroad for her junior year to the University of Padova, the university there found the international students homestay rooms. These were not typical Italian family homes, but university professor homes, or single woman’s homes. People either looking for company and money, or academics from countries more accustomed to sharing living situations than Italians.
So when we get an Italian, it is most often an unusual situation. In Cesca’s case, she ended up with us because ‘there was no room in the dorm.’ The living situation worked out just fine for her and for us; in fact we remain friends to this day. One warm October er we hosted Giuseppe, a rather nervous Carabinieri from Rome who was interested in advancing his career. He worked in the stolen artifact department and played a trumpet in the Carabinieri band (more about Giuseppe in a later blog). Then there was Roberta. Roberta was young, sixteen, and her father wanted her to be in a family home while she attended a summer program at Harvard to improve her English.
Roberta stayed with us for a month. She was from Modena, a river town in north central Italy famous for balsamic vinegar, Pavarotti, and Maserati. Her English was already quite rapid and confident. Read the rest of this entry »
Our First Homestay Student Is Now Dr. Cesca & Dogs Love Her!
Posted by: Christine on: 10 June 2009
I’m talking about real dogs, not bad looking guys because her fidanzato, Gianni, is quite handsome; a graceful, well-ironed young man with blue eyes, big smile and great sense of humor. I am happy “my first homestay daughter” Cesca found a man to love and a man to love her.
Now back to the story about dogs: One evening Matt, Cesca, her friend Elena and I were walking around the extraordinarily beautiful seaside town of Trani. Trani is all beige-ish white, sun-bleached cobblestone, turquoise and sky blue with bits of green along walkways and flowers in window boxes. In the 11th century, Trani was a major launching position on the Adriatic for the Crusades.
Trani is crowded with Italian tourists in the summer: hundreds of expensive sailboats moored in the gently sloshing harbor; Italian men wearing perfumed ascots, perfectly pedicured blonde women, and kids in crocs out for an evening passesgiata. Gelati American music. Italian chatter. Vespa horns. Strings of lights. Wafts of espresso, garlic, and fish both fried and grilled.
We were there in April, not the tourist season, and we were the only Americans there. The evening was chilly enough for a thick sweater. The four of us walked along an ancient cobbled strada past the crescent harbor out to a promontory to have a look at the Cathedral of Saint Nicholas. Everybody in this part of Italy loves St. Nicholas. His Trani cathedral lies on a raised open site near the sea and is built in the characteristic white local limestone. It has also a large crypt and a lofty tower. The Romanesque portal are beautifully ornamented in the Arab style.
The sun was about to set, accenting the sturdy building’s clean Read the rest of this entry »
We’re in Italy Visiting Cesca
Posted by: Christine on: 11 April 2009
Read Apple& Cinnamon Series Parts 1-14 to find out more about her.
our first homestay daughter
- Lee Davis: Christine, I don't know if you'll remember me, (Debi) Lee Davis (yes, I'm in the yearbook). I was also in your art class (as a person with no artis
- Christine: I still get emails from her!
- Susan May Tell: Sounds so good. Wondering if I should open the avocado I have on my counter ....... BTW - what happened to Roberta?
your homestay experience?