Work, Pie, and Christmas

My absence of late is due in part to some (exciting) changes at work, but also mostly due to my laziness. Christmas is SWIFTLY approaching, and I feel like I was just writing about October flying by. I have put off almost all of my Christmas shopping for next week since we will be off of work. This means that I've been basically ignoring the oncoming holiday except for a few twinkly lights in our window and a mini tree from Trader Joe's (it's small, but pretty cute).

My new position at work has been exciting, challenging, mildly stressful, and also combined with my old position (until after the winter break). This all means that I am SO excited to get into the holiday spirit next week and start baking (more), buying gifts, making gifts, wrapping gifts, and oh yeah - sleeping in.

I did however, bake a bit over the weekend. As I type I'm eating some leftover (heart shaped) blueberry pie with a glass of wine. This particular blueberry pie is SUGAR FREE, but don't cringe - it still tastes like pie. Damn good pie. Zack has been avoiding sugar as of late, which has been a good excuse for me to get back into adventurous baking and cooking. These blueberry pies were made with a tasty sour cream/butter crust from America's Test Kitchen cookbook. The filling? Super easy to make a fruit pie sugar free . . . organic frozen blueberries (bought in bulk from BJ's . . .), a tablespoon of flour, splash of orange juice, cinnamon, tablespoon of maple syrup. Yum.

Note: We aren't going to discuss the "sugar" cookies I made. Some things are better left unsaid . . . and untasted. What was apparently an ironic request I took as a challenge and the result was gross and doughy.

 The neither gross nor doughy but actually delicious pie crust

 Baked

Not quite baked

Yeah, he's pretty handsome. 

What's better than pie?