Adventures in Adulthood

I made my first student loan payment today!

Hooray! I am thrilled to have entered the next, new stage in my life, i.e. indentured servitude.

While my soul cried as I finalized my payment, my mind stopped all unnecessary thoughts not directly related to my future finances.

“You have to pay X amount every month? How will you survive?” it said, every syllable drawn out in agonizing, invisible pain. “This crippling debt will leave you devoid of a social life, or worse, gourmet cat food in the future.”

“????????” -me

source: IMDB

I’m irritated every time I think about it. This is no way to start my new exciting life as An Adult. It’s no way to start the holiday season. Loans have such a lack of Christmas spirit that I’m sure they were raised in Grinch colonies devoid of any joy, where the main activity on Friday nights isn’t a trip to the local ice cream shop, but to the local fire pit where they roast their hopes and dreams to a crisp.

It takes a village, after all.

And yet, here I am, click click clicking around to see what loans should be payed when so I don’t pay an extra elbow and kneecap on top of the arm and leg I’m sacrificing for my education.

I’ve thought of a few things I could do with my money* for instead (especially that huge slap-in-the-face estimated interest**):

1. Burn it in a trash can fire
2. Place as a training mat for your house training pet
3. Tissues
4. Actually give to charities and people on the street when they ask
5. Test out new paper shredders
6. Move out of the house sooner

Instead of going on weekend trips or lavishing my little princess Figgy with expensive gravy-based packets of Fancy Feast, I have to wave goodbye to my hard-earned money while it sails away without me. Probably to an exotic location like the Land of Crushed Dreams. You should visit, they have the best collection of lost souls crying in their cars on display.

All negativity aside, it’s sort of fun getting rid of these scary-huge*** statements as soon as I can. And by fun I really mean satisfying like putting a pumice stone to your feet for hours.

*A stupid social construct that is somehow necessary but also totally meaningless. I’d love to tell you about my totally unrealistic goals for the future of global finances sometimes. It involves large amounts of apple orchards and manual labor trade and would obliterate money forever. Contact me here if you want to help spread my version of a hugely dystopian future!

**wtf is this anyways?  Why would I want to give you an EXTRA few thousand dollars? In the words of Louis Van Gaal, “What is this world twisted?”

*** A scarier idea is that I’m not paying that much –relatively—to many of my friends and peers. What is this world twisted, indeed.

My Apple Pie Fun

I made the best apple pie this weekend. The best. Oh my god it was so good I wish I could send you the taste via letters.

I followed  this recipe from the How Sweet Eats blog, which has easily become one of my favorite things to check out when I have some down time.

Because I have a habit of starting kitchen projects without seeing if I have all the ingredients, I was missing a few things. Obviously it was ok because it came out SO GOOD. I thank my good sense in tastes and flavors! So unless you have a good feel for ingredient substitutes, I don’t suggest throwing in new ingredients because you will be wasting your time.

The above recipe is for about 3 pies worth of crusts, I decided that I would just make a little more than a 1/3 of the recipe. I opted out of the oatmeal topping since I didn’t have any oats (plus I wanted to try a crust topping. The oats topper is great, though. I’ve made it before and won 3rd place with it in a pie contest.)

I also didn’t have apple cider (or apple juice), nor, unfortunately, did I have bourbon. Oops.

So I needed to improvise. What I did have was unbelievable amounts of whiskey in the cabinet but I thought it would taste too smoky in lieu of bourbon or rum (which also works). Then a beam of afternoon sunlight fell upon a hidden (m and d call it “protected”) bottle of Armenian cognac. Bingo.

Instead of apple juice, I used lemon juice. Yes, lemon juice. I rationalized it by thinking it had natural sugars and was a juice. Psst: it worked perfectly.

I mixed the sugar, cognac and lemon juice and butter together and believe me when I tell you it smelled like bakeshop heaven. I followed the sugar and butter amounts from the recipe, but I eyeballed the cognac and lemon juice. I didn’t use more than a 1/2 cup of either and it turned out to be a great syrup.

I did end up needing more than the four apples I used, since mine were not as crisp as they could have been and fell into a applesauce-like consistency.  But like good mush. I wish there were more so that there would be more mush! I suggest about 5-6 apples. Or more! The world is your oyster! Remember, this is just an apple pie, don’t sweat  it.

 

An ugly picture of my beautiful pie