Puffed Apple Pancake (Page 649)

• Date: Wednesday, May 31, 2006 - 7pm
• Location: Hartsville, SC
• Kitchen: My Parents' House
• Fellow Chef: My Mom
• Dining Companion: My Dad
• Recipe Rating: B+

My mom has been eyeing this recipe since she got The Book, so she wanted to make it together. It was quite good. The pancake came out nice and custardy. The cooked apples had a lot of flavor and were perfectly tender. I would have prefered if the custard-like base had a bit more flavor to it. It was slightly bland. The pancake was still very good though. We ate it with sausage for dinner, and it made a nice meal. I was skeptical about eating pancake for dinner, but it wasn't too sweet, so it worked out well. It would also be great, of course, as a breakfast or brunch dish.

I made it safely back to Boston this evening. When I got off the plane it was 54 degrees and raining. I was dressed for 95 degrees and sunshine so I had to do a quick change of clothes at the airport before venturing out!

While waiting for my flight in Charlotte, I finished reading "The Time Traveler's Wife," in the terminal. I cried my way through the last 40 pages of the book. Books don't usually make me cry. Sad movies do sometimes, but it's a very rare book that I react to so strongly. I was too involved in the book to get up and get a tissue, so there were tears running down my face and I was sniffling. I'm sure people though I was crazy! Crying in front of complete strangers is a little embarassing of course, but it's also interesting to see how people react. I could tell that people weren't sure if I was upset about my book, or upset about something else. In the south, people are much more likely to try to help a complete stranger than they are in Boston, and I could see that a couple of women were trying to figure out if they should ask me if I needed anything. Everyone just let me be though, and when I finished my book I went to the bathroom and dried my eyes before my flight.