Apple-pie...just this once

Hmm, after a long hiatus in the pie-baking field, have I recently picked up this old habit of mine again  - with family members volunteering to test. Today, while watching Verdi's Macbeth, I prepared the dough and the Bramley apples (sitting on the sofa made it a relaxed job)  and afterwards made it in to a pie. And of course, I proudly had to picture the result:


: 

It's a quite tasty pie, though I was careless and didn't read the recipe well - too much sugar in the dough - so now the pie is sweet but chewy instead of crumbly. In Dutch it's called sand-pie, and not without reason. It should be a bit like short-bread when baking cookies from the same dough.

This is said to be a Dutch pie (though to me it looks rather international), with sour apples, flaked almonds, a hand full of raisins and cinnamon.

It seemed a razor-sharp picture as a thumbnail on my phone, but it puts me to shame here on my journal . Next time better. :)

And do not worry (in case any one would do that, which seems doubtful on a low-traffic blog, ha ha): this should be the only time I will share the results of my cooking with the world...

Karita Mattila

Picture of  "Manon Lescaut" at the Metropolitan Opera 2008, Karita Mattila and Marcello Giordani in the last act, dying in the desert.


This afternoon Sky Arts showed "Manon Lescaut" from Puccini. I loved it, beautiful opera, very dramatic and surprising story I thought.

But what I loved most was to hear Karita Mattila. Her voice is so beautiful to me, there were several moments I just had to close my eyes and feel how she deeply filled my heart (I can't help it, I'm not a fan of sentimental descriptions, but such moments are a physical experience as much as an emotional: the area around my heart told me undeniably that 'something is going on here' :) )

I'm happy to have found a soprano who's voice stands out to me: now I can look for her performances in the ocean of performances which are available. Handy! Promising!

Not to say of course that I'm not looking for other wonderful singers, the more the better. But there are so many singers and there are not so many who really touch you deeply. To know which ones do, that is...magical.