Okay. Up, dressed. Food from fridge. Got up halfway through and made the dough. Resting in the fridge. Just remembered that my good rolling pin needs mending. I'll have to use the short wood one with no handles.. Ugh.

Brunch

Yeah. I have to peel the pear...

Thanks for the pep talk. Sleep well...

I’d love a taste of your breakfast. Looks good.

Thanks! It's just an egg bake and I (knowingly) didn't reduce the water (should've sautéed or zapped) so it's a bit wet.. It's broccolini, spring onion and red kale, with a sour cream and milk custard and my favorite North African seasoning, with some smoked gouda on top.. The proportion is normally 6 large eggs and 1.75 c cream and milk (proportion of milk to cream is dealer's choice). vpVeg is whatever fits your 9" dish, and you like, though I'm partial to broccolini and red dandelion greens with spring shallots, or if none, scallions or spring onions. This time, there was so much kale instead of using less, I added an egg and a quarter cup of milk. I bake in Corelle so the bottom won't brown as it would in Pyrex. 325F for about 55 min. or tester comes out clean--this was bigger so took an extra 7 minutes or so. I make these things all the time. Dead easy. A great way to be able to face dark green leafies at breakfast. ;) Leaner dishes later in the day. :)

So, JL's pep talk and a break in the weather did the trick. I had ***totally*** forgotten how much work this was when I offered. So there I am stirring and stirring the sugar and finally realized here were no sugar police reventing me from melting it on medium. That worked right away. :D Was it "right"? Nope. But it worked. Good news is my recent injuries were silent. The rest of me was so tired and achy I wanted to cry, but that was the weather. I've been that way since I was a child. Pie is made. nearly out of the oven. And last weather report sounds like we may be able to take the pie to the family after all... Thanks for letting me groan about it here. ;)

Wah! In a couple minutes it went from under to over browned spot! I smelled, and it doesn't seem actually burnt, but still. And it's dark because I couldn't find the new bag of light brown sugar and had to use dark. There's no time to make another one. But I think I was clever to put parchment straps to help get it out of the case. Just enough up to get fingers under the rim.

See, this is why I don’t bake. Too stressful! Good save!

Oops. forgot the (sad) picture:

JL, I usually love baking, but I think stress and fighting the weather got to me here. I bet it tastes a lot better than it looks!

It looks fine. Put some jam in a piping bag and make a curly-cue design on the top!

So, I'm more or less ready other than party dress and rain shoes. It's bright and sunny here. The Christmas house, however, will have significant rain this evening with flood... Just talked to the one who’s with our ride. The flood warnings et al. have convinced them that going out is foolish. I concur. It's just the kind of thing where caution is often not borne out... The pie will likely be cut in pieces and frozen. Unless it really is burnt. The crust is dark chocolate and supposed to be black.

So, going nowhere, I cut a piece out of the burnt looking edge. As I suspected and hoped, it was just over caramelized, and actually quite delicious. The dark brown sugar threw off the flavor of the custard, however. Not bad, but too sweet and caramelly, with the caramel drizzle, and one can't taste the chocolate or pear. Not the super yummy pie that it was last time, but not ruined. There's egg bake behind it on the plate.

'It's just the kind of thing where caution is often not borne out'

I know that feeling well and have decided to live by the axiom 'better safe than sorry'

We were able to have a gathering last night and friends in Arizona and my daughter out of state joined on a video call and it was a very fun thing to do, funner than I expected.

I saw a picture of the flooded roads on the guardian , makes sense to stay out of that situation, take care!

Your pie looks lovely, for me slightly dark area adds an enjoyable note of bitterness, I'm not much of a baker but I have a cookbook called 'bitter' by Jennifer McLagan and it's been interesting for me to explore that flavor with caramel desserts and savory dishes alike.

And like me as a kid on a snow day, yay , I can go back to bed !

They're posting some flooding in the LA area & show a house partially underwater. I hope that's NOT your destination. Your pie does NOT need more water. ☔It looks delicious! Quiche like..?

I stopped checking the news, but it's a huge area. A squall blew through here and put me staight to sleep in my chair. The Christmas dinner house is in the foothills, and while it's unlikely to flood there, there's plenty of opportunity between. Sigh.

Only quichelike in the way most pumpkin pies are, with a custard filling. There are roasted pumpkin chunks in the bottom with milk chocolate chips sprinkled in between, pear chunks on to (some floated and you can see pear sneaking through) and a drizzle of spiced caramel sauce, then a traditional pumpkin custard filling it all.

I do have an excellent pie box. My proper pie carrier only fits 9", box I have a couple of these fridge boxes which fit a 10" pie but barely, which is why I did the parchment lifters. I should test out how they worked. I'm hoping it makes it easy just to get fingers under the rim. I wouldn't trust them to actually lift and carry. They're too slick and floppy. I got the idea from silicone loaf lifters, but those are too thick, and the straps are heavy enough to mar the pie surface. The lid doesn't show in the whole pie picture, but it is attached.

The egg bake pictured and discussed up topic and on the plate behind the pumpkin pie slice, is essentially crustless quiche, though a little eggier than classic quiche.