Too much baking

I know it's the end of a long day when Loki wants to play but I don't have any energy so I end up lying on the floor and swinging a toy on a string back and forth for him. That was today.

This morning, I finished cleaning my apartment (which I began yesterday), then met a friend for brunch. I swung by the grocery store, then took a stroll in the nice weather to get some ice cream, sit on a bench and read. Ultimately, I walked a little farther to a used music store that I had been wanting to check out and bought a little Sinatra and AC/DC.

I came home to do laundry and some serious baking. I'm in a Congressional Cook-off for work next week. Each person draws a state name and then has to make a food from that state or related to a Congressman from that state. I ended up with Pennsylvania. After some research and help from friends, I decided shoo-fly pie (a Pennsylvania Dutch recipe) might be a good option. (It beat scrapple, at least.)

But I've never made this pie, or even tasted it. So I wanted to do a test run. Today was that test run. It appears to be edible, but I haven't cut into it yet. I'm bringing it to work tomorrow to run it past my test subjects (co-workers) and see what changes I should make before next week — or whether I should look for an entirely new food.

On top of that, I decided to make homemade pasta again. I used the same pasta recipe (except cut it into fettucine or linguine strands instead of bowties) but also made an alfredo sauce to go with it. I would post the recipe except I'm too tired, and it wasn't the best anyway.

After all that, I had spent the majority of three to five hours in the kitchen. And now it hurts to stand. Also, this was one night where a larger kitchen would have been useful. Dishes from multiple recipes were strewn about, and I kept having to move things to make space for something new. (When I'm rolling out pasta — or piecrust — that takes up the larger side of my counter, leaving a space the width of the toaster oven for all my other counter needs.)