A couple of pies and talk of tats

There is a bakery near on the East Side of Providence that attracted the attention of one of our people who lives nearby.  It is the Wayland Bakery on Wayland Avenue.  Our colleague decided to run some of the products by the cake hour group and had previously brought in a cherry pie.  This time around it was a replay of the pie theme and an apple pie and a strawberry rhubarb pie were served up.   

This got our colleague's attention.

Two kinds of pie!

 These are certainly good looking pies. The differing tops are a nice touch. For the apple it was the standard crust layer with the opening for the steam to get through. The strawberry rhubarb had the hatched type top finish. Both were done to a nice golden brown making the pies look most appealing.

Looks like an apple pie

A crust just like Grandma used to make!

Both pies were easy to cut into and held together well as slices. This is not always the case!  A lot of pies fall apart once you cut them.  You can trust us on that as we've had lots of pies. This apple pie had a moist crust that was not too sweet. The apple filling was likewise not too sweet with a good amount of cinnamon. The apple were not overly cooked and thus still somewhat crisp. This is preferable to apple mush filling where the apples are cooked to death. All in all it was a good pie.

Golden brown and shiny like it should be.

Crisp apples were the filling

Each piece held up nicely after cutting.

Did not take long before this was all that was left!

However if it is mush that you wanted the strawberry rhubarb was the better choice.  It is possible that the filling was premixed and precooked so that it became something like a compote. You really couldn't pick out a strawberry or a piece of rhubarb. This may be the way you need to go to successfully marry the two flavors together. The filling for this pie was definitely a filling and not just a bunch of baked fruit pieces.  That is not at all to say that it was bad. On the contrary it tasted very good and was like the apple pie not overly sweetened. We have a couple of aficionados of this type of pie and they were very pleased.  Thus we might conclude that the Wayland Bakery is a good choice if you are in need of pies. Remember this at Thanksgiving!

Another good looking crust!

Strawberry rhubarb puree as the filling.

Our conversation today dealt with the issues of piercing and tattooing.  There were not a lot of fans of either procedure.  A few of the particular peeves were pierced noses being reminiscent of hogs, pierced lips and tongues, and too many ear piercings.  What really creeped us out were the people who get their earlobes pierced and then have these massive rings inserted sometimes large enough to get a coke can through. Given this particular dislike you can imagine how thrilled we get when someone with those indiscretions for ears serves you in some capacity like the recent sales clerk in New Hampshire.  Of course we shouldn't be too judgmental as it turns out there are new hearing aids that are designed to be worn this way.

This dude is more than over the top!

A funky hearing aid for sure!

Tattoos were also something that did not elicit many positive comments.  Years ago they were a source of hepatitis B infections and some still remember that.  Even though health standards have gotten better you still don't know in whom that needle was stuck before it entered your skin.  Some people did express an interest is getting a tat but it was pointed out that if you do so you can largely say goodbye to working in the hospitality industry with the exception of funky restaurants and Starbucks. There aren't too many luxury hotels that will hire you with a visible tattoo. Bottom line is they can limit you so think twice before you get one.  Good advice for high school students.

This seemed like a good idea when I was younger!

One of our interns told us about how one of his really old teachers would discourage people from getting tattoos. She would ask the question who is interested in getting a tattoo. If she got a response she would just raiser her two arms so that they were parallel to the ground and then shake them to show the movement of arm flab that develops later in life. Makes you think twice!