A Change in the Weather

And, a change in plans.

The weather forecast for the weekend was cloudy Friday night with a slight chance of very light rain Saturday after 11am.  Our plan was to ride Saturday morning before 11am.

Instead, we were awakened at 3:30 am by crashes of thunder following flashes of lightening that brightened our bedroom like a strobe light.  Between the thunder claps, we heard rain coming down, hard.  At 7 when we went out to feed, the rain guage measured 1 1/2 inches.  I dumped it out and headed into the barn where Brett was mixing up the morning vitamin buckets.  It was still pouring rain and Brett was concerned about the lightening which was still streaking across the sky.

I gave the girls their buckets and brought Jackson out of the pasture to put on his trail boots.  He was drenched -- the girls would not let him in the run-in shed and he wouldn't leave them.  So, he stood just outside with the rain running off his neck and back.  While I put on his boots, I noticed that he was shivering.

I went back to the barn and found his winter blanket and grabbed a towel.  I rubbed him down (felt kind of silly rubbing down a horse while standing out in the rain) and then put on his blanket.  Before going back in the house, I checked the rain guage again.  In 40 minutes we had received almost another half inch.

Needless to say, we didn't ride.

Instead, I made a brown butter apple tart to take to our friends that evening.  We were invited for dinner and I had volunteered to bring dessert.  I was going to make an apple cobbler but since I had the whole day ahead of me, I decided to make the tart -- which involved a lot of time.

After mixing the dough, it spent Friday night in the refrigerator.  I rolled it out between two sheets of plastic wrap and then it went back in the refigerator for another 30 minutes.

Next I took off one piece of plastic wrap and inverted it into my tart pan.  I took the rest of the plastic wrap off, trimmed it -- and put it back in the refrigerator for an hour.  The dough was made with a lot of butter, sticky and soft when warm.

Then I baked the crust; filled it with apples; made a custard filling of browned butter, vanilla, sugar and eggs -- and poured that on top.  It went back into the oven to bake.

After cooling for two hours, I removed the pan and we went off to dinner.  Yum!