The best laid plans...

Before I start I would like to thank the home rental gods for providing me with a home with a gas stove. I woke up this morning (after waking up at the normal time, hitting the snooze, and going back to sleep) to find that the power was out and it was much later than I expected. Cool, except that my coffee maker needs electricity, and therefore I need electricity. But I rummaged out the French press, lit a burner on the stove, and made coffee anyway. Also, I'm glad I remembered to grind beans the night before. That does need electricity. I should keep an emergency stash of ground beans somewhere...

And then here we go. I am not a great cook. I'm not a terrible cook, but since I am a vegetarian and try to stick to Michael Pollan's rules ("Eat food, not too much, mostly plants") and experiment with raw diets, I don't have a huge repertoire. BUT I do own a tart pan (for reasons I won't discuss here) and so when the opportunity to produce a baked good of the tart variety arises, I often volunteer.

So, my friend is rallying some folks to try to raise money for Haiti the old fashioned way - with a rum-focused bake sale, Haitian single-drip coffee, and whatever we can get away with making in the bike-powered blender. Naturally, I volunteered to bake a tart.

Searching epicurious for baked deserts with rum, I found this, which looked relatively simple. And it is. Two problems: the "1/2 cups graham cracker crumbs" should read "1 1/2 cups." I know this now. Now that the bottom of my oven is covered in burned butter, my stove hood has been venting for 30 minutes, and both house doors are wide open (in January). Second problem is that it turns out (I should read these things more carefully before I start to make them) that the filling is just bananas mixed with apricot jam. JAM. Is that lame, or is it just me?

But it turned out at least food-looking, and my vision is to cut it up then serve single slivers topped with the whipped cream. And nutmeg. Or maybe I'll add nutmeg now...