Pie crust cookies

This is the surplus pie crust bits from the chicken pie yesterday. An entire day in the refrigerator caused it to be cold as can be. It was also a little dried out because it was covered loosely with a plate and not completely airtight with plastic kitchen wrap. The pieces were broken into smaller pieces, then cut further into even smaller pieces, but larger than pea-size which is the target size with pie crusts, or so I keep hearing, although after saying that you will see cooks process the hard fat and flour to veritable dust, unless possibly the familiar peas are 1 millimeter diameter. 

At any rate, I added water, a bit too much as it happened, so I corrected with oats which were conveniently nearby otherwise I could have corrected with whole wheat flour or any number of other substances, beans and lentils, grains, rice, corn, and nuts that were already transformed to powder one day when the mill was out and I felt like running things through it to see what would happen, and at the time imagining making all kinds of bizarre crackers. So here we are, and what do I do? Use ordinary oats. 

The old pie crust with oats is flavor enhanced with sugar, cinnamon, and powdered ginger, then baked on high heat for 10 minutes. Turns out, they are delicious and perfect for dunking. 

This would be the equivalent of my back yard ↓ were I in a house and not a downtown apartment. It is a parking lot that services the Art Museum next door. Once a year, WestWord, Denver's alternative newspaper which happens to be just two blocks south on the street where I live, hosts a concert featuring a large number of local bands, a musical showcase they call it on their site.  They take over the whole parking lot and the length of the adjoining street is set up with tent-booths. This involves tent-booth assemblage, hundreds of hollow aluminum poles that apparently must be dropped multiple times each onto the street then dragged across paved surface. An unsightly temporary tall fence border is set up to keep out the non-paying riff-raff, also aluminum pipes, trucks are positioned in the blocked off alley that leads to our parking, beverages are sold, approximations of food vended, and all kinds of special interests get in on the act. Half the alley is blocked, as is half the driveway ramp down to our underground parking, for some inexplicable reason they take half the driveway leaving half for all our coming and going when the full driveway is only just sufficient in the tight entry from the alley. It's  a mess for us, and a LOUD one too. Visitors tend to abuse our own parking which is a premium where I live, an area presumptuously termed the Golden Triangle. Then the featured music goes on and on all day. And then at last the disassembly of those same aluminum tubes for fencing and for tent-booths, CLANG bang ching ding-a-ling-a-ling clink clank CLANG clink, every bit as clamorous as the the setup, packed up and off they go again back from whence they came. The running truck engines, the horns, the switch to carryover boom-box music. The truck-packing, the pipes again, CLANG bang, drag, roll, cling, clangity-CLANG-CLANG-Bonk. 

The good thing is they give us all free tickets to keep us all mollified.

As if we couldn't hear the music already without ever bothering to move, even with the doors shut tightly. And as if we would have a watery Coors out of a plastic cup, or eat a pile of nacho chips on a paper plate, covered with hot Cheez Whiz™ poured out of a #10 can.  Please. 

I am describing here, not complaining. And you know what else besides? The fact is, I love them so. I really do. I love everything about them. I love their energy, their enthusiasm, their taste for questionable music, their acceptance of unnatural food items, their children, their tolerance, their regrettable sartorial choices especially shoes, their generous attitude, their happiness, their kindness, their sadly pathetic need to be part of something interesting which is hardly even so, their get-up-and-go, their getting up and their going, their back-and-forth wandering with nothing to see, their searching for something, their applause for pure crap, their desperation. The willingness to really work for all that. I even love the resolute losers asking for coins outside the bottle shop then freaking out in gratitude when handed a few dollars with no judgement attached and no pity. Everything. It's why I choose to live here in the midst of it, to see all of that.