Missed It

We missed apple picking season again. 

That's two years in a row. I guess I keep hoping both the kids will be free on the same weekend and, while technically they were, one had Covid so we couldn't exactly go anywhere. I still have some applesauce from last year and when I run out I can just buy a bunch of apples and make more, but the outing was always part of the fun. Maybe next year we can plan that better.

What I have done recently is make a chocolate cream pie, something I have not made before. I followed the King Arthur recipe and it was fabulous. The pie did not last long! Much more successful than that red velvet cake, I might add. 

Today I am making chocolate chip cookies, using a recipe from the NY Times. Lately my toll house cookies have been very...thin. I'm not sure what has been happening but they come out very flat and yet still chewy. Weird. This recipe is fantastic. At least, they look good. We haven't tasted them yet. My new coworkers have been after me to make cookies, since they know I bake. So I'm bringing some in for them. The cool thing about this recipe is that you make the dough and refrigerate it for at least a day. The longer you let it sit, the better it is, apparently. Seems to work. 

I Didn't Forget

Pi day was last Monday. I did not forget! 

Having generally been frustrated with my usual pie crusts, I decided to make a lemon meringue pie with a pate sucrée crust. This is more common in tarts, but the sweetness of the crust offsets the tartness of the lemon filling and it worked well.

Per usual, I made two pies, as the elderchild in college also needed a pie. (Note to self: 1/4 of the master pate sucrée recipe and 1-1/3 of the lemon filling recipe in the Pilsbury cookbook made one 9" pie and one 8" pie. 1 full meringue recipe.)

Plus, it gave me an opportunity to use the blowtorch. My favorite part!

It's Hard to Describe

Just look at that lamination!

It's not like I haven't been cooking. I have. I made pies. I made puff pastry apple tarts for Thanksgiving. I cooked an entire Thanksgiving meal for six. I have been making bread and we even had friends over for dinner last week. I knit things, gifts for family and friends. 

It's just that I haven't felt like writing about it. When the pandemic first started, I had all sorts of energy. I made cakes, experimented with Japanese baking, hiked, sewed, and worked. That energy is gone, replaced with the ennui of the day to day grind. There is little joy at work, just angry and anxious families who take their frustration out on the staff. It's no wonder it's hard to find people to hire. 

There's no exotic travel to look forward to. I miss my old life. This one feels too small.

So here I am, making turkey stock and canning it. For Thanksgiving I roasted a turkey breast and then cooked some turkey legs in a slow cooker. The bones got made into stock a few days ago and today I canned nine pints. That's about as exciting as it gets. 

Peaches for Days

We finally went on a trip.

Two weeks ago, we piled in the car and drove to Ohio to visit family. It was our first big road trip with an electric car, and we charged it along the way without any problems. Nice to know that works well; the car plans the route and where to charge based upon what the battery level is when you start. While we were there, we went to a charging station a few times but also just plugged it into the 220 outlet at my in-laws' house which was slower but allowed for more visiting time. 

My mother-in-law had ordered a box of peaches from the Georgia Peach Truck, about 25 pounds. On a whim when she went to pick them up, she got another box. So there were 50 pounds of peaches to do something with in a relatively short time. We ate a lot of them, cutting up 4-5 peaches every morning for breakfast. However, between my brother-in-law and me, we made short work of the rest.

First of all, I made a peach cobbler. I always forget that the texture of cobbler is weird to me, and I should just make a crisp.

Over the course of the next two days, I made two batches of jam without added pectin. My in-laws often get jars of jam in the mail from me, and they had them there for me to take back, but I filled them with jam instead. However, we came up against the aforementioned Great Canning Lid Shortage of 2021. Since there weren't a lot of options, we decided to try paraffin like people used to do. It took a few tries for me to get the pattern down, but it worked just fine. I was even presented with some gingham and VINTAGE Wiss pinking shears from the 1940's, in the original box and hardly ever used. The shears were in amazing condition. We ended up with eleven jars, and by the time we left there were only nine left. 

Paraffin cooling

Looking adorable

Another thing everyone wanted was a pie. I looked up a recipe and used this one for the filling, but made my usual crust, this time half Crisco and half butter. I struggled a lot with rolling this one out, and the base was patched in myriad ways. Thankfully it was under the filling. (I nicknamed it "Frankenpie.") We ate it, still warm, out on a deck after some burgers. Summer is awesome.

After all that, my brother-in-law made two more pies, and he tossed a bunch of peach chunks in cornbread which I had never considered but now think is amazing. What is even more amazing is that we got through all 50 pounds of peaches in a week. 

Now we're back, and getting settled, and I made bread today and I'm making a different kind of pie, a custard pie from a recipe I saw in the NYT.

Yes, I Made a Pie for Pi Day

Two, in fact!

While I have not unpacked much, I have unpacked my rolling pin and silicone mat for rolling out pie crust. I worked all weekend but I couldn't let pi day go by without making a pie. So on Saturday morning before work I made a half-batch of pie crust and let it chill until yesterday morning when I could roll it out. I used my fluted clay pie plate for our pie and, in the absence of anything else the right size, found a metal cheese mold ring that I used to make a more free-form rustic pie which I dropped off at college for the elderchild before I went to work. The filling was the last three jars of apple pie filling in my inventory. 

I'm very rusty with the baking thing. Actually, I'm rusty with all cooking. I find myself trying to remember what I used to cook for dinner all the time. I guess it's time to unpack my cookbooks.

Oven Opportunity

Last weekend we had to vacate the house for two days while the spray foam insulation was applied. Apparently we weren't supposed to be around the fumes while the chemical "cured." So we moved into my parents' nearby apartment which was currently empty, smuggling the rabbit and his cage in late at night in case we weren't supposed to have him there. This is the place where I've been storing a lot of my things and where I have been baking bread every week. Key words: FUNCTIONAL KITCHEN.

The first night we were there I baked cornflake chicken and squash halves in the oven. I made a batch of cookies. It was lovely. The next day I made a double batch of cornbread and baked it in little loaf tins so we could freeze some. We had two of the loaves tonight with a taco casserole I made in the instant pot. For dinner, the youngerchild asked for something unexpected - chicken pot pie! I didn't know the youngerchild liked that. I figured out a way I could make it with what I had available to me.

At the store, I bought a rotisserie chicken and some chicken gravy. I had sweet potatoes and a small onion from the farm share which I cooked in a sauté pan until soft. I made half a batch of pie crust. We've been watching a lot of Great British Bake Off and everyone wanted me to make a "suet crust" but I only had butter so I guess it was a disappointment. Not really. Butter crusts are awesome.

I divided the crust into three portions, rolled them out and put them in more of those little aluminum loaf pans, then put a layer of shredded chicken, 1/3 of the sweet potato mixture, and 4 T. of chicken gravy in each one. I then folded over the flap of crust that was hanging off the side of the tin. These were baked for 25 minutes at 425˚F and then 20 minutes at 400˚F until the gravy was bubbling at the top. They were the perfect size and tasted pretty good. They maybe could have used more gravy poured over for serving but I wouldn't add any more to the pie itself because that might be too much moisture.

And look! No soggy bottom!

So Much Has Happened

New oven!

Yeah, sorry about that. It's been quite the month and a half. It started with a trip to Malaysia for our friends' wedding in the latter half of January. And then we got back, work picked up, family members were sick, there were trips out to see colleges and said family and then the flu hit, I fell off a horse, and now we're all stuck at home waiting to see what will happen with the state of the world. I am the only one who doesn't get to work/study from home so this is going to be interesting.

Both children will now be doing some sort of remote classes after their respective spring breaks end. We were supposed to be going to Scotland today to visit more colleges, obviously that isn't happening. All the concerts and lectures we had tickets for are postponed indefinitely or canceled. It makes sense but it's frustrating all the same.

You know what I can do? Bake! Especially now, that I have a NEW OVEN. Right before we went to Malaysia the oven died its final death. Which meant my sister was staying with the youngerchild without an oven, but they managed. I got a new oven delivered the day after we got back and haven't even really had much time to play with it except for making bread. That will change this week, as I had already taken the week off (for the aforementioned nonexistent trip to Scotland) so plan to start trying to bake some things. Starting with today - Pi Day!

Using the filling from eat the love's Strawberry Rhubarb Galette, I made a Pi, with the help of the elderchild. The oven worked swimmingly. We can't wait for dessert!

A Week of Feasting

After last Sunday's mini-Thanksgiving, we've continued to eat our way through the week. Monday we had a fondue night, with tiny potatoes, broccoli florets and bread and two different types of cheese fondue. Tuesday we went out for Thai food and Wednesday we had some leftovers to clear the fridge for the meals to come. On actual Thanksgiving I was working and our site director sent an entire traditional Thanksgiving meal which was good because it got busy and it was nice to have food ready to eat when we had a few moments.

Last night we went out to dinner at a Chinese restaurant, Red 8, in the new casino in Boston. We did not go into the casino part because not everyone in our party was over 21 but the whole place was quite the spectacle. After a whole lot of very good Chinese food we went to another restaurant, Sinatra, for dessert, most of which consisted of little pastries on a "gold record" made out of dark chocolate! It was Frank Sinatra themed, after all.

Tonight we finally had our family Thanksgiving, with my parents, while also celebrating my father's birthday. I made the pumpkin pie a few days ago but last night started the candied cranberries for a garnish. This recipe for pumpkin pie really is terrific. Yesterday morning I made the apple pie, this time cooking the apples first before baking them in the pie. I am really pleased with how this turned out. Also, I used honeycrisp apples instead of Cortlands and I think I like that better. I also made a quick cranberry-pomegranate sauce by making cranberry sauce and tossing in the seeds from half a pomegranate at the last minute.

Mom made the sweet potatoes again and, again, I overbroiled the marshmallows but this time I got them out before they entirely burned. Whoops. My husband got the turkey brining on Thursday while I was at work which was so helpful, and I made the stuffing yesterday. So today, between raking leaves and running to the store for last minute things, we got everything cooked and on the table by 4 pm.

So, Happy Thanksgiving to everyone and, Happy Birthday, Dad!

Personal Pies

The weather has not been kind this last week as far as the farm share is concerned. The tomato plants died in the frost so this was likely the last week for any tomatoes. The raspberries aren't getting enough sun to ripen so there were very few to pick. It took a while but my husband and I were able to get almost a full half-pint of berries. They weren't very pretty, or big, or even necessarily at the peak of ripeness. After giving half to my friend as her part of the share, I had a tiny amount of berries. What to do?

What I did have was a little bit of leftover pie crust dough from last weekend. I rolled it out and lined four small ramekins with crust. Then I divided up the raspberries and a handful of blueberries I also had in the house, sprinkled on some sugar mixed with cornstarch and cinnamon, and added a top crust. These were baked, uncovered, in a 350˚F oven for about 35 minutes. Voilá, instant personal pies!

Pi Day

Once again, Pi Day has arrived. This morning the elderchild and I made a peach pie, using two jars of peach pie filling I made last fall. I had a little problem with the pie crust and I'm not sure why, but I ended up needing a lot more water and the crust ended up crispy rather than flaky. No matter. We had pie. We also had pizza for dinner so we had all sorts of circular foods!

Time to Be Thankful

This has been a particularly blog-unfriendly year, between not having a lot of time and not having a lot of interest in canning or baking. I know, that seems weird. It's not like I'm not baking, it's just that it's fairly routine stuff, like cookies or cornbread or the regular batches of white bread I make with Legion whenever we run out. That's still happening, but it doesn't seem all that blog-worthy anymore. I haven't even started a gift stash this year.

But it is Thanksgiving, and it's time to stop and rest briefly and have a feast. To reflect on the things that have made this year good and overlook the bad.

This year there will be nine of us, and I just brined the turkey. We are having our feast on Friday as I'm working tomorrow, giving me an extra day to bake and prepare. Yesterday I made the squash by roasting my last three farm share butternuts and mixing the baked squash with butter, salt, and pepper. Nothing too fancy. Mom will bring the sweet potatoes we love, our friends are bringing rolls and Brussels sprouts, and maybe a dessert.

For the turkey, I mixed 1 cup of Kosher salt for each gallon of water, and put the turkey in that with some bay leaves, peppercorns, sage, celery salt and rosemary.

The next thing I did was make two pumpkin pies, using my favorite recipe. Fortunately, I had condensed milk in the house and didn't need to run out and get some.  I also had 3 cups of pumpkin  purée in the freezer; that may be the last of it. The crust got a little toasty because they were a little too close to the edges of the oven but nothing too bad. I baked the leaves and acorns separately for about 20 minutes so they wouldn't burn. One will go to work with me tomorrow and the other is for my feast.

Tomorrow after work I will make an apple pie and also the stuffing, then on the day of I can roast the turkey, make the mashed potatoes, and put on all the finishing touches!

Notes on a Long, Cold Week

In the ever-fluctuating weather of New England, it's been REALLY COLD. And sometimes rainy. But COLD. It was 33˚F this morning. However, now it's a balmy 57˚F and I needed to get into the hives.

I'd planned to take the feeders out entirely, particularly since Beeyonce's hive hadn't really been taking as much syrup. I took advantage of this nice weather and got in there, removing the feeder and moving the false back closer to the combs. For Phoebee's hive, I'd planned to do the same but since they were a younger colony and the weather is supposed to be a little warmer over the weekend, I gave them a new jar of syrup. One more, before the cold sets in for real.

Recently we also went apple picking, in the rain, although the rain gods were kind and it only drizzled while we were out in the fields. I made a pie for the elderchild's birthday but haven't even decided how much applesauce I'm going to make. We're eating our way through the rest for now and I'll see how much applesauce we need before I start going crazy. We haven't been eating through it as quickly as we used to. I guess as the kids grow older they don't see applesauce as a snack.

Yesterday I picked up the penultimate farm share. I didn't spend a lot of time in the fields but did get a whole lot of kale and parsley. There were squashes and potatoes and brussels sprouts and all sorts of terrific autumn veggies. I'm a little inundated with escarole but I will make another batch of soup with some of it. Tuscan-style escarole and white bean soup is one of my favorites.

What I should be doing is taking advantage of this great weather and cleaning up the yard a bit. But I'm tired. Maybe tomorrow. 

Peach Pie Filling

A little bit ago I bought a whole lot of peaches. We ate what we could, I made a crisp and some peach melba jam, and there were a few left that were getting a little soft. I decided to try my hand at peach pie filling.

The first recipe I found had apples and raisins in it and I didn't want to make that. Then I found a plain recipe which was scalable. For 6 large peaches, first I peeled and sliced them and set them in a bowl of water with lemon juice (to stop the browning). Then I boiled the peach slices for a minute and set them aside to drain. The next step was to combine 1.5 cups sugar, 9 oz. water, just under 1/2 cup of Clear Jel, and a heaping 1/8 tsp. of cinnamon and bring to a boil. Then I added 3 oz. lemon juice and boiled for a minute. Then the peaches were folded in and cooked for about 3 minutes, and then packed into pint jars. This amount made 3 pints. They were processed for 30 minutes in boiling water.

While they were processing, I went to feed the bees and found that one hive (Phoebee's, who I was able to see today) finished their jar of syrup and the other hive (Beeyonce's) didn't. Not sure why that is, but I changed the one that was empty and I'll check again in a day or two. 

Wild Blueberry Ice Cream

Blueberry creme anglaise chilling

Today the elderchild and I put together the blueberry ice cream. First we made the base: I puréed a cup of berries and topped off the volume with milk to get 16 ounces. To this we added 6 ounces cream, 8 egg yolks and 5 ounces of sugar to make a creme anglaise. It was a nice purple color. It rested in the fridge until later in the afternoon when we ran it through the ice cream maker, adding the half-cup of frozen blueberries I'd set aside yesterday. This then waited in the freezer until it set and it was time to have dessert!

I'm very pleased with how the pie filling worked this time - it wasn't runny and since these were fresh wild berries they held their shape well. It didn't look as though the filling was jam which is how I think store bought blueberry pies often look, due to being made from frozen berries.

Not the best photo, but you get the idea...

New Toy

As early as we could manage, the elderchild and I went to pick wild blueberries. I'd purchased a new toy in the hopes that it would go faster: a blueberry rake. It was also going to be 100˚F today so we left the house at 6 am and were done picking a half-gallon of blueberries by 8:30 am. It was already 90˚F when we left!

Anyway, the rake worked fairly well when the bushes were almost completely ripe. If they weren't, the rake would pull off the unripe berries as well, so I resorted to hand-picking when I came across a bush that was not entirely ripe. It did well even though wild blueberries are smaller. I'd been worried it would miss a bunch of berries or they'd fall out after but it seemed to work just fine.

Over the course of the day, the elderchild and I made a pie out of most of the berries (6 cups worth) and I set aside some to make blueberry ice cream tomorrow. The pie is for dessert tomorrow with the ice cream. Mmm.

For the filling, instead of tapioca I made a base of cornstarch, water, sugar and spices and then poured it over the berries. This seems to have worked much better than the tapioca; my main complaint had been that you could still see the little pearls with the tapioca. This crust is half butter and half shortening as I wanted to see what it does for the texture.

I taught the elderchild how to make a proper lattice, and now the pie is cooling and smelling wonderful!

Strawberries and Saffron

This is a belated post, but when the elderchild and I made a strawberry rhubarb pie the other day there was a lot of pie crust left over. To give the elderchild more practice with rolling out crust, we collaborated on a rustic strawberry tart.

The filling was a little bit of strawberry jam topped with sliced fresh strawberries. When it came out of the oven, I immediately brushed it with the saffron simple syrup I'd saved from the youngerchild's baklava and zoolbia adventure. The liquid evaporates off and leaves a glaze which had a nice hint of saffron that went beautifully with the berries. Yum!

Back in the Saddle

Metaphorically speaking, although I am going riding tomorrow...

It's been a long and busy springtime and I have been putting off various cooking and canning projects. But strawberries don't wait and today was a perfect day to go picking. The elderchild and I got up early and arrived just when the farm opened; in half an hour we picked almost 18 pounds of berries. After stuffing our faces with warm strawberry doughnuts and visiting the baby goats, lambs, and all the bunnies (we caught a glimpse of a baby bunny but it didn't want to come outside) we rushed home.

[Actually, we rushed home because I had an opportunity to buy tickets for Hamilton when it comes to Boston. My purchase window opened at 10 am, we got home at 9:46 am. I am psyched to say that we have tickets for October!!!]

First I made one batch of strawberry jam. I have SO MUCH jam leftover from last year if you roll all the flavors together that I won't make a whole lot this year. One batch to start, anyway. We'll see how much I have left. Then I set aside some berries for eating and enough berries in sugar for shortcake. The shortcake is currently in the oven.

Next up, pie filling. Since the youngerchild loves cheesecake, particularly strawberry cheesecake, what better than to make my own pie filling? Using this recipe, I made 6 pints of pie filling. And it's glorious (we licked the pot).

After a few errands and the like, I stopped at the store and bought some rhubarb since I don't seem to have any. I bought almost 4 pounds so I chopped 12 ounces and mixed that with a quart of berries, 1 cup of sugar and 1/4 cup of cornstarch. This will become a pie tomorrow. The elderchild has wanted to learn how to make a pie so this is a perfect way to start. The rest of the rhubarb was chopped and is now frozen in 1-pound bags.

That has used up about half the berries. I have to think about what to do next!

Nor'easter

Welcome to March, when we in New England are subjected to back to back nor'easters. What makes them worse is that it was so warm in February we got into spring mode already. Mother Nature is laughing at us.

Regardless, what is nice is having a day when I have no place to be, and I can just bake to my heart's content. Also nice is that tomorrow is Pi Day.

I'm still working on a batch of bread, but this is what I've baked so far:

Baked apples - This was breakfast, along with bagels and lox. The apples were stuffed with some of those maple candied black walnuts, cinnamon, brown sugar and butter, and then baked. The verdict? More sugar and cinnamon. (I'd put 1 tsp sugar and 1/8 tsp cinnamon in each apple.)

Apple Pie - playing around with the crust again, I made some roses and a partial lattice. The pie filling was made and canned last fall and this pie used 2 pints. This crust was all butter because I only made enough for 1 single-crust pie and dragging the leaf lard out of the freezer for 1/4 cup seemed like a lot of work.

There is also a blueberry tart made with the leftover crust. That'll be for snack today!

Thanksgiving Celebration!

It's not often we do our Thanksgiving dinner on the actual day. Usually I have to work and we have our celebration on a different day. Not this year!

Here's what was on the menu:

Roast goose. I followed Hank Shaw's instructions from Duck, Duck, Goose, removing the breasts halfway through the cooking and then searing them at the end. This was more work than I anticipated and I think it came out too tough. Not the recipe's fault, maybe mine? Anyway, for the price of a fresh farm raised goose I think it will be easier to stick with a smaller turkey. The gravy that is made from the giblets is pretty tasty, though.

Stuffing, topped with goose fat before reheating. Cranberry sauce which I made the other day.

Mashed potatoes, made by my husband. Sweet potatoes and marshmallows, made by my mom. She also made a Brussels sprouts and grape dish that was pretty good, so says those of us who like Brussels sprouts.

Pumpkin bread, made by my sister-in-law, and brioche dinner rolls, made by me. I made the dough last night and refrigerated it until this morning when I got up early and shaped a dozen dinner rolls. I haven't made brioche in ages!

Lastly, the pies. I had a pumpkin pie and that fabulous apple pie I made yesterday. The cornstarch worked perfectly, the crust was flaky and light, and not having a solid top crust wasn't a problem at all. I topped the pie with homemade caramel sauce which I made this morning and then there was ice cream and whipped cream because what's a pie without one or the other?

So from me to all of you, Happy Thanksgiving and may your table always overflow with lovely homemade food!

Vision = Reality

Finally.

I've been trying for a while now to get a particular look for my apple pies. I want them to look autumny. Like piles of fallen leaves. I want them to evoke that nip in the air that screams snow is coming and still look tasty enough to eat. It's Thanksgiving, and I want my pie to be perfect.

Here is a list of the things I tweaked for today's pie:

1. I used my smaller (new) pie plate so only 6 apples.
2. Therefore, I dropped the sugar to 3/4 cup.
3. I added 2 T. of cornstarch to the sugar because I'm tired of my pies being runny.
4. No top crust - I covered the apples with cut outs of leaves and acorns, all scored with a knife, and tossed randomly but strategically onto the pie.
5. I used an egg-milk wash rather than milk and sugar.
6. The pie was baked uncovered first, and then covered for the second half of the baking process.

Not very scientific of me, but I can probably trace each alteration to a specific result and therefore I should be able to figure out which of these I should do again.

Regardless. I am happy.