Pie Secrets

 Just making and eating pie again, as is my usual custom this time of year. It seems like pie would be a great thing to make in winter when it is cold (and it is, if you freeze or can some of the summer fruit!) but I seem to mostly make it in warm weather when the bushes and trees are dripping with fruit and all hands are stained with juice. I love pie. Passionately. You can keep your cake...I'll stick with pie.

 I was busily making pies this week and then eating pies and think to myself about a small correction or two that I owe the pie making section of my blog audience. A while back I shared my favorite pie making cookbook and typed up the recipe I always use for blueberry pie.

 Well, a good friend used that recipe to make a pie and was much disgruntled to find that it sank down a very slumped in, and pale version of itself and came marching back to me to ask exactly why her pie didn't look anything like mine even though she'd used my recipe.

 I am my mother's daughter. I use recipes but I am also not afraid to experiment, and sometimes do so without my conscious or deliberate thought, even habitually. Can you believe that of me?

The hitch with my pie making is that I discovered in my newlywed pie making days that any standard recipe seems to yield those sort of sunken results and so requires tweaking. I follow the recipe's suggestions for sugar and thickening agent (usually cornstarch) but I pour in far more fruit than anyone would advise. They say, for instance, to add 3 1/2 cups of blueberries? I put in 6-8 cups. Pies should be teeteringly piled with fruit, so much so that the crust is required to hold it all in, because during the baking everything will shrink and compact and a bit of evaporation will occur. Always add more fruit. Add as much fruit as you can practically manage to squeeze in. Truly.

Another thing I always change in my pie recipes is the amount of water in the crust. Invariably recipes suggest far too little water for me to be able to get it to work. I just add water in tiny amounts...say a tablespoon or two at a time until I am able to get a dough to form. It is easy to go to far so go slow, and try to stir briskly and minimally in order to avoid making your dough tough, but I often end up adding as much as a half a cup of water. I just keep dribbling it in until the dough behaves.

So, there are my secret pie confessions....go forth and make pastry!

Guilty Pleasures!

List time!

Today: Guilty Pleasures

All those rotten little ways I shamelessly indulge and never tell anyone except for....um...all of you. Shhhh.......

1. I love Kentucky Fried Chicken's popcorn chicken with "honey" mustard dipping sauce....it makes everything okay again. Not every branch has it and no single restaurant seems to carry it with regularity which makes it a maddening sort of addiction, never mind that its totally non-healthy fast food to boot. Heh.
2. I read People.com sometimes and *wince wince wince* even Star.com from time to time. Totally dumb, totally superficial and sooooo not my thing really but, I can't help it. Somehow, it is a fluffy little distraction that makes me feel better on days when my own hectic life is too overwhelming. Lets all spend a little time reading about the latest wacky moves of Tom Cruise, shall we? 
3. I like to occasionally buy pre-forced, almost blooming potted bulbs in the spring and plop them in my garden like I actually grew them....then they bloom and I feel cool and the garden is insta-pretty. 
4. I sometimes plan out houses that I would like to have go up for sale in certain neighborhoods and then I stalk them to see if it worked yet. Once in a while it does. So far nothing has been the right size or price but, its a fun little hobby.
5. I like to read juvenile literature. Not perpetually, that gets mind numbing...but, from time to time, pretty regularly I pick one up because it puts my mind in a simpler, cozier place.
6. I don't shower often (mommyhood and all) but I'm afraid when I do, I take looooooong showers. I used to be a very quick shower girl...kinda prided myself on it. Not so much anymore. When showers happen, I dwell on them.
7. I use my laptop in bed....every day.
8. I buy Quilted Northern Ultra toilet paper which is a ridiculous indulgence but, its not the most expensive brand in existence and it makes me feel luxurious. I like soft tp, I could never buy Scott unless our budget demanded it for survival. 
9. I send my ironing out whenever I get in over my head and life seems like too much. I've been sending it out for the past month and I'm not sure when I'll be ready to take it on again.
10. I have gotten quite accustomed to always having ice in my water glass, now that we have one of those fancy fridges with an ice machine implanted in the door....crushed ice, mind you.
11. If KFC has no popcorn chicken...or if I am too teary to make it all the way to KFC or remember where the nearest one is...french fries from McDonald's with extra ketchup will make it all okay again too.
12. Peonies are a very expensive cut flower but, they are worth the money. I will almost always buy some if I see them...unless they're really sad looking. I'm a sucker for that sweet, lemony scent.
13. I will overspend (if allowed) on local produce.
14. I have an alarming number of cookbooks. I haven't the room to store them all...this is one of the reasons why I need a bigger kitchen...room for the culinary library.
15. I sometimes use A's electric razor to shave my legs to make up for the fact that I don't have time for a full up shower. It works so beautifully! I try to be contentious about cleaning it and putting it away afterwords! (I hope that's okay, Honey!)

My Vanity House Hunting List

Back the great house-hunt. Today I hit the roads in earnest and chalked up a lot of addresses viewed. I had been a little procrastinatory about the whole thing before and was taking a while to rev my engine up to full power again on the whole process. Somehow starting over feels like such a big deal, even though we never really got anywhere to speak of on the farmhouse I fell in love with. But, this weekend there was a bunch of new properties listed that fit our criteria on paper and look well worth viewing so I'm off burning gas again, peering down driveways and madly scribbling notes while idling by the side of the road.

Of course the whole business of buying a home is in many ways, deadly serious...gigantic investments of money, huge risks, so much discussion and evaluation and work to line up values with your spouse so that you can both find the perfect nest together. All that aside, there's frippery involved. Of course there is...I'm involved. Today a little window into the silly small things that I'm looking for or hoping for or dreaming of but don't dare expect to find...etc. Just the slightly embarrassing bits that I can only share with you loyal reader types if you promise not to tell. Shhhhh.....

Little Things I Long For In A House (But You Better Not Tell):

• A romantic street name. I know this doesn't matter but, somehow if I'm really truthful it does make a difference to me. I would be wooed easily but a tiny cottage on Chipmunk Lane but the same house on Center Ave. somehow seems much less sparkly.
• Old plantings. I am a sucker for grandma's lilacs and old heritage apple trees of unknown variety that still bear but are in need of a good firm trim to dress them up the coming fall. A always says, "You can plant your own plants! That's a silly reason to choose a house." And I know he's right but...but...but..*sigh*
• Ramshackly garden sheds, old chicken coops or small barns that have fallen into rescue-able disrepair. I love hints of old farms or at least lush old gardens...signs that once this property produced and was dearly loved by somebody long ago, little outbuildings give me that sort of warm and cozy feeling. 

• Big maple trees with stout branches, just right for hanging a swing off of....bonus points for a charming view of said tree and imaginary swing from the kitchen sink.
• A greenhouse. I realize this is rather unlikely but...a girl can dream. (just keep it on the down low)

• A particular shade of whipped butter yellow with white trim. This color just makes me go weak in the knees, I've dreamed of a house in this hue since I was a wee thing.
• Garden beds rimmed in rocks and/or raised bed vegetable plots all marked out already and neatly positioned in the sunshine. (Pitter pat, pitter pat)
• A root cellar...I realize this is about as likely as the greenhouse wish but, folks, its in my secret heart...how great would that be? *sigh*
• A walking distance little corner store, for those nights when I forget to buy milk or you really need a coffee quickly. Its not necessary but, its part of my fantasy. 
• Moss between the paving stones that make up the walk to the door. I realize that many homeowners, yea even master gardeners are busily scraping moss off their stones and Round-uping any weeds that manage to creep in between the cracks but, I'm weird...I don't care if its a slipping hazard....give me a misting of green moss or some run-away creeping thyme or a little irish moss and I'll be sold.
• A small woodstove. Nothing enormous, nothing truly productive, just the pretty sort of little stove set on curving legs in the corner of the living room or a distant edge of the kitchen...something that will make me feel a touch more pioneer and will embolden me about future power-outs. Extra points for a bit round hoola-hoop of a firewood ring at the back door that comes with the house.