Pie Snob

I can't just eat any pie.

But the thing is, that I love pie (specifically blackberry, followed by apple, and then cherry, there are a few chocolate creme pies that are good). My criteria for what makes a good pie lies in the crust. Pie of course is meant to be sweet; the filling and the crust. It could be the world's most beautifully browned and flaky crust, but if there's any trace of saltiness I leave it on my plate. Just cannot do it. When D and I were dating we'd drive all over the city looking for a slice of warm blackberry pie, but the right kind. I think it was Barringer Farms that did a decent job of a warmed mini pie in a paper bag for a while and sold them at the swanky UVillage QFC, but that was short lived.

My mom's mom had it completely and utterly right, I can't explain it, but there's nary a trace of salt (even though there's just a pinch). But it's not flavorless, either.

It's a really uncomforatable place to live though, being very skeptical about how pie should taste but not being brave enough to just break out and make my own. In the past I've put in orders from my mom...a present of apple pie makes the perfect birthday.

Well, today was the day. I had to take hold of this obsession. I picked 4 1/2 c. of blackberries with the kids on Tuesday and they needed to find their way under a pie crust. I called my mom and said I was ready to learn. Break out the flour, I was coming over!

The recipe is crazy easy, my mom patiently walked me though a few little secrets and it was done, I had made my first double crust pie!

It is delicious...all of it.

Goldilocks and the Three Bowls

I make 3 bowls of oatmeal nearly every morning. I start with 1/3 Cup toasted oat bran in each bowl, sprinkle 2 Tablespoons of whole ground flaxseed meal, then pour over 3/4 - 1 Cup boiling hot water & stir. What happens afterward determines who eats which bowl:


1) strait up brown sugar - E
2) dried cranberries, pecans & brown sugar - me
3) 2 or 3 cubes frozen mashed fruit - N (in this picture 2 plum, 1 pear)

Green Beans

Made up some green beans for my little sweet pea this evening:


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Make Your Own Laundry Detergent?

I'm really curious to see if this is something I'd be happy with...let me know if you try it!

Frozen Banana's

Now traditionally, I am not a banana fan. I avoid banana in smoothies, D eats any donated banana bread that makes it's way into our house, banana flavored candies and gum have always turned my stomach, I even had a hard time offering the mashed gooey fruit to E when we started her out on solids. But, um, I'm pregnant, and things change...I've fallen in l-o-v-e with chocolate covered frozen banana's!


Perhaps it has something to do with the utterly hilarious episodes of Arrested Development that have kept me endlessly entertained this pregnancy. Just as my habit of eating jars and jars of pimento filled green olives was informed by those martini making comic geniuses from M*A*S*H while I was pregnant with E.


They're cold and delicious and have been easy to find in the freezer section at Trader Joe's.


Although, upon doing the math ($1.99 for 4 in a box and I've been eating 1 or so per day), I decided I should try my hand at the frozen treats...so we're trying our first batch today!

Ingredients:

• 6 ripe bananas (I did 3)
  
• 1 cup semisweet chocolate chips

Preparation:

Peel bananas; cut in half crosswise. Insert a wooden stick (I used reusable popsicle handles) into flat end of each banana half. Lay bananas on a shallow pan or baking sheet; freeze for about 3 hours, until very firm. Melt chocolate chips over hot water. With a spatula, quickly spread melted chocolate over each banana, coating well. Chocolate will become firm right away, refreeze again. Wrap each banana in foil; store in freezer (I just threw them in a ziplock).


p.s. ours turned out waaay better than the TJ's ones, much sweeter and better quality banana's!

The Incredible (In)edible Egg

I don't know how many of you enjoy a hard cooked egg, and furthermore how many of you have tried to hard cook an egg as of late, but it seems impossible! The shell seems glued to the innards, leaving you with a mangled mess. With the market flooded with organic, omega3 and cage free versions I wonder if maybe somewhere along the production line of the old 'standard' white eggs they were adding something to make shelling easier?
Well, anyhow I actually looked up the recipe for hard boiling eggs in several cookbooks, tried them all and settled somewhere in the middle. So, if you're cooking up real eggs for this Easter's hunt, or just looking forward to sitting down to a high protein lunch or breakfast; here's my tried (over and over) and true method for cooking those suckers up.

• Place eggs in pan, cover with cool water, place on heating element and bring to a rolling boil
• Once it reaches a boil add 1/4 tsp - 1/2 tsp of salt
• Simmer for 12 minutes
• Turn off heat and let stand for 1 minute 30 seconds
  
• Remove eggs and place in an ice water bath to completely cool
• Eat or Refrigerate
  

Book Signing

Anyone interested in attending Molly Wizenberg's (Orangette) book signing next month (March 3rd, it's realease date) with me? Mark your calendar's and shoot me an e-mail and we'll get our little evening figured out.

Cookies and Crafts

This weekend marked the start of, well, the craziness. E and I ventured over to my moms to start on the holiday baking. E brought her gingerbread house, while I pretty much sat around playing with my niece, drinking wassail, and watching my mom burn her fingers rolling krumkake.

Then on Saturday Jen and I took the girl's to the Urban Craft Uprising at the Seattle Center to browse among the enormously talented folks of the crafting community. And today E and I spent much of the day indoors wrapping gifts and planning our Christmas card for this year.

Thanksgiving Starts Today

Although the official meal is set for 5pm tomorrow. The bulk of the shopping was kindly completed yesterday by my father-in-law, and food prep started today. We're hosting D's parents who are in town from California and mine, along with 2 other dear families. The table is set in our fine china (when else do you get to use it?) E's made place cards for all 14 of us, veggies washed, bread cubed and toasted for stuffing, cranberries poised to be sauced, turkey scheduled for it's brine bath at 2AM, and the rest seems like it will gradually come together tomorrow. It's times like these I am thankful for our 2nd set of appliances (stove and refrigerator) in our downstairs mother-in-law apartment, whew!


The Menu:
meet & greet:
7-layer bean dip and chips
goat cheese rolled in candied pecans, dried cranberries, and fresh basil w/water crackers
deviled eggs
veggies and dip

the sit-down:
A 22 pound free range turkey
mashed potatoes
homemade stuffing
green bean casserole (without canned ingredients)
sweet potatoes
Trey's jambalaya
spinach salad
fruit plate
rolls
4 different kinds of pie and a few other lovely desserts


What I love about including so many people is that you get to a little taste of their traditions, what an honor for them to share these dishes with us! And thanks so much for pitching in everyone, I am soooo looking forward to tomorrow!

Rosemary Biscuits

Need a little somethin' to take along for a summery picnic?



Rosemary Biscuits

• 2 cups unbleached flour
• 1 1/2 Tbs baking soda
• 1 Tbs sugar
• 1 Tbs fresh rosemary leaves chopped (or 1 1/2 tsp dried)
• 1/2 cup butter
• 1 large egg
• 3/4 cup buttermilk

1. Preheat oven to 425
2. In Cuisinart pulse all dry ingredients. Add rosemary, pulse quickly.
3. Cut butter into small cubes and then drop in using feed tube, blend until small crumbs form
4. Pour into large bowl, set asside
   
5. In small bowl whisk egg and buttermilk together, then add to dry ingredients, mix well
   
6. Turn dough out onto floured counter and knead several times, adding flour until not sticky
   
7. Roll into golf-ball-sized portions or use biscuit cutter
8. Place 1 1/2 inches apart on ungreased cookie sheet or parchment paper
9. Bake for 12-15 minutes, until lightly browned on top, serve warm!

*this recipe comes from one of my all time favorite cookbooks; Simply Classic; A Collection of Recipes to Celebrate the Northwest (with a few of my own variations of course)

French Blueberry Breakfast Coffeecake

I grew up with my mom making a muffin version of this, and today I decided I needed to make the coffee cake version. With all this wonderful fruit popping up at the market's, coffee cake seems like the most natural place to put it lately, with these lingering cold mornings.

French Blueberry Breakfast Coffeecake

• 2/3 cup butter
• 1 cup sugar
• 2 eggs
• 3 cup flour
• 1 Tbsp baking powder
• 1 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp nutmeg
• 1 cup milk
• 1 cup fresh or frozen then thawed blueberries
• 1/2 cup sugar mixed with 1-2 tsp cinnamon

1. Cream butter, sugar, and eggs
2. Sift flour, b.powder, salt, and nutmeg
3. Add sifted ingredients to butter mixture alternately with 1 cup of milk
4. Grease and flour 1 9x13 pan, scoop in batter, it's very thick so pat it out evenly
5. Spread blueberries over batter (maybe push in a little), then sprinkle cinnamon/sugar mix
   
6. Bake at 350 for about 30 minutes or until wooden skewer poked in the center comes out clean.
7. Let cool (slightly) and enjoy!
8. Cover tightly, this one dries out easily
   

*Disclaimer: I have no idea why this is labeled a "French" coffeecake.

*If you wish to make muffins, hand mix in 1 cup of berries into the batter, spoon into muffin papers at 2/3 full. After they are baked (20-25 minutes) and cooled, you can melt a bit of butter in a dish, dunk the tops in and then into cinnamon/sugar. These are nice with or without the berries and freeze quite well! It makes 2 dozen.

Rachel's Granola

When I was in the hospital after delivering E, I had a great number of visitors. Among them was my friend Rachel. I have to admit I don't remember much about the actual visit, (labor takes a bit out of you) but loved the gift she left with us. A glass Mason Jar filled with homemade granola. Upon our arrival back home, I easily polished off the entire jar in a few days. It was the perfect food, and soon afterwards I got the craving again and requested the recipe. It's been years since I'd thought about it again, but with this cold and crazy weather we seem to be hanging onto, it came to mind.

Rachel's Granola

• 3 cups uncooked oats
• 1/4 cup wheat germ (I used flax meal)
• 1 cup pecans lightly chopped
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 1/3 cup honey
• 1/3 cup butter
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1 cup dried cranberries or other yummy dried fruit
  
• 1 cup grapenuts (can be omitted)

1. Preheat oven to 325
2. In large mixing bowl combine oats, pecans, wheat germ (or flax meal) and cinnamon
3. In saucepan combine: butter, honey, vanilla and brown sugar and heat until melted, then pour over oat mixture and mix well
4. Pour out into lightly greased glass 9x13 pan and bake for 20-25 minutes, stirring halfway through
5. After cooking, stir in cranberries and grapenuts
6. Cool and enjoy, and store in airtight container
   

* It's outstanding mixed with a good dollop of Trader Joe's Organic Lowfat Vanilla Yogurt.

* Now, I've named this Rachel's Granola, but after speaking with her earlier this afternoon to obtain publishing permissions she seems to recall that the owner is actually that of a friend's mother...either way, Y-U-M.

Trophy

Our little cupcake spot was recently featured on Martha Stewart's Show for Cupcake Week (April 03 '08 for those of you that would like to view the episode & recipe on her site). I met up with a few friends and their children for the featured treat.

In case you were wondering; They are as good as they look.

Well done Trophy!

And of course we had to bring Daddy home a treat...

Falling in Loaf

I have fallen in love with my bread machine (I have an earlier model). It's sat dormant in it's box for years in our garage but after a little prodding, I carried it upstairs to her rightful place in the kitchen. I put her to work every week now with new recipes (whole wheat, cinnamon raisin, french, and today the infamous WHO bread). The lovely thing hums and jiggles for a few hours and when our warm bread is ready to be turned out onto the cooling rack she gives be a little 'beep-beep.'
I love her.
There is something so wonderful about piling simple and fresh ingredients into her bucket and without any more work on my end, out pops a nice loaf for us to use all week. For years I had the misleading assumption that bread machine bread is less healthy than something I would mix and knead myself, I thought they required a store bought mix for some reason. But now all the preconceived notions have dissipated and she and I are of one mind: Warm bread is good any time (especially when you use the 'delay' button for a piping hot slice in the morning).


* note: I've found that it only takes 2tsp. of yest to make the WHO bread recipe in our region/altitude, otherwise the extra 1/4 tsp creates an air bubble under the top crust...

Magic in the Middle

Jen made these a few weeks ago, and I was delighted to find that I had all the ingredients on hand to make up a batch today! Although there is a certian contentment that comes along with pulling piping hot cookies from the oven, today's little morsels of heaven also brought a sense of urgency: Get as many plates together and give them away ASAP, these are dangerous!


INGREDIENTS

• 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup granulated sugar (plus more for dipping)
• 1/2 cup firmly packed brown sugar
• 1/2 cup unsalted butter, softened
• 1 cup creamy peanut butter, divided
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 large egg
• 3/4 cup powdered sugar

1. Preheat oven to 375. Whisk together first 4 ingredients in a medium-size mixing bowl. In a separate bowl, beat together granulated and brown sugars, butter and 1/4 cup peanut butter until light and fluffy. Add vanilla and egg, beating to combine. Stir in dry ingredients, blending well. Set dough aside.

2. Stir together remaining 3/4 cup peanut butter and powdered sugar until smooth. With floured hands, roll mixture into 26(1-inch) balls.

3 Break off about 1 tablespoon cookie dough, make an indentation in center with thumb, and press 1 peanut butter ball into indentation. Wrap dough up and over filling, pressing to seal; roll cookie to smooth it out. Repeat for each cookie.

4. Dip top of each cookie in granulated sugar and place 2 inches apart on lightly greased baking sheets. Use greased bottom of drinking glass to flatten each cookie to about 1/2 inch thick.

5. Bake cookies at 375 for 7-9 minutes or until set. Let cool on wire rack.

Electric Grill

We received one of these for our wedding. The combination of Tania's recent post (using those wedding presents of old) and remembering how much Jen loved hers, challenged me to find ours that was somewhere in my parent's basement and put it to use! Now that an entire batch of pancakes will easily feed the 3 of us, I was looking for a speedier way to get from the kitchen to the table and eat with the rest of the brood.

Here's the recipe I use weekly (from the cookbook) my variation in purple.

• 2 c. all-purpose flour (or 1 1/2 c. flour and 1/2 c. flax seed meal)
• 2 Tbs Sugar
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 egg
• 3 Tbs unsalted butter
• 2 c. buttermilk

1. Melt butter, set aside to cool
2. Sift all dry ingredients in large bowl
3. Add egg to cooled melted butter
4. Add egg/butter to buttermilk, whisk
5. Add buttermilk mixture to dry ingredients and whisk gently, a few lumps should remain - don't over overmix
6. Make pancakes!
7. Freeze leftover cooked pancakes to toast up later
   

Pretzel Day

Came home from church this afternoon with a hankering for a nice warm bit of bread. Pretzels. Hadn't made them in a while, but Martha had the recipe waiting online:
(my variations in purple)

Soft Pretzel's

• 2 cups warm water, 100 degrees to 110 degrees
• 1 tablespoon sugar
• 1 teaspoon active dry yeast
• 5 to 6 cups all-purpose flour, plus more for dusting
• 1 tablespoon salt
• 2 teaspoons canola oil
• 2 tablespoons baking soda
• 1 large egg
• Coarse or pretzel salt (or a salt/herb mix or cinnamon/sugar)
  
• Vegetable-oil cooking spray (or parchment paper)
  

Directions

1. Pour warm water into bowl of electric mixer fitted with a dough hook. In a small bowl, combine water and sugar, and stir to dissolve sugar. Sprinkle with yeast, and let sit 10 minutes; yeast should be foamy.
2. Add 1 cup flour to yeast, and mix on low until combined. Add salt and 4 cups flour, and mix until combined, about 30 seconds. Beat on medium-low until dough pulls away from sides of bowl, about 1 1/2 minutes. Add 1/2 cup flour, and knead on low 1 minute more. If dough is still wet and sticky, add 1/2 cup more flour (this will depend on weather conditions); knead until combined, about 30 seconds. Transfer to a lightly floured board, and knead about 10 times, or until smooth.
3. Pour oil into a large bowl; swirl to coat sides. Transfer dough to bowl, turning dough to completely cover all sides. Cover with a kitchen towel, and leave in a warm spot for 1 hour, or until dough has doubled in size.
4. Heat oven to 450 degrees. Lightly spray two baking sheets with cooking spray (or use parchment paper, this recipe tends to discolor aluminum baking sheets). Set aside. Punch down dough to remove bubbles. Transfer to a lightly floured board. Knead once or twice, divide into 16 pieces (about 2 1/2 ounces each), and wrap in plastic.
5. Roll one piece of dough at a time into an 18-inch-long strip. Twist into pretzel shape; transfer to prepared baking sheet. Cover with a kitchen towel. Continue to form pretzels; 8 will fit on each sheet. Let pretzels rest until they rise slightly, about 15 minutes.
6. Meanwhile, fill large, shallow pot with 2 inches of water. Bring to a boil. Add baking soda. Reduce to a simmer; transfer 3 to 4 pretzels to water. Poach 1 minute. Use slotted spoon to transfer pretzels to baking sheet. Continue until all pretzels are poached.
7. Beat egg with 1 tablespoon water. Brush pretzels with egg glaze. Sprinkle with salt. Bake until golden brown, 12 to 15 minutes. Remove from baking sheets promptly or they'll be cemented there forever, unless using parchment. Let cool on wire rack, or eat warm. Pretzels are best when eaten the same day, but will keep at room temperature, uncovered, for 2 days. Do not store in covered container or they will become soggy.