Four Pies

I don't have too many words this time.  Here is what July looked like:

One of my first successful lattice crusts.  I always stay away from blueberry pie, but blueberries were on sale and they looked so pretty.  I am glad I bought them because it turns out, homemade blueberry pie is delicious!  I bought way too many, so that's why I made this:

Not such a great pie.  It was inspired by a Rose Levy Berenbaum pie, but I didn't have her recipe.  It's lemon curd in a flaky crust with blueberry topping.  I tried the crust recipe in this month's issue of Bon Appétit.  It was flaky and buttery but not very tender.  I also found out that I only like lemon curd in small servings.

This pie has a secret.  Under the layer of glazed, raw strawberries, is a layer of cooked strawberries, and under that, is a silky, creamy, white chocolate layer.  The raw strawberries make it easy to convince yourself that leftovers make a decently wholesome breakfast.

There are no photos of the fourth pie; it was devoured before I thought to take any.  This is the pie I want to share with you.  It's a frozen key lime pie, and its advantages are many: the graham cracker crust is one of the easiest crusts to prepare; it has only four ingredients; since it's a frozen pie, you can make it ahead of time and keep it in your freezer for up to three months (how it could remain untouched for that long is beyond me, but you could make two at a time, eat one that night and have one on hand for dessert emergencies).


Frozen Key Lime Pie adapted from the Good Housekeeping Cookbook

Graham Cracker Crust (recipe below)
4 limes (even though it's called a key lime pie, you just use regular limes)
1 can of sweetened condensed milk (14oz)
1 cup of heavy whipping cream

First, zest the limes to get one tablespoon of finely chopped/grated zest.  Then juice the limes so that you have 1/2 cup of juice.

In a large bowl, whisk the lime juice with the condensed milk until smooth.

In a different bowl, beat the heavy cream with an electric mixer until stiff peaks form.  It should take about 10 minutes.  You then fold the whipped cream into the condensed milk mixture.  Do this slowly, taking only 1/3 of the cream at a time.  Gently mix it in until evenly blended.

Pour into your fully cooled graham cracker crust.  Cover tightly and freeze for at least one hour and up to three months.  Sprinkle some long strips of lime zest in the center of the pie right before serving for a pretty garnish.


Graham Cracker Crust

1 1/3 cups graham cracker crumbs (basically, one sleeve of graham crackers)
2 T sugar
5 T unsalted butter, melted

Combine the sugar with the graham cracker crumbs.  Stir in the melted butter until it is fully incorporated.  Press mixture evenly into your 9 inch pie pan.

Chill the crust for 30 minutes while you are preheating your oven to 350 degrees. Bake the crust for 8-10 minutes until it lightly colors.  Allow to cool completely before filling.

On washing dishes after drinking too much wine

1)      It’s assumed that since you are even attempting to wash the dishes, you’ve only had a little too much wine. This point is further supported by the fact that you had the good sense to make yourself a bowl of Turkey Hill’s Double Dunkers ice cream as a reward for doing the dishes tonight.

2)      It will most likely take more time and more water than normal.  This is due to rewashing items you’ve already cleaned, dropping items back into the sink, and simply not having the faucet over the dish that you are supposed to be rinsing off.  How much more water and time you will use depends on how much wine you drank.

3)      Expect the process to be noisier than normal, for some of the same reasons outlined in point two.  If you are lucky, you have a stainless steel sink, where jostling dishes and falling flatware sound with a dull thud; as opposed to a ceramic sink, where when completely sober, gently laying dishes down can make a surprisingly sharp crack.

4)      Hopefully you were cleaning up while you cooked, before you started drinking wine (unless you were drinking while cooking, you know, just to get in the proper mood for dinner).  If you were conscientious about this, hurray for you, you should have no sharp knives needing washing.  If you were not, be very, very cautious. 

5)      Do not attempt to put dishes away when you are done.  The reason for this is two-fold: 

a.       Reaching to the top shelf of the cabinet to put that one cereal bowl away really took a lot out you.  It doesn’t normally seem to require so much strength and concentration.

b.      Chances are, you aren’t doing a great job getting these dishes clean, and will need to redo some of them tomorrow.  If you are lucky, your husband will look them over and put them away while you are sleeping.

And we have the pictures to prove it

It’s official, our house in North Carolina is on the market.  The listing agreement was actually signed last month, but after a little clean-up and some small repairs, it is finally listed

Yes, my husband and I have embarked on the adventure of selling a house.  I have to tell you, it’s rather dull at the moment.  It has involved reading and rereading a bunch of papers (a step we can look forward to repeating), paying out large sums of money, and a lot of waiting.  I have elected not to write about real estate agents, as I am reserving judgment until the end.

Hopefully, this period of waiting will be abbreviated.  Without the rental income, our household has outlined its own austerity measures.  We are having trouble enacting them, and if it is this difficult in a republic of two (our kids are represented but do not have voting rights) it is no wonder nations are rebelling against them.  I am the worst about it.  I don’t have many personal splurges.  I make most of my own beauty and hygiene products, I’m now able to avoid expensive coffee drinks, and I don’t go out that much (I did just see Harry Potter, my first movie in the theatre since Toy Story 3).  My budgeting willpower breaks down in the grocery store.  Actually, it’s busted way before that; it’s when I open up a cookbook or Bon Appétit, or check out the latest on Dinner: A Love Story (just made the recipe for dry rub baby back ribs and I have to say it, OMG! it was good).  I also like to experiment with making pastry and chocolate, and this costs more money than our grocery budget now allows.  However, I realize that the most expensive ingredients do not make the best meals, and now just need to get a little more creative.

Please, the few of you that will read this, send out positive thoughts for a quick and successful sale of our house.  Once this process is over, we can begin again in a different role, eagerly (and later, anxiously, I’m sure) looking to buy a house up here in Virginia.

Going with it

I imagine myself as one who enjoys spontaneity, but that’s not true.  I want to be someone who enjoys spontaneity, but the reality is that I hate surprises.  Or at least, I like surprises that that give me time to plan.  Unfortunately for my husband, the imagined me frequently mentions that she is tired of being the one who has to make all the arrangements for family and couple outings, and that she would love it if he would just whisk her and the boys away for some fun.  However, on those occasions, it is the real me that is whisked away, and I bombard him with questions like “Are you sure that this place is open,” “do you have directions,” and “are you positive that we are appropriately dressed?”  (Those who know my husband understand that he has giving me cause to question him regarding that last matter.)

Last weekend he boosted my confidence in his ability to plan a surprise for us.  He drove us out into the countryside to pick lavender at the Seven Oaks Lavender Farm.  It was mentioned the Tuesday before at his Barbershop group (yes, my husband has recently started singing Barbershop) that this was the last weekend it would be open, and he knew he had to take me.  It was a beautiful day.  We got there in the morning, before the air became too sticky.  Edward had borrowed a flower basket from my mother, and we walked the short path from our car, stopping to look at the baby goats, up to the patch of lavender.  The woman who owns the field told us about the different types of lavender; the English Lavender, that is the sweetest smelling but was pretty much all picked; the Provence lavender, the most common variety and the best for cooking; and the Pierre Grosso, which has more of a camphor smell, but dries a beautiful, deep blue.  I crouched down, picking my stems while my son Max ran through the bushes squealing with delight and chasing butterflies.  Bumble bees buzzed all around, but they had more important things to do than to worry about us.

Lavender Syrup

I wasn’t completely prepared this time, but next year I will come ready with a list of everything I want to make with lavender, and be sure I collect enough.  I did have enough stems for lavender syrup, though.  It’s fragrant, sweet, and just subtly floral.  I use it in my tea and yesterday I drizzled it over a delicious vanilla pound cake. There is something poetic about eating flowers.

2 cups sugar

2 T dried lavender blossoms*

1 cup water

Put all ingredients in a small saucepan.  Bring to a simmer and stirring constantly, cook until sugar dissolves and syrup is just slightly thickened.  Remove from heat and allow it to cool.  After refrigerating for two days, I poured the syrup through a fine sieve to remove the lavender blossoms.  Store syrup in the refrigerator.

* mountain rose herbs is a great online source for herbs and spices 

Sing a New Song

It always creeps up on you, when you realize you’ve become your mother.  Rarely do I think before a statement is made, “I am going to say something that will sound like my mother’s voice is coming out of my mouth.”  The epiphany hits you after the statement or act is done.  Sometimes it makes you cringe; sometimes it makes you smile.

I was raised in a family that really, really loves to sing; and sing loud.  My parents played the music they liked, and while lots of kids grow up listening to Oldies, I was the only third grader in my class who knew all the words to Gene Pitney’s “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance,” or Jim Croce’s “Operator.”  Likewise, while my mother sang traditional lullabies to get us to sleep, “Rock-a-bye Baby”, “Hush Little Baby” and the like; the nighttime songs that come to mind most are “Greensleeves," “Yellowbird,” and “I’ve Got Plenty of Nothing.”  (While I knew the words, I didn’t really learn the melodies of these songs until much later.  My mother is horribly tone deaf, but she makes up for it in feeling.)

So, as we were driving along the other night and the sky started to pour, my son asked me to sing the rain song.  Did I think of “Rain, Rain, Go Away” or even “The Itsy Bitsy Spider?”  Nope, I started belting out B.J. Thomas’s “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ On My Head.”  At that moment I was my mother.  And I smiled.

Slow Times

It’s a little slow around here right now.  I suppose I should enjoy it, but I feel the need be working on something.  It’s probably because projects are looming ahead, promising joy and anxiety.

 I learned a few things last week though: 

1. I can’t understand why it has taken me this long to getting around to reading The Great Gatsby.  I have had this book on my shelf for over five years, and must have picked it up three or four times.  Somehow it never held my interest.  I must have given up at page three, because this time I could not put it down and finished it in two days.  What a beautifully tragic story.  Oddly enough, a conversation about the movie Roadhouse triggered my interest in starting it again.
2. Sweet onion butter!!!!  I made it to go along with some bacon muffins, and I now want to have it on hand all the time.  It's great on corn muffins, crumpets, and I'm looking forward to smothering it on a steak.  It’s very simple to make.  Take a stick of butter and let it come to room temperature.  Add ¼ cup chopped sweet onion, ½ tsp of garlic powder (more or less to taste), and mix it all together.  Put it in a crock, mold, or small bowl and there you have it. 
3. Every time I go grocery shopping, I should check how many eggs I have.  It’s simple arithmetic, but somehow I can never keep track of how many eggs I have used during the week.  When I load my groceries into my fridge on shopping day, I find that I either have twenty-two eggs, or like this week, one.  Does anyone have an idea for a pantry-staple, eggless dessert?  I didn't want to make a run with the kids just for eggs, so I tried twice to make a brownie-pudding cake, and let’s just say that you won’t be reading about it on my blog.  

I woke up a few days ago with Cyndi Lauper’s song Money Changes Everything in my head, and I thought, I would like to find out.

Better with Butter

Is there anything that butter does not make better?  My entire body says “No!” (and unfortunately, as the song goes, my hips don’t lie). 

This past week was a rather indulgent one.  My little sister graduated from high school on the 11th.  That evening I ate a large, cheese laden dinner, had a slice of chocolate-peanut butter cake, and then went out for song and drink at a Korean Karaoke place. 

My husband’s 30^th birthday was on Tuesday.  That was dinner at a local Korean grill (the Korean theme just happened unintentionally) where I first tried Bibimbap!  It will be hard not to order that every time we go back.  I also made him chocolate toffee bars.  This recipe called for one pound of butter!  They are a crumbly, cakey, cookie bar, with the brown butter flavor of toffee and topped with chopped nuts pressed into melted chocolate.  In a word: delicious.

Then there was drinking and eating with friends on Thursday downtown (I am going to have to recreate the fried green tomato BLT I had out sometime at home this summer) and Tess’s actual graduation party on Saturday, with more cheese laden food and more cake. 

But, Friday was really where it was at.  Friday was supposed to be an easy day at home.  I remember it was not, but I can’t quite remember why.  There was much tension throughout the day, but that afternoon made everything better.  My parents got my husband a charcoal grill for his birthday, and this past Friday we christened it with the best burgers we’ve ever made.  Add to that some home made strawberry lemonade, grilled corn on the cob, and blowing bubbles with Max and Sam, and we ended up with our easy summer afternoon.

The Best Burgers

My husband loves burgers.  Burgers are many times his benchmark of a restaurant.  So, it made me very happy when he finished his first one on Friday and said, “You know, you go out and order a great burger, and everyone says ‘Wow, this is great, but it’s never as good as home made.’  Before, I never got that. Now I do.”

I have a tendency to want to complicate dishes with herbs and spices, or try out different techniques.  I think I feel that the more components to a meal, the more of myself I can put into it.  I purposefully tried not to do that this time, but the method can lend itself to some interesting variations.

You will need:

4 T butter, softened

1 ¼ lb ground beef

Salt

Pepper

Buns and whatever “fixin’s” you like

First, get your charcoal grill going.

Roll the softened butter into a log.  If you want to make a more creative burger, you could add fresh, chopped herbs to the butter, or garlic, perhaps some chipotle peppers, before you roll it.  It’s up to you.  After you have your soft butter in log form, wrap it in plastic wrap and freeze it until solid, about 30 minutes.

Divide your beef into four sections and, handling the beef as little as possible, shape it into patties.  Now, take out your butter, and cut the log into four equal pieces.  Flatten each round into a disc.  Place each butter disc in the center of the patty, and shape the beef around it.  Remember, the patties will shrink on the grill, so you want to press them down and make them a little wider than the bun.

Season the patties with salt and pepper, and then grill them over direct heat until desired doneness, trying to turn as few times as possible.  Be sure not to pierce them or press on them with a spatula.  The butter will melt and seep into the rest of the patty, keeping it juicy and flavorful.  All you may really need is a piece of cheese melted on the top.