Of February Joys

 

Paperwhite narcissus are such a joy to me. This is my second batch, the first one started in early December. I order 24 Ziva bulbs and use most of them in three or four containers around the house for Christmas. I put polished rocks in the containers, fill with water up to barely touching the bulb and keep them cool and dark for almost two weeks until roots are full and small pale green shoots appear when I bring them out. 

Then I have enough bulbs left for one big display and I believe the second batch are even more special, filling my kitchen with their perfume.

Do you see that sweet face above? James Mason and his sister always bring me joy! And he's in another episode of disc disease pain right now so I'm trying to keep him resting and inactive as much as possible while the meds work. 

This gives me the opportunity to write a blog post and I wanted to tell you about the absolutely amazing apple pie I made before Christmas. It's from a 2007 Cook's Illustrated magazine and it was a labor of love, taking me all day. Was that just me and my slowness? I mean, I always take triple time that recipes say it's supposed to take. 

I can't give you a link to this recipe because you have to subscribe to it now but you know a pie crust is going to be good when it calls for two sticks of butter and sour cream. After I put it together in my Cuisinart, formed it into two balls and put it in the fridge for two hours I started peeling the apples. [I took pictures each step of the recipe but am sparing you most of them!]

This is the step that was a surprise to me but is supposed to be so much better than using raw apples. I cooked the apples in a Dutch oven, along with the white sugar, brown sugar, cinnamon, salt, lemon juice and zest for 20 minutes AND then put the cooked apples on a baking sheet to cool for 30 minutes. I started to skip this step but decided to follow everything as written. 

Have you ever cooked the apples for an apple pie?

Then I put the apple mixture in a colander and drained out the juices to discard. 

Then it was time to roll out the dough into two rounds. And then the rounds of dough went back into the fridge for 30 minutes on parchment paper! After that I lined the pie plate with one round and poured the apples into that and sprinkled with lemon juice. 

Time to top the pie with the second pastry, slits cup in, brushed with egg white wash, and sprinkled with sugar.

After baking at 425 F. for 40 minutes (recipe called for 45-55 minutes) I took it out and then had to wait 1 1/2 hours to cut and eat.

Lord have mercy, was that apple pie the best I've ever eaten!

Okay, maybe it didn't take me all day but it took me hours and hours. And I'll never make it again unless we have company there to help us eat it because apple pie, even good apple pie, is not so good after two days and the critters and birds got the rest. The crows were particularly fond of it. 

Time to help James Mason get up and go potty. My to-do list mainly consists in taking care of him for a few days while squeezing in some basics as I can. I certainly won't be making another apple pie anytime soon. 

What are you all up to now?

Supper Thyme

Did you ever put thyme in pie?

If you haven't, consider putting it in blueberry pie now that summer is here. 

Here's the link to Southern Living's Thyme-Scented Blueberry Pie.

I added a cup of frozen cranberries to the recipe because I didn't have nearly enough of the

blueberries the recipe called for.

RH said it was the best blueberry pie I'd ever made, but maybe that had something to do with the crust. The recipe calls for refrigerated crusts, which I've been known to use, but I had been wanting to make a crust with vodka so tried it.

Oh, my word, the vodka does make it so tender!

Recipe here from Cook's Illustrated.

The recipe called for the crust to be made in a food processor. I had never done this but I bet many of you have. I am directions-challenged but read the recipe over and over and finally did it.

You can't possibly know how proud of myself I was to do this instead of using my trusty old pastry blender.

I'll tell you one other thing I did last week for the first time in over a year--I drove myself to the grocery store and shopped alone, carried in the groceries alone when I got back home.

And I was so proud of myself! You see, part of what I've been doing the two months I was on my blogging break was going to physical therapy two times a week, three times a week the first month.

I've had bad knee pain since January and was diagnosed with patella femoral pain syndrome, similar to runner's knee. The therapist also discovered I had tibialis anterior tendonitis. 

Since I had felt this winter that I was soon going to need a walker to get about, I have been faithful to my PT appointments and doing the exercises at home. And next week, God willing, after almost three months, I will be finished with PT but of course must continue the exercises at home--if I know what's good for me.

So that, combined with my computer being down for three weeks, made it easy for me to almost drop out of blogging. 

But a blogger I am and so to blogging I returned in my last post. Just as once again driving gave me a renewed sense of independence, so blogging gives me that indefinable unexplainable feeling of accomplishment too.

Those of you who blog or are on Instagram, etc., do you feel this way too?

No one may really care what we had for supper except ourselves, but isn't it fun to share?

The organic vegetables above went into Jacob's Lentil Stew, recipe here. I also added a couple of turnips to it as we really like the tang they add to vegetable soups.

Thank you for reading my rambling supper post. What are you having for supper?

Here is supper. It smells good.

It looks good. It tastes good.

It is good.

All good things come from You.

Gunilla Norris in

Being Home 

 

Pie in the Sky

Well, not really. Pie on the table here today.

Can you believe it?

After my last post was about healthy eating?

I did take it seriously, friends, and printed out every one of your comments.

So many good ideas there--thank you!

But today is Father's Day,

and R.H.'s request was coconut cream pie.

That's our wedding china there,

Copeland-Spode Blue Bird.

I had leftover pie dough so I made a pecan pie too.

But wait, what did our daughter-in-law bake for him for Father's Day?

A chocolate meringue pie!

Three pies!

R.H. is in pie heaven and he sampled the chocolate for lunch.

I think I will freeze the pecan for July 4th

as Christy and Bryan will be here and Bryan loves pecan pie.

Have I ever showed you our vintage pie rack?

We've had it for over 40 years

and one Thanksgiving we filled up all pie pans.

My favorite vintage pie pan is the top one, "Golden Boy."

It is what I used to call our firstborn when he was a toddler:

"You're my golden boy!"

Because he had bright blonde hair.

Here's the few silver pastry forks I have and they really are nice for eating pie.

It's been a nice Father's Day.

I actually succeeded in getting R.H. to rest for once.

Here's a picture we got from our youngest son today,

a picture of our granddaughters!

Happy Father's Day!

These orange double day lilies were here when we bought the house,

planted on one side of the house.

Don't they look pretty with the Queen Anne's Lace?

Three French Hens & Key Lime Pie

Christmas Day 1961

Our first Christmas Day as newlyweds.

No Christmas cookies made yet but I did make a delicious Key Lime Pie today from the Key Limes shown below, handpicked for me in Florida by a beautiful young woman from her parents' tree. Thank you, Amy, they were delicious!

May I illustrate my story of the Three French Hens with a couple of pictures of my pie?

Well, of course I can. How are you going to object?

I was 18, recently graduated from high school and married to R.H. in the fall after going to work at a big religious publishing house. I was the baby of the department I worked in. Next youngest were staff in their forties.

In December we were all invited to the department Christmas party, a dinner held at the home of our boss, Dr. Burton. There were three editors and their wives, the boss's secretary and her husband, and two single ladies who were editorial assistants, and lowly me, the new receptionist.

Dressed in my Sunday best, I went alone as I could not talk R.H. into going with me.

The party was in a beautiful house, the host and hostess gracious as Southern men and women of that time excelled at being. I managed to behave reasonably well by keeping my mouth shut and listening to my betters except for polite replies to their questions, mainly expressing their regret that they would be unable to meet my young husband. 

My table manners passed approval, I think, but then the after dinner entertainment was announced. Beautifully beribboned scrolls were passed around the table with the words to all the verses of "The 12 Days of Christmas."

Dr. Burton said, "We need 12 people to do this properly but since Mr. Callis was unable to come tonight, I'll take the first and last verses."

I blushed at being the center of stares at that but then I blushed at the drop of a hat in those days. My part in the following entertainment? I had the third verse, which meant I had to sing my solo NINE times. That one is, if you remember, the Three French Hens line and I was beet red before, during and after each time I had to somehow get the line out. 

I think every person at the table that night was in their church choir and one man was the music director of his. Not me. I was not tone deaf. No, I knew perfectly well what each tone was as I had studied piano for eight years, but I never hit the right notes, not once.

My children used to beg me NOT to sing as soon as they could talk. I think their first full sentence was:

"No, Mama, don't sing."

My co-workers politely ignored my sour off key words…"Three French Hens." But they never again asked me to sing.

It was very good pie.

Green Tomato Pie Time

Virginia Rich has been called the originator of Culinary Mysteries. I bought her first book, The Cooking School Murders back in 1982 and then her next two, The Baked Bean Supper Murders, and The Nantucket Diet Murders when they came out. I was sad when I learned she passed away before completing any more books. Later Nancy Pickard was chosen to continue the Eugenia Potter mysteries and she wrote three more.

I identified with Virginia Rich's Eugenia Potter character even though I didn't have a cottage in Maine or a cattle ranch out West. She was my kind of people.

"How I wanted to be a cheerleader,

Mrs. Potter remembered with a pang.

It had been no comfort at all to be able to spell."

The young girl above was one of the prettiest and sweetest cheerleaders pictured in my 1961 senior yearbook. Notice the length of her skirt? There was something so feminine about these modest uniforms and very alluring, R.H. says, when a twirl or jump in the air revealed just a glimpse of shapely legs. And of course I wished I was a cheerleader. Making A's in English didn't help at all.

Want to see a photo in the same yearbook of me and R.H.? I thought you'd never ask….

There we are, all dressed up for Hillbilly Day. I don't know why my mother and I thought that this dress and ruffled pantaloons were hillbilly attire but R.H. had it just right, down to a corncob pipe.

I've wanted to make Eugenia Potter's Green Tomato Pie ever since I read the book and what better excuse than now so I can blog about it. I made the crust out of a cookbook called Old Hundred that my parents gave me back in the 1970s, brought home from a trip to Calgary, Canada, but Old Hundred was in New England. Can you tell that I've used this cookbook a lot over the decades?

Falling apart at the seams but the recipe makes a very tender crust. I had a little trouble with the lattice work of the crust, as you can see…

But it was delicious. Here's the recipe from The Cooking School Murders by Virginia Rich:

Grandmother Andrews' Green Tomato Pie

Slice thinly:

6-8 small green tomatoes sliced paper thin

1 lemon, cut in quarters and then in paper thin shreds

Crumble together:

1 cup brown sugar

1/4 cup white sugar

4 tablespoons flour

3 tablespoons butter

1 teaspoon salt

Layer the tomatoes and lemon shreds with the sugar mixture sprinkled on each layer.

Bake at 425 degrees for 25-30 minutes.

"Edward made pastry with professional ease and speed.

Mrs. Potter crumbled brown sugar, flour, and butter

to layer with the thin tomato slices Charlotte's knife was producing,

along with paper-thin shreds of whole lemon to be interspersed among them.

Greg amused himself cutting and twisting Edward's velvety pastry dough

into lattice strips to crisscross the top of the pie."

"Maybe, as you say, that pie would be even better cold, Aunt 'Genia,"

was Greg's verdict later as the four ate lunch on the porch,

"but I don't see how."

I don't see how either, but I'm sure going to try a second piece cold from the fridge tonight after supper. 

I know that Fried Green Tomatoes with all kinds of gourmet sauces are on restaurant menus now, but here is 'Genia's simple recipe the way it was done in Iowa in her grandmother's kitchen:

         Fry bacon, bread green tomato slices in cracker crumb, and sauté, keep warm. Make a cream gravy with drippings to serve over bacon and tomatoes.

And for those who asked how the new chickens are doing at Valley View, here is a photo of Sunny and Cher taken yesterday morning peering in the door at me while I was cooking.

They look perfectly at home, don't they? While Gray Girl was in the leaves scratching away, they were up stealing a little cat food. I think they were waiting for a piece of pie though.