Overbooked and Underpaid: Notes from a Yes-aholic

Pie Week - Day Three: Fruit Difficulty Ratings

When you are making a fruit pie, the crust is only part of the process. Even if you are using a store  bought crust you still have to prep the fruit you will be using for the filling. Some fruits take no time at all, others are incredibly labor intensive and can actually double the amount of time you spend on your pie before you even put it in the oven.

I've prepared the following rating system for how much time you can expect to spend prepping fruit for a 9 inch pie shell:

• Blueberry                           Easy            prep time 5 minutes             
  • prep - wash and drain, check for rotten berries and stems. Coat w sugar 7 flour mixture.
• Strawberry/Rhubarb    Easy            prep time 15 minutes
  • prep - wash, hull and slice berries; cut leaves off Rhubarb, wash and dice. Coat w sugar & flour mixture
• Cherry                                 Medium     prep time 25 minutes
  • prep - wash and drain, pit cherries, check for rotten berries and bugs. Coat w sugar & flour mixture  
• Apple                                  Medium     prep time 25 minutes
  • prep - peel and core apples. Slice very thin, either with a paring knife or mandoline. Alternate in crust with butter and sugar mixture. 
• Peach                                   Hard           prep time 25-40 minutes
  • prep - wash peaches, drop each peach in boiling water for about 15-30 seconds, plunge peach into ice water and remove skin, insert knife at stem area and make a cut through to the pit, extend cut all the way around the peach until you have the two halves separated. Using your hands, twist opposite directions to free the stone from the peach and then slice. If using non-freestone peaches, cut each slice off the peach individually. Wash hands frequently as this is all a very slimy process. Alternate in crust with butter and sugar mixture.        

Pie Week - Day Two: Plastic Wrap

One of the biggest hassles of rolling out your own pie crust is dealing with cracks, especially at the edges. 

A great tool for helping keep your crust smooth without adding too much flour or overhandling it (both activities that contribute to a tough crust) is plastic wrap. 

I try to touch the pastry dough as little as possible while I am rolling it out so here is my step by step process on using the wrap:

 

1. After mixing your crust ingredients together, turn them out onto a piece of plastic wrap and use it to gather the dough into a ball

 

2. Keeping the plastic around the dough start to flatten it. This helps keep the edges smooshed together by the wrap, reducing cracking and helping you smooth out the crust without actually touching it with your hands.

3. Now you have a nice, smooth, uncracked crust without adding extra flour.

Click here for my complete Blueberry Pie recipe.

Easy as Pie Part Two

 

Make pie? Are you kidding me woman? I have waaaaay too much to do!

OK, here's why you should make pie.

Firstly, there are very few desserts as satisfying and easy - yes, I mean it, easy (if you approach it right) as homemade fruit pie.

Secondly, making pie is a great family activity. I had the good fortune to grow up having a mother who showed me how to make pie. Only apple - I don't think she actually makes any other kind, come to think of it. And because my mother had learned from her mother, it felt like a big deal to be part of a tradition. 

I actually found out only last year that, due to a lot of complicated reasons, my younger sister never got this time with my mother. It turns out that my sister didn't really get cooking lessons of any kind. By the time she would have been the right age, both hers and my mother's lives spun in entirely new directions and my mother stopped doing almost any cooking.

When I found this out, it had a big impact on me. And, when my sister came to visit last year, we decided to have a pie baking day. I tried to remember everything that was special about my grandmother's pie and also to share all the little tips and tricks I've picked up along the way. My sister and I don't get much time together (she lives several states away) and this is a visit I will always especially cherish.

I also lost one of my best friends to breast cancer in 2007. She left behind three young children. One of her big regrets as she was facing the end was how much there still was to teach them. She felt especially guilty for having worked so many long hours to get ahead in her career, and also provide them with material things, but not having spent as much time doing things with them like baking.

And I also think of all the times I have "bought my kids a memory". 

Let me explain what I mean by that - once, when we were traveling from Connecticut to Long Island, we spent the extra money to take the ferry. It was the first time our kids ever saw the ocean. Well, it wasn't very exciting - kind of gray and cloudy and rough. And it was, for us, expensive. And my husband asked me, "Are we paying this money just to buy the kids a memory?" And the answer, of course, was yes.

So my first question to you is this:  "How often do you "buy your kids a memory?"

And my second question is: Who do you want teaching your kids to make pie - you or Martha Stewart?"

Honestly, I just as soon leave her out of it. 

And, even if you fail dismally and your pie is awful, you will have spent quality time with your kids, taught them something about success and failure and grace (cause you'll eat it anyway) and have spent approximately ten dollars in the process.

And the worse the pie is, the funnier the stories will be that get handed down to future generations.

So go make pie! And, if you need help, follow my tips here.

 

 

Pie Recrudesce

 

You'll have to look that word up. I did, and I am all the better for it.

I wanted to follow up a little bit on what I wrote in Easy As Pie Part Two.

I gave, I think, a pretty convincing argument for making pie from scratch, and, especially, taking the time to make it a family activity. 

The bit I left out is how to arrange your schedule to make that actually happen.

There are things I like to call "destination activities". These are things that you have to go out of your way to do or specifically put a time on your calendar to do. They often consist of things like taking the kids to the beach or to an amusement park, attending one of your kids ball games or dance recitals, you get the gist.

Most of us are in the habit of making things like ball games, track meets and recitals a priority. Especially those of us under the age of 55. I think we had it banged into our heads by all the parenting guru's since the 70's that parents who blow off attending their kids activities are going straight to hell.

Now, I don't know about you, but I'm pretty bad about cooking or doing much of anything else outside of work on a day when I have to squeeze in one of those games or recitals. The last time I actually baked cookies to take to a piano recital was probably 2005. (I always forget that it's even part of the expected recital routine and wind up picking up some really bad, overpriced, baked goods from the convenience store around the corner.) On my better days, I grab one of my own plates so that I can at least wrestle the stuff out of its store packaging, arrange it on a plate, and look as though I gave the whole business more than a nano-second of thought.

So I need to be very clear that, on days when I make pie, I very seldom cook anything else. I make the pie the big focus. 

Frozen pizzas and homemade pie? 

Works for me.

And I don't try to make pie and take the kids somewhere on the same day. I pick a day - maybe a rainy one - and, instead of taking them to the museum or the playland or whatever, we take the time that we would have spent doing something that, quite frankly we've done many times before anyway, and we make pie instead.

And it's waaaay cheaper.

And I don't come home with a bunch of crappy little plastic toys and souvenirs that suddenly have no owners when it's time to pick them up or put them away.

So, try to make pie.

You have nothing to lose but your waistline.

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