Littlest Pastry Chef

I remember standing on a step stool at the end of the counter watching my granny make pies, cookies and other tasty goodies. Hopefully my kids carry the same happy memories of creating delicious treats.
Keeli had a great time playing with a small handful of left over pie crust dough, a bowl of flour and the rolling pin for nearly an hour after our project was completed. She thinks the cinnamon sugar cookies we make from the remaining crust dough were "hers."

Sundown

Pie Anyone?

Rick proudly proclaims that his Grandma Bert makes the best apple pie in the world. And, wasn't I suprised to learn that she takes them out of the freezer, bakes and enjoys them.

They aren't mass produced and boxed. They are homemade pies. She just freezes them to allow us to enjoy them year round.

It has become a tradition for us to spend a weekend or two making pies for the freezer to provide a few sweet things for the winter months. We started with these lovely apples. They are a hybrid variety of the traditional Golden Delicious apple and were available at a nice price at the farmers market.
Next we prepare the pie crust using Grandma Bert's not so secret recipe. This crust is heavy, flaky and sweet, perfect for fruit pies.

5 cups all-purpose flour
2 cups shortening
2 Tbps. brown sugar
2 tsp. baking powder
Roughly mix the dry ingredients together and cut in shortening.
In a small bowl mix together 3/4 cup lukewarm water, 1 large egg, 1 Tbsp. vinegar.
Make a bowl in the center of the dry ingredients and pour in liquid. Fold together until a stiff dough forms.
This recipe makes enough for 5 individual crusts and can be stored in the refrigerator or frozen until needed.

Now we are ready for the fun stuff. Peeling and coring all in a twist. The kids really enjoy this part. We peeled at least 15 pounds of apples.

Then, we sliced them into smaller pieces, added some sugar, flour, cinnamon, nutmeg and butter for the perfect pie filling.
Then, we put the tops on. The girls got fancy with a couple of the pies using apple cookie cutters. Most of our pies are just plain, functional and tasty. This pie will reside on the bottom shelf of the freezer with its brothers in a nice plastic bag.

For the Love of Pears

The farmer's market has been a treasure trove of fresh fruit. We have purchased four 20-pound boxes of pears from a Wenatchee area orchardist. For the first few days they have this vibrant green color.
We place them on newspapers in the cool, semi-dark basement and one week later they are this beautiful, ripe yellow. Some have a nice touch of salmon pink to their skin.
Then, it's peeling, paring, cleaning and packing. After about a half hour in the canner, we have some lovely fruit to enjoy later this winter.

I also had to spend part of the day "reprocessing" a batch of jelly that didn't set. I've never made jelly before on my own, we're usually the types to enjoy strawberry and raspberry freezer jam. But, this year I wanted to make jelly. The juice for this jelly is 50% sour cherry and 50% plum. It came out a really pretty color.
On a crazy side note, does anyone else think that once you halve a pear the seeds and core resemble popular drawings of aliens? Those little seeds look like their almond shaped solid colored eyes and the core is sort of tapered to the bottom like a chin. Too strange, or maybe I've been in the kitchen too long.

The Sweetness Factor

Sweet corn...this will be yummy in our tummies during the winter months.
We were recently invited to pick sweet corn from a local organically managed field. The corn has fantastic flavor (I sampled far too much while processing) and every ear was full of yellow, plump, juicy kernels.

All our little pickers were out in the field pulling ears from the corn stalks. Of course, one picker did the majority of the work in the field, but he doesn't complain too much and works relatively cheap.

After about two hours of picking and building a pile of corn in our truck bed, we headed for home - where my work would begin.

I spent two days blanching, cutting, freezing and vacuum packing corn for our freezer. Corn is one of the few things I refuse to preserve by canning. Canned corn isn't as visually appealing or as tasty as frozen corn.
We can't wait to enjoy it as a simple side dish with melted butter and in Mexican corn bread and corn chowder and meatball soup and corn pudding and ... ...