About 15 or more years ago I conceded. After much self flagellation, high blood pressure, lots of flour and shortening, I came to the full realization that pie crusts were not my thing. I am okay enough with that to buy a pie crust when I have to. And it's a shame too, because I love pie. My mom made pies all the time, why can't I? I used recipes from Joy of Cooking, tried out Joe's Surefire Pie Crust recipe, took tips from all the housewive's secrets, used the ice cubes, didn't touch it, you name it, I tried the trick - but I still ended up squishing dough into pie crusts to at least contain the ingredients long enough to bake it. It was a tragic parody.
Enters John, my wanna-be-pastry-chef husband. Until he met me he was a Hamburger Helper, Pop Tarts kinda guy. As you know from recent posts, he has now taken over our bread making tasks. This weekend he tackled pie crusts. I hovered from a near distance. I made cracks from the peanut gallery; some out of fun, some out of envy. I relayed my story a dozen times. He is tenacious. And he was successful. Out of our oven, to my delight and surprise, came a perfect Apple Pie; melt in your mouth flaky crust, delectable apples....oh my.
I have now designated John as the Pie Baking King in our household. Let's give him a Big Hand!
I expect great things come Thanksgiving.
Sep 18, 2006
Sep 05, 2006
Our Daily Bread
We get to wake up to this many mornings:
One of the fun and unique (and healthy!) habits in our household is that we grind our own wheat for flour and make our own bread. I started doing this about 10 years ago and more recently John has taken up the task. He does it by memory and I have long forgotten the recipe.
We order once or twice a year from a local business who has a truckload of wheat delivered to their driveway from Montana, where all of us whole-wheaters gather to retreive our orders of 50# sacks of grain. We take it home and transfer it to tightly sealed 5 gallon buckets appropriately labeled (white, yellow or red wheat, for example). We keep large containers in the pantry so that we only have to fill them every other month or so.
So, tonite, as I was making chocolate chip oatmeal cookies, I used freshly ground wheat flour. Actually, that is not entirely correct. I keep about 3 cups in the freezer for small cooking requirements like gravy or something that is not worth hauling out the grinder for.
The best estimate is that each loaf costs us about 50 cents. We eat well in the Hanson Household!