Category Archives: food and cooking

Berry Pies

family, food and cooking, , ,

It’s traditional for Mr. Glad to have homemade blackberry pie for his birthday, which arrives at the peak of the wild blackberry season here in Northern California. As a young couple we did our first picking up near the Eel River when we were just making hopeful forays northward, thinking about where to move to when our college days were done.

Later we had the bushes growing like weeds in our back yard and neighborhood, and the children could bring in plenty, so much that there were many more berries than I could bake into pies.  I developed a recipe for blackberry syrup to process in jars so that year by year we had it to pour on pancakes.

Twenty years ago we moved to a less rural part of the county and now have to make more of an effort to collect our pie ingredients. In the last few years it has twice happened that one or two of the children made heroic efforts against busy schedules and blazing heat to collect buckets full enough for me to bake the customary pie or two.

One year I carted one of these pies up the mountain for our Yosemite family camp experience, and forgot the birthday candle. Someone carved a sort of long matchstick from a twig to use instead, but it was pretty much a failure.

Just above is the time I baked a blackberry pie at the high mountain cabin where I like to go for solitary retreats or for family gatherings where cooking is appreciated.

This busy-busy summer, there was hardly time for a spark of thought about going berry-picking, so I picked up two bags of mixed frozen berries at Costco with plans to make four pies for the big party that the children would give.

 

 

I’d used this berry mix once before, to make my usual blackberry pie recipe, the result being a kind of gummy candy wrapped in pastry. As the berries are individually quick-frozen, I speculated that they lose a lot of moisture in the process and must need less thickening than what I’d automatically put in the bowl.

So this time around, I used less than half the amount of tapioca granules called for in the original Joy of Cooking recipe. A little runny would be better than globby. And the pies were a little runny, so if I do it again I’ll use exactly half the thickening.

Getting the edge of the crust to look nice is not the easiest part of pie-making. It took me quite a few failed attempts in my youth before someone showed me to hold the top and bottom layers of crust together as one, while you fold them under, against the edge of the plate. Now you are all ready to flute the edge, if you want. My pinching technique is shown at right in a photo I had Mr. Glad snap for me. Click on it if you want to see it large.

It seems hard to bake a berry pie without the blue showing through the top crust. Two of the pies I put an egg wash on, and two not. Two had a little less butter in the crust. But they all came out looking about the same.

 

 

 

What was really different was baking them in a convection oven. With the first two pies, I experimented and used the foil collar on one and not on the other, and they baked equally, beautifully brown. So I may not use foil collars ever again!

 

The flavor was excellent, a composite of blackberries (Marionberries, to be precise),  blueberries, and raspberries, with butter seeping in from the crust, and a bit of cinnamon with the fruit. I go lightly on the sugar so that the sweetness doesn’t overwhelm the taste buds.

 

It was a wonderful party the children had for their beloved father, and he was very pleased not to have to go without his pie.

Cherry Tomatoes Then and Now

food and cooking, garden, tomatoes

Today I had a hankering for soup, so it was lucky that I found in the freezer a quart of the Cherry Tomato Soup I concocted last summer, or fall, to be exact. It seemed to want to go with the quart of Ham and Bean Soup that I also found in there, and after that, it was only natural to throw in the leftover green beans that had a smearing of pesto on them. Yum.

Here is what last year’s soup looked like before freezing. When I went back to find the post to link to, I noticed Anita’s tale of how her curried tomato soup happened, and it sounds like something I’d like to try this year, if my eight plants produce. But–I’m afraid they might have blight!

Here’s the biggest picking of tomatoes I’ve made so far. The green one is a Green Grape. It looks more like the Green Cherry I had last year, compared with the red one there, a plain Grape. The dark ones are Black Cherry, and the yellow are Yellow Cherry.

Thank God for cherry tomatoes, which ripen fairly quickly. Even they are three weeks late, and we are still waiting on the big tomatoes.

Bread with Sorghum

books, bread, food and cooking, housework, people

I made some more bread this week. The bread pans and dough hook were still in hiding, but I enjoyed the kneading, and the free-form loaves do look more rustic, even if they are a bit problematic for B. when making his lunch in the mornings.

This time I used a lot less oil and sugar, and for flour I added some oat and sorghum to the mix. Sorghum? I picked up a small bag of the stuff somewhere, sometime, toward the goal of always-increasing variety in the diet. I didn’t really know where sorghum comes from, but while the dough was rising I read on the bag that it is a grain. This morning I read more about it online and find that it has been used for a long time by humans, more in other parts of the world than here in the U.S., but is gaining popularity here, too.

When it was time to put the loaves into the oven I quickly tried to think of what styles of decorative cuttings I’d seen on commercial artisan breads, but it was too late to do a good job of being creative in that department. So far, my experiment shows that the simple and traditional architecture is nicer.

I have a dear friend N. who is about my age. Neither of us gets to make bread the way we used to 20 or 30 years ago, when The Tassajara Bread Book was one of our bread bibles. Tonight I talked with her on the phone and told her about making bread twice in one week. She was surprised, and said, “You must be avoiding something you should be doing instead.”

That’s one way of seeing it, and how wonderful to have a friend who understands me! Another aspect of the phenomenon is that breadmaking is a relatively small and particular task that I know how to do. None of the little decisions about how closely to follow the recipe comes with very many options, and if the whole batch is ruined for some reason it wouldn’t have much consequence. Baking a loaf or two of bread takes only a few hours, and makes me feel homey, useful, and accomplished.

The tasks I am “avoiding,” on the other hand, consist of three whole rooms, each of which will require at least a day’s worth of work, consisting of one hard decision after another about whether to keep one item or who among my friends, or among thrift shops, might want  another one. If I keep it, how will I store it so I can find it? Etc. Everyone knows how that works.

Now how did I end up talking about sorting junk when I started with homemade bread? The subject is like the clutter itself, creeping in when you are busy doing doing good work. This next week is my chance to tackle one of those rooms, where I hope to lodge a wedding guest if I can clear off the bed. And this afternoon I found both my dough hook and my loaf pans, so it’s even possible I might be inspired to make bread again, too.

Bread for Sanity’s Sake

food and cooking, housework

Many things I do are probably downright irresponsible and illogical. Like making bread and blogging about it, when large areas of the house are still scary to venture into because of the piles of this and that tottering around you. Just fixing that one many-faceted problem should take priority over any optional activities, but there’s more.

A party is being given for my husband this Saturday, for which actual cleaning would be in order, and maybe hanging some balloons in those places where we still don’t have pictures back up on the wall for several reasons. I don’t have all my wedding garments ready or chosen or shopped for, for my own son’s wedding that is in two weeks. The church garden needs some more things planted, so they’ll be ready for the big festival we have in two months, and my garden wants weeding. Grandchildren are having birthdays for which I mustn’t forget to send the gifts I do have around here somewhere.

If I say that some things must be done just to keep me sane, I hope it will make people think twice before they call me to account for what is probably laziness.

In any case, I’m glad I did make bread yesterday. I tried to come up with a sensational title to this post, seeing how breadmaking is so fundamental and important an activity in the history of the world. And I love to make bread, though I haven’t for a year or more…can’t remember the last time I took out the yeast. When God gives me a summer of fog, and goosebumps in my own house, perhaps I could make a case for it even being logical to make bread.

Any bread would do, the mood I was in, so I found this card in my recipe box, and rye flour in a drawer. I started by mixing a sponge in my Kitchen Aid, and would have done most of the kneading in there, too, but I couldn’t find my dough hook. It must be in one of those boxes I haven’t unpacked. So I initiated my new quartz countertops in a monochromatic kneading session that only hurt my wrists a little bit.

I stayed up late last night waiting to take this bread out of the oven, and I’d have blogged about it right then if my camera battery hadn’t been used up. The plan was to go right to bed as soon as I turned off the stove. But it didn’t seem long after I set the loaves on my new baking stone and shut the door before Mr. Glad called from upstairs to ask what that “strong” smell was; he hoped the bread wasn’t burning.

No, it wasn’t, but when I looked inside, I saw that it was browning more quickly than I expected. Must be the convection oven, or the amount of sugar in the dough. I put some foil loosely over the top and let it stay in the full 45 minutes, during which time the whole house filled with the heady anise smell on top of the plain wonderful bread smell.

When I did take it out, I must have been in the middle of reading something interesting; anyway, I didn’t go to bed, and before I knew it, the bread was cool enough to slice and eat, which I did. I’m glad to report that it wasn’t as exquisite eating as it was intoxicating to the olfactory senses, or I’d have gone to bed really late, with a tummy ache.

It’s a very nice bread, but a little too sweet and rich for my taste. I’ll have to make some adjustments if I use the recipe again. This morning I hope to take one loaf to a friend. Thank You, Lord!