All American Apple Pi{e}

I love apple pie. When I lived in Hawaii I remember being the most homesick when I talked to my dad one evening as they were about to cut into a big apple pie in the back yard, watching the sun go down. Not many things say summer like an apple pie. 

I also love that I am married to a math genius whose favorite number is 3.14. When March 14 comes around it means pi{e} at our house. 

I made the pie crust the night before and forgot to take any pictures but I will still include the recipe. I believe this is my great grandma's recipe. This crust comes out so flaky and light, I have tried a ton of other recipes but I always come back to this one. It's perfect.

Pie Crust

5 Cups flour

2 Cups Crisco shortening

2 tsp salt

Cut these together with a pastry cutter until the mixture has the texture of coarse corn meal with small pea size chunks of shortening hanging out in there.

In a 1 cup measure whip together:

1 egg

1 Tab white vinegar

Fill the cup with ICE cold water

Pour over the flour/shortening mixture and toss together with a fork until it just begins to come together. Divide the dough and wrap in plastic wrap.

This will make 4-5 crusts so half the recipe if you are making one double crust pie like I did. 

You will also need some Granny Smith apples. I have tried other kinds but I like the tartness of Granny Smith's and I like that they hold up nicely when they bake. I usually use 8 large apples

 Peel up the apples

 Then slice them up, not paper thin, not super thick. Technical, I know.

Then drop a few on the floor, you know, for good luck...

 Then gather up the rest of the things you will need:

For the filling I use

8 Large Granny Smith apples
1/4-1/2 Cup flour
1/2-2/4 Cup white sugar
1 tsp-ish cinnamon
1 Tab lemon juice
Toss them all together and taste an apple or two to see if it needs more sugar or cinnamon.

The next step is to roll out your dough. Now, I had mine in the fridge over night so I pulled it out and let it rest on the counter while I was peeling and slicing my apples. If you make the crust the same day as the pie you will want to make it first and let it sit in the fridge while you do the apples. Confused yet?

I don't know any better way to roll out pie crusts or biscuits (recipe here) than on a pastry cloth. You can see how well loved mine is. It's the best!

 Roll it nice and big and then place it carefully in the pie plate. I cut the edges off of mine on the bottom crust when the plate has a nice wide rim.

Now pour the apples right in there

Roll out the the top crust, pop it on top, trim the edges and give them a nice crimp

With a sharp paring knife carve out the letter Pi on top (or some other kind of vent)

Throw that sucker in the oven at 350* for around an hour

Then just bask in it's glory. Ooooh Aaaahh!

We took our Pi{e} to some new friends' house to celebrate the day with them. You know when you meet someone new and you just know instantly that you are going to be great friends. Yeah, these people were like that. It's intimidating to make new friends sometimes but these guys were great to hang out with!

I didn't get any pictures last night but this morning I did eat a nice slice for breakfast. Is there anything that beats pie for breakfast?

Let me know if you end up making this pie or if you have any questions, I would love to see how it yours turns out!

Biscuits & Gravy

When I am feeling nice and lazy and don't want to make anything for dinner I whip up some biscuits. Sometimes we have them with gravy and sometimes we just eat half a pan of them with jam and call it good. It takes no time at all to make these biscuits and they are quite delectable if I do say so myself.

They're so easy that a 9 year old could make them and win Sweepstakes at the Cache County Fair in open class. That is a true story. It happened to me. I have been making these biscuits for a lot of years! This recipe seems long but I have added in a lot of tips and tricks that I have picked up over the years.

Baking Powder Ranch Biscuits

(Ranch, as in a cattle ranch. Not Hidden Valley)
4 cups flour
2 sticks butter- you have to use real butter, not margarine or spread. Just use butter!
8 tsp. baking powder
1 scant tablespoon sugar
dash of salt- seriously, just a dash especially if you use salted butter
1 1/3 cup milk
Oven temp 400*

Mix all dry ingredients in a large bowl. Toss in the sticks of butter and cut the butter into the flour with a pastry cutter. It looks like this:

You can get one here

You could also use a couple forks to do this but a pastry cutter really does the best job. You will know you are done cutting in the flour when your arm hurts and the mixture looks like very coarse corn meal with some chunks of butter that are small pea sized.

Slowly add in the milk and mix/toss it with a fork. Mix everything until it just barely starts to come together. If you over mix at this point your biscuits will get tough. We want light and fluffy so don't get too crazy mixing. It should look like this:

 

 Turn the mixture out on a floured counter top or a pastry cloth. I prefer a pastry cloth because I can sort of wrap the dough up and squeeze it together to get all the crumbly bits incorporated rather than having to mix it more. Have I mentioned that you shouldn't over mix?

Pat the dough out with your hands until it's about 1/2-3/4 inch thick. Cut with a glass or a clean tin can, just something with straight sides.

Now comes the key part. I don't know why I do this but I feel like it makes the biscuits better. You have to shake the biscuits. Shake is not the right word but that is what my little nephew B calls it when I make these biscuits with him- you can see he and his brother shaking them in the pictures below. Hold your hands like you are about to clap them together with the biscuit sitting on the counter between them. Then just roll the biscuit between your hands like you are trying to open a jar lid with freshly painted nails. Does that make sense? Just shake each biscuit around once or twice.

Pop them on a cookie sheet and bake for 15 minutes at 400*.

Gravy

While the biscuits are cooking I usually whip up some gravy. It's more of a method than anything else. I don't think I ever use a recipe but I will try to explain it.

Brown 1 pound of ground sausage- I like Italian or hot but really any kind will do. Once it's all brown sprinkle in some flour right on top of the meat. I think something like 1/8-1/4 cup? Mix that around until the flour soaks up the grease in the pan and sort of cooks onto the meat, it just takes a minute or so. Then just pour in some milk until it looks right. It will thicken the longer it cooks so keep your milk out and just add it and stir until it is as thick or thin as you like. I add a lot of black pepper to my gravy as well.

Once the biscuits are out of the oven, pull them apart and pour that delicious gravy all over the halves. I like to pair this entree with some home-canned green beans and home-canned peaches. We always had home-canned growing up but now store bought is how we roll.

You can also eat these with honey butter, berries and whipped cream or just some homemade raspberry jam.

Thanksgiving 2013 {the food}

Did you know that the Dr. and I love food? If not then I will inform you- we love food. A lot. We love to cook at home and we love to eat out. There's just something special about cooking a meal for someone else or sitting down to share a meal- it brings people together.

Good heavens, we probably ate a Thanksgiving size meal every night we were in AZ. We really wanted to stock up on some great Mexican food while we were there since you can't even buy refried beans here in Boston. We stopped at the Mesa Temple for a session on Saturday morning after arriving in Phoenix the night before. Lunch was in order after that as we had a 2+ hour drive to Flagstaff ahead of us. We popped into a little place called Mango's in downtown Mesa and it didn't disappoint. The chimichanga, the tacos, the beans and the rice! Ole!

Monday we made a trip to Phoenix to pick up the parental unit coming in from Seattle. What do they have in the Phoenix area? That's right, In-N-Out!

How could we not stop?? Their special sauce runs in my veins! Just look at those burgers and animal fries:

Is your mouth watering yet?

While the Dr., his brother and dad were all out on the reservation hunting, Shelley and I baked up a storm at the house. She made bread, I rolled pie crusts and the kids pulled apart the bread for stuffing. I made the turkey brine and the Dr. roasted it up the next day with some amazing gravy, potatoes by Trevor, green beans and asparagus. Everyone helped and it turned out great!

Caramel Apple Pie

Pumpkin

Banana Cream

French Silk (to die for!)

Stuffing helpers

The Turkey carving the turkey

The result of all our hard work

 Other foods of interest we had while in Flagstaff: Cafe Rio, Downtown Diner (Harlan's favorite greasy spoon for breakfast) and the Olive Garden (not that cool).

Food Storage

Does anyone else ever get really panicked about their food storage?

I have been thinking about getting it started and built up for a while now. When I was single I bought a gallon jug of water and some extra boxes of mac 'n' cheese. I think I had a box of Saltine crackers in the cupboard too. I was definitely going to survive the zombie apocalypse.

Since the Dr. and I got married I have been thinking about it a lot more and actually putting a little more effort to make it happen. I have a spreadsheet and I've been calculating, making lists and organizing. I feel like I have a pretty solid plan to store about 3 months worth of food. Once we have that perfected, I want to work on rotating through and maintaining that supply for a while and then move on to building up to a full year of food.

This hasn't been an easy process. One of the surprising things I have discovered is that many of our favorite items aren't available in our local Costco. Like re-fried beans. Seriously, when I asked the customer service desk if they carried them the guy didn't even know what I was talking about. Really!? They also don't carry our favorite pasta sauce and we can't find good enchilada sauce anywhere. We have resorted to some pretty extreme measures to acquire our favorite foods. When I was in Texas I went to Wal-Mart and bought 12 cans of El Pato enchilada sauce, packed it in my suitcase and flew it home with me. Boston, they just don't understand the beauty of good Mexican food.

Following a conversation with my boss about the government shut down I may have driven straight to Costco to pick up a few more items for the cupboards. I have packets of mashed potatoes stuffed into the drawers of our TV console and we are actually using the little cupboard above the fridge. Yep, that one that never has anything in it because it's too out of reach. There are a few boxes of long-term items from the church cannery sitting in the guest room waiting to be stuffed under a bed or into a hidden corner of the house. I promise I am not a hoarder, I am just trying to follow the prophet.

Don't mind me, I am just hoarding food.

We have also started making our own bread lately. There are a few things that have motivated me to begin doing this- the price, the taste and the ingredients. I can't believe the price of bread at the grocery store. Maybe I am just a cheap skate but why does it cost $6 for one loaf? I haven't been able to find a bread that I really enjoy eating either. I feel like Goldilocks- it's either too dry, too coarse, not substantial enough, it gets soggy by lunch time when you make a sandwich out of it. I am also unpleasantly surprised by how quickly it will mold, especially considering the amount of preservatives and added ingredients.

Hi, I am home made bread. Resistance is futile.

Coconut pineapple bread. We don't make sandwiches with this one but it's still tasty

I've found that homemade bread is just right. I can substitute sugar with honey, I can throw in some rolled oats, make it whole wheat or 50/50. I could roll cheese and ham inside and have ready made sandwiches for the week. I can make it just the way I want it. I usually spend a few minutes after church on Sunday throwing the ingredients in a mixer and waiting for it to rise while I take a nap. Then we spend our late afternoons smelling delicious bread puffing up and browning in the oven. Is there anything better than that?