Ingredients:
Method:
Anya said I have too much “computer stuff” on my website again — not enough kittens and pie and fun stuff. So I am not allowed to post anything about computers for ALL OF FEBRUARY! And, if I do post about it, I get March added on. And another month for the next infraction, and so on. So … umm … pie!
Anya made a peach pie — I had extra pie crust dough from making a quiche a few nights ago, and we had frozen sliced peaches over the summer when we picked up a big pile of fresh peaches. I made a maple sugar crumble (maple sugar instead of brown sugar in a crumble recipe) for the topping. Anya used cookie cutters to decorate the pie with maple leaves and a snowflake. It was very tasty!
Ingredients:
Method:
Ingredients:
Method:
Place frozen strawberries in a large pot, sprinkle with salt and drizzle with lemon juice.
Over medium heat, heat until strawberries begin to break down (stirring frequently).
Lower heat to simmer and cook until volume is reduced by about half.
Cool and refrigerate to store overnight.
12
servings1
hour40
minutes14 oz all-purpose Flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
226 g unsalted butter, room temperature
284 g sugar
1 Tablespoon lemon juice
170 g egg whites, room temperature
125 g strawberry reduction, room temperature
170 g heavy whipping cream
Ingredients (1 serving):
Method:
I wanted to use the left-over turkey from Thanksgiving to make some quick(ish) pre-cooked freezer meals. Turkey pot pies sounded like a neat idea — make a couple batches of pie dough, saute a bunch of veggies, add diced turkey, and turn stock make with the bones into fresh gravy.
The first step was to dice up all of the left-over turkey — then put the bones along with some salt, onion, and garlic cloves in a pressure cooker to make a stock. I used a combination of roux and corn starch to thicken the stock into a gravy.
I diced carrots, broccoli, onion, garlic, and green beans and sauteed it all. Then mixed in corn kernels and the diced turkey.
After stirring in the gravy, I’ve got turkey pot pie filling.
I assembled a large pie for dinner.
Since the filling is wet, I blind baked the bottom crust for twenty minutes then filled the pie and added a top crust. The large one for dinner went into the oven. The six small pies were topped and put into the freezer to firm up.
Once everything was frozen, I used the vacuum sealer to package up my pies. Since I have ceramic mini pie plates, I need to take these out of the freezer and sit the package in a water bath to warm up the ceramic. Then bake at 350 F for about an hour for a simple (but not really quick) meal.
They turned out well — the extra baking of the mini pies made a nicely caramelized and crunch bottom crust. For next time, gravy absorbs into everything, so I need more gravy. And I think it would be a lot easier to have one larger pie instead of the three individual ones. Just need to pick up a few stainless steel deep-dish pie plates so I have something that can actually go from the freezer to oven directly.
I made chicken and dumplings (well, spaetzle) this evening. Pressure cooked chicken bones with some garlic, onion, and salt for an hour to make broth. Added sauteed onions, carrots, corn, green beans, and diced chicken. I thickened the broth with a little corn starch. And we each mixed in some hot pepper sauce to make it spicy 🙂
I used to call decaf “what’s the point” coffee … because the whole point of my coffee consumption was staying awake on as little sleep as possible. Since I’ve cut back on work hours (a.k.a. set some boundaries), I had stopped drinking coffee. But I really like good coffee. So I got a bag of decaffeinated coffee from the grocery store. Strange experience from the last time I got a bag of coffee — now, half of the coffee section is Starbucks which I don’t much care for, at least 3/4 of the remaining bags were ground … which struck me as strange because the whole bean coffee is going to keep much better. And there was only one whole bean decaf option — a $22 bag that seemed like a lot of money for a pound of coffee. If we use this whole bag, I’ll probably buy a bag of whole bean decaf online.
I had purchased silicone pancake molds a while ago — Anya likes to make fancy shaped pancakes, but I really do not like scrubbing cookie cutters that have been used as pancake forms. Finally tried them out today — they are really easy to use. If you put the part with the lip facing down, pour in some batter, and let them cook … you can pick up the mold and flip it to continue cooking the other side.
Voila — we’ve got heart and flower shaped pancakes:
