The Fall Harvest?

Hello, ya'll....Deliverance here....

I know it has been a long time but I have been really busy. On what you ask? Fighting to make all that work in my garden worth something before the season is over. Now I usually have no big problems with my garden. I am up to my elbows in tomatoes by now and have so much canning done by now that Frederick and I have had with the whole busy by now. Not the case this year.
It seems that the gardening fairies were working against me this year. No matter what I tried nothing seemed to matter. I have canned 9 quarts of tomatoes this year and those were given to me by a friend of mine. It seems that it was a good year for some(*%$@#*)!!! What you see above is the first good harvest of tomatoes I have gotten this year. I have more coming but the question is will they ripen before the first frost.
Let me back up a bit here and let you know that it was a long winter this year and I didn't even get started on the garden until mid-May which around here is very late. And then it went from very cold to very hot almost over night which is not good for a healthy garden. It seemed that the seedling were just getting started when the sun would hit them with close to 100 degrees and they didn't have a snowballs chance in hell of getting thru the day. I spent alot of time re-seeding. Spinach...died. Squash...suffered badly. Green beans...not bad...have canned 18 quarts. Potatoes...not sure at this point, but the plants never got very big. Beets...big question there, I'll know in a week or so. Same for carrots but at least they look like very healthy plants. And then there are the tomatoes...which after 2 months some of the plants never got out of sproutsville before they would die.
Now don't get me wrong I am so grateful for what I have managed to harvest, it is just not the harvest I am use to. So now I am ready for this season to be over with so that I can start working on next year. There will be some changes in how the garden is planned, planted, and prepared for planting. More chicken coop cleaning, more sand to get this clay work into a nice soil, and tilled at least twice before the first snow flys. "And as God is my witness, I will never be hungry again" Sorry, my alter-ego, Scarlet O'Hare, just stepped in but I think she is gone for now.
On another note, for all of you who care...That is Barney in the background. His is a very healthy rooster and learning how hold his own with the "ladies". But he does live on the back porch and probably always will, the other chickens know that he is not whole and they are a bit funny about these things. He is a very well taken care of rooster. He comes to the back door just about sun down and either Frederick or myself will bring him in to sit on the couch and watch television a while before we put him in his house for the night. I mean a well rounded rooster has to stay on top of current events, Right?
Mama has given us four more chicks. I think she is one of those Moms that loves to have babies around so she just keeps hatching them out. Bertha, our biggest hen, hatched out two of her own. And she had a serious change in attitude, very protective. And Dolly has one new one and still sitting on a clutch of 8 more eggs so we will see what comes of that. I really think that Mama is a good influence on the rest of the flock. And this also means that I may not have to incubate next year. Which may not work for me...I also like having babies around...baby chicks that is!

Well, that it all for now. I will try to let you know how the rest of the harvest goes as long as I don't slip into a depression or have Scarlet take over my life.
Love ya'll..Deliverance

Pie, Pie, Apple Pie

Fall is here and, to me, that means more cooking than usual, and making exclamations of joy whenever I see an apple or a pumpkin. In accordance with autumn spirit, the apple tree in the back of my house, which did not produce at all last year, was graced with a few apples this season, just enough to make a pie.

Now I have to explain a little bit about how I feel about pie.

Pie is magic.

Being initiated into the art of it's creation is a right of passage. Practices of making pie, especially pie crust, vary widely, but once one's method of pie making has been perfected, innovations in pie making technique are met with skepticism and/or outright hostility.

Consider this: I am usually mild mannered and polite when meeting new people, and I am not given to bouts of rude obstinacy. Unless you insult my pie. I found this out during a Pinot Noir tasting party, where I was explaining my pie crust technique to a culinary minded friend. Another guest at the party overheard and made the mistake of telling me that my described pie crust was subpar because it was made with only butter and not shortening.

I rolled my eyes. "Butter is better because it provide superior taste and browning. Shorting give a great texture, but it just doesn't taste as good." I told him. He shook is head patronizingly. "My grandmother," he intoned, "makes the best pie crust. And has won numerous state pie competitions with her recipe. So her pie crust is better than yours."

"Don't talk to me about pie crust that you don't even make when you haven't EVEN TASTED MY PIE CRUST!" I shouted. And granted, I should have just let his comments slide, but I had had three glasses of wine and this was PIE CRUST, man. This was personal.

He tried to argue it with me a little longer, but I refused to back down. Finally I glared at him until he looked away. We didn't speak the rest of the night. Take that, pie insulter!


Ok, down to business. I did try a slightly new variation on my crust when I made my apple pie last week. I used a slightly higher ratio of butter to flour and I really liked the results. I've never made a more flaky crust. The extra butter idea came from the gal who does the smittenkitchen blog. Here's her recipe with my tweakings:

2 1/2 cups flour
1 teaspoon salt
2 sticks (8 ounces, 16 tablespoons or 1 cup) unsalted butter, very cold

Whisk the flour and salt together in a chilled bowl and then cut in the butter with a chilled pastry cutter. Do NOT use a food processor. If at any point while you're working in the butter it starts to feel warm or greasy, stash it in the freezer for a few minutes. You want it to stay as cold as possible during the whole process. Once the butter is in little crumbs in the flour (with some big crumbs left), add cold water, one tablespoon at a time until the dough just comes together. Stash in the fridge or freezer until the dough is firm and you're ready to roll it out.

It really helps to have a chilled marble pastry board to roll the dough out on, but if you don't have one just use the counter and try to work quickly. The colder the dough stays, the flakier it will be in the end.

Roll out the bottom crust, line your pie pan with it and fill with a mixture of peeled sliced apples, cinnamon, vanilla, a dash nutmeg and sugar to taste. Dot the filling with some extra butter. Roll out the top crust, lay it over the filling and crimp the edges to seal. Cut some holes for steam to escape (or use a heart shaped cookie cutter when you roll the top crust out if Martha Stewart inexplicable takes possession of your soul, the way she does with mine). This pie crust recipe makes more than enough for 9 in pie. I wrapped the extra dough in plastic wrap and stuck it in the freezer for a rainy day.


Bake pie at 400 degrees for twenty minutes, then lower the heat to 350 and bake for another 40 to 50 minutes, until pie is brown and your neighbors start dropping by to investigate what smells so good.

Feed the pie to good friends and enjoy the tuning of the seasons. Winter will be here before we know it!