Job Skill: Multi Tasking Genius

now everyone will want to hire me

Today has already been jam packed even though I've had my friend Lisa B and her three kids for a visit, Max had a sleep over with his friend, I stayed in my PJ's until 10am and it's only 3pm. But that's not all I did. I did the dishes. I put a bunch of stuff away in the kitchen. And then I finished my blueberry project. I was freezing them and you have to do it in two steps. Wash and freeze them, then you package them up. Freezing takes a few hours so it's easy to walk away from them for several weeks while you start a rock band in your garage.

You can't leave food unprotected in the freezer for very long before the freezer begins to eat away at the quality. I learned this lesson well with my strawberries. So it's been hanging over my head. I did it. They are all done.

This is not urine.

Another thing that's been hanging over my head is my limoncello project. Remember that? Cindy sent me lemons when I couldn't buy them myself (from her own tree) and I was making her limoncello recipe. Well, after letting the peels steep in the vodka for the requisite 40 days, and then another 100 days after that...the peels have no color left in them and I still have not completed the project. Which is stupid because I think it's about time for some chilled limoncello, don't you?

Because I'm an incredible multi tasker I strained the limoncello while making a batch of sugar syrup to sweeten it (the last step) and AT THE VERY SAME TIME I was heating some questionable* milk to make into ricotta.

I know what you're thinking.

"How the hell does she do it?!"

I was thinking about how I was going to write a post about my awesome multi-tasking which is the employers gold standard skill when suddenly my milk (while I was straining the peels) went from 185 degrees to 207 degrees and boiling over.

In case you don't know it, you are not supposed to boil milk while making ricotta. Ooops!

What is it they say about pride cometh-ing before a fall?

Yeah, so I'm going to use it anyway because the last time I made panir cheese it turned out more like ricotta, and you do boil the milk to make panir. Maybe I'll rename it "panatta"?

Maybe not.

Meanwhile.... Now we are going to bicycle downtown while my sugar syrup cools down and then when we get home we will get to combine it with my lemony vodka. It will involve tasting it until I get it just how I like it. I'll probably be prepping the last of my peaches for freezing while I do it.

*5 days past it's date, but it didn't smell bad so what the heck?

Clean Out Your Spice Rack
(good household management tip)

My new spice rack. It's time for a clean-out. My most used herbs and spices are: thyme, marjoram, salt, pepper, cayenne, cinnamon, vanilla, nutmeg, ginger, and cilantro (though generally only fresh cilantro). My least used: cream of tartar, caraway (because I loath caraway seeds), curry, and fenugreek seeds.

I am going to bust a household myth that many of you are probably still holding as a dear truth close to your bosom:

Household Myth: dried herbs and spices will never go bad and may be kept for years.

Truth: they may not go bad but will certainly be like dust in your mouth if you let them get too old and may also have bugs in them.

Like most people I don't replace my dried herbs and spices all that often. It can be expensive and you never know when you're going to need that asafoetida, right? I'd be willing to bet that most of you have at least five jars you almost never touch in your spice rack that you bought while trying out some new recipe two years ago when you were on that "world" cuisine kick. When was the last time any of you used mace?

Not too long ago my mom came to my house and made a bunch of curried deviled eggs. I love deviled eggs whether they have curry in them or not. It turns out, though, that very old curry will had an interesting grit to egg yolks while adding no appreciable flavor. I don't use curry all that often. So my mom mistakenly used my very old jar of crusty curry and all the flavor had been destroyed by time and it's great age. The lesson here is: don't ruin your food with flavorings that have lost their integrity.

How can you know if a dried herb has gone bad? Most herbs, when dried well, retain a green or silvery green hue. If your dried oregano is brownish or grey then it is probably not good anymore. The best test of all is to smell it. It should smell strongly of itself when you open the jar. If you don't have a strong nose, as I do, then pour some in your hands and rub it between them. If there's any life left in it you will smell it and the smell will make you want to use it in something right away.

With spices it's even simpler- just sniff it. If the smell isn't strong and delicious in the jar, then it's old. Did you just buy it and it doesn't seem aromatic? Then you have probably wasted some good money on old spices. It can happen. If you want to be able to store spices for longer and have them maintain their integrity, store the whole spices and grind them yourself as you need them. You can do this with many spices such as: cloves, nutmeg, cinnamon, ginger, and allspice.

Here's a quick list of how to cull out your spice cabinet:

• anything over three years old is likely lost much of it's integrity

• anything brown that started of green should go

• lack of aromatic scent

• webbing in the jar*

• dead or live weevils

This is part of good household management. To prevent waste in the future I have some suggestions. When trying new recipes that call for herbs or spices not in your usual repertoire, buy very small quantities from the bulk section of your store (preferably in little paper bags because those are recyclable). Buy just enough for the recipe you are trying. If you end up making the recipe again, you can buy a little more. If you find yourself using this new herb or spice frequently, then you can either buy it in a jar, or better yet, fill an empty jar you already have with a bulk purchase of it.

For those of you hoping to grow your own herbs to dry, here's a list of the herbs that maintain their flavor best when dried:

• thyme

• oregano

• marjoram

• dill

• sage

• basil (though I prefer fresh or frozen)
  

• sweet bay laurel

• stevia

• lemon verbena

• mint

(Don't bother with: parsley, cilantro, chives, or tarragon. You can dry rosemary but I see no value in this as it is very much like putting hard sticks into your food. Most people can grow rosemary and use it fresh all year round and using it fresh is much more tender and good than using it dry.)

Holding onto old food items because it would be wasteful to throw them out is a false economy. My FIL** had a box of cereal in his pantry from 1987 just three years ago that had water damage on the box. He's a very frugal man and frugality has much to recommend itself, but one can take it to extremes that not only don't make sense, but can become a danger to your health. Most food loses it's nutritional value before a year is up. All food is best eaten fresh, or eaten within a year if dried or canned. It may last through a nuclear war ten years from now, but that doesn't mean it has any nutritional value to offer besides filling up a hungry belly.

Be wary of the bargains you buy. If you are buying flour on sale and it comes in a ten pound bag and you don't use much flour anyway, you may be wasting more money than you're saving. Flour goes rancid and can get bugs in it if it isn't used within a few months. Most food items that go on sale are on sale because they are already getting old. If it's something you use a lot of frequently then it is probably a good buy.

Now go clean out your spice rack and see what you have left when you've shaken it all up, sniffed, and sorted it!





*If you shake a jar up a little and you see that there seem to be bits of herb or spice hanging on the sides of the jar, the jar has mites in it. Yep, tiny mites. Or worse? Moths. Gross.

**Sorry for outing you FIL! I love you but that cereal had to go!

Root Cellar Soup
(with extra sharp cheddar)

As so many of are learning to eat seasonally, use our own home canned goods, and even storing winter vegetables in a root cellar, it's important to know how the heck to make use of what we have on hand. If you're me what you have on hand right now is: old potatoes, super hairy carrots, slimy topped celeriac, and some gorgeous onions.

While potato leek soup is a perennial favorite of mine, sometimes you need to figure out a way to add more vitamins to your winter food and use up carrots which are no longer in their prime due to the less than ideal root cellar conditions provided by a plastic bin in your garage. Normally I never peel my carrots, but anyone would have agreed with me that it has become necessary.

I have no celery besides the few packages of frozen celery I put aside for emergencies so I'm using celery root which is in season and gives a delicate wonderful celery flavor. Before moving to Oregon I had only tried to use celeriac once and it did not go well because apparently if you have year round access to avocados and lemons you don't need to know how to grow celery root well. It was harder to find there while here it seems that all market farmers have it (and lots of it) in winter.

The main point though is to use what you have in your root cellar, which at this time of year, is most likely going to be roots. If you have some turnips, use one! If you have rutabagas, use one! The main thing to keep in mind is that the potatoes should still be present in a greater proportion to the other roots for the sake of the consistency and flavor.

Root Cellar Soup

Ingredients:

4 large potatoes, sliced thin in small pieces
4 medium carrots, peeled (if necessary) and sliced in thin rounds
1 celeriac, sliced thin in small pieces
1 onion, diced
2 tbsp olive oil (or butter if preferred)
2 tsp salt
1 tsp dried thyme
fresh ground pepper to taste

In a soup pot warm up the oil on medium/high heat and add the onions and saute until starting to soften. Add the rest of the vegetables and saute until some of the vegetables begin to slightly brown on the pan. You will want to stir frequently to prevent anything from burning. Add enough water (or broth) so that it's about an inch above the vegetables. Add the salt, pepper, and thyme, and put the lid on the pot. When the water has begun to simmer, turn the heat down to medium/low and cook, covered, for about twenty minutes or until all the vegetables are tender.

Turn burner off to avoid burning your whole house down. Use an immersion blender to puree the soup.* Sometimes I like to leave a little bit of texture, sometimes I like it completely smooth. At this point you need to take a little taste to see if you need to add more salt and/or pepper. I don't tend to add tons of salt to my food but I find that of all the things I cook, root vegetables can usually use extra salt.

If your soup is too thick for your pleasure, thin with either cream, milk, or broth. I like to serve it with sharp cheddar and buttered toast.


*If you don't have one of these, get one. Trust me, it is INDISPENSABLE in the kitchen. If you don't have one and aren't going to get one then you'll need to use a conventional blender to puree the soup and I recommend that you wait until the soup is cool before you do it.

Nothing Green To Eat

(a local eating update)

As I've been running ass over tit through crystalized molasses to rectify the imbalance in my head that is now causing me to eyeball dried up Christmas trees with the kind of panic and aggressive suspicion I normally reserve for black widows, I have been thinking a lot about all the components it takes to live a good healthy life. And I just know that any day now I'm going to go on and on about it. But not tonight.

There are invisible weights on my whole body and brain that are preventing it from moving more than one inch an hour. If I was a mime this would be my coma skit.

I wrestled the dried up Christmas tree to get the lights off and came to this conclusion:

• Whoever put the lights on this year must never be allowed to put them on again.

• I am 99% sure that it was Philip and my mom who wrapped the string of lights with no end and no beginning all around that tree as though they planned to keep them on there for the rest of our natural lives.

• Apparently I have gotten so edgy now that wrestling with Christmas lights is the only thing that can make me say "Mother #%cker" (Normally I NEVER say it because I'm a gentle fairy-person)

In spite of my leaden limbs, I managed to make a wonderful mushroom soup tonight using some left over wild rice. All local. So good. Is there another word besides "earthy" that aptly describes the mushroom's innate mushroomy-ness?

So here's what fresh vegetables I have to work with this week:

3 leeks
1/2 rancid turnip
potatoes
onions
carrots
celeriac
mushrooms

(Of that list, only potatoes, onions, and mushrooms are in ready supply at stores.)

The Brussels sprouts I bought did not store well in the garage and I had to process and freeze what was left of them. We've eaten all the chard but never got to the kale before it went bad. I ought to have just blanched and frozen it right away. There is nothing green to buy that is local right now. I have my hopes pinned on the Hillsdale Farmer's market this coming week-end. Please let someone have chard, spinach, and lettuce!!!

Wait, I do have some winter squash.

Which isn't green, but at least it isn't an earthy beige hue.

The big debate is whether or not to start making real dents in the freezer stash. Is this the hardest part of the year to get through if you're only eating local produce or is the spring the hardest part? This is what I'm trying to figure out now, before I've eaten through my whole pantry.

I'm finding that having a constant supply of fresh green food in winter is pretty important to me. Which is why this year I will make sure to plant plenty of greens in the late summer so they'll be established and producing by winter.

In spite of the scarcity greens, this whole local thing really isn't a big hardship. In case anyone was wondering.

I can't tell if my chickens are trying to play games with me or not, but it would seem that the hens are stashing their eggs in the hay where they think I won't find them. Eggs are fairly scarce in the hen house these days, but I got five of them today. All of them hidden deep in the nest.

Before I put you all to sleep with the soporific rhythm of my dulcet voice, how about I sign off and fold laundry? I hope none of you have a passive aggressive dying Christmas tree to wrangle to the ground, and if you do? May the mother #@cking force be with you.

Broken Rice Salad

I am not normally a fan of wild rice. It's chewy and reminds me of brown rice which I'm also not normally fond of. Brown rice reminds me of eating raw tofu. Which isn't unlike eating chalk. But local grains are hard to come by and I really felt I should try the local wild rice I found here. It comes in two varieties: regular and broken pieces. The broken pieces are less expensive so I bought some of those, also thinking that they might cook up more tender if already broken.

I was not disappointed. I still prefer white Basmati rice to all other rice, but I won't be buying more of that for a long time. (I still have about a cup of it left in the pantry which I'm saving for a rainy day.)

Due to my very circumspect approach to my blog which prevents me from telling you every little detail about me, you probably think I'm a real skinny minnie and have no clue that I am trying to mend some serious cheese inhaling habits which have caused me to expand in the middle quite a bit. You will probably be shocked to know that I am trying to cook some foods that have a slightly lower caloric punch than grilled cheese sandwiches. (Look, just play along, would you?)

This warm salad is what I made for dinner last night and it was both delicious and satisfying, so I'm going to give you the recipe too. You can use unbroken wild rice as a substitute, but then you can't call it "broken" rice salad.

Broken Rice Salad

Ingredients:

2 cups cooked broken wild rice*
4 large carrots chopped
10 Brussels sprouts cleaned and halved
2 med. Yukon gold (or similar) potatoes diced
2tbsp vinaigrette
bottle of favorite dressing**

Steam all the vegetables until tender. Most of them take about five minutes. Test them with a fork to see if they are ready. Put them in a large bowl together and pour the two tablespoons of plain vinaigrette over them. Stir them up to coat with the dressing. The point of the plain vinaigrette is to keep your vegetables from getting dry if you don't eat all the portions of this meal right away.

Add the two cups of cooked broken rice to the bowl and stir well.

Divide into four portions. In each bowl add two tablespoons of your favorite bottled or home made dressing and stir gently. Eat. So good.

Serves 4.
336 calories per serving.
7.5 points per serving.

To reduce the calories or points even further you can try using only one tablespoon dressing on your individual serving. Personally I think that would be madness, but you must be the judge.


Also, if anyone else who is struggling to shed some pounds needs some moral support, please come join me and some friends at our new blog "The Fat Ass Water Cooler" where we are going to try to inspire each other to meet our goals. The main topic of that blog will obviously be weight loss, being fat, and how to change our unhealthy habits into healthy ones. So if you find that talk tedious, don't visit.



*To cook my wild rice I heated a tablespoon of butter in a big sauce pan, then put 12 oz of the rice in the pan and stirred it often for about five minutes on medium high heat until my kitchen smelled like cooking hay, then I added 36 oz water to the pan, turned up the heat to high until the water was boiling. At that point I turned the heat down to medium low and with the lid on the pan let the rice simmer until done which took about 30 minutes. The rice is done when the hulls open up and the rice is tenderish. Let's be honest, wild rice never gets truly tender.

**I used "Riverhouse" Feta dressing that is made by a local company and is a creamy vinaigrette with herbs, feta, and kalamata olives. You can use a plain vinaigrette on this recipe and chop up a little bit of feta and olives if you can't find a similar bottled dressing. But be careful how much you use if you are hoping to keep the caloric value the same.

Kale and Leek Quiche

A Recipe

It was really good. I inhaled it.

Kale and leek quiche.

The other day when I was craving some dark leafies and bought all that kale, this is the first thing I made. I am a huge quiche fan. Do you know how hard it is to find a good vegetarian quiche recipe? I wanted a reliable recipe that I could use as a sort of quiche template- how many eggs and how much milk will I use each time? I have been working on it for years. Obviously, how much egg and milk you will use depends on how much other crap you stuff into the pastry shell.

I have found that in most cases a quiche requires 6-7 eggs mixed with 1/2 cup milk. If I have put a lot of stuff in the pastry shell, or if the eggs I have are really large, I will usually only need six.

I was lucky that I had a spare already-rolled-out pastry shell floating around in my freezer. As soon as I saw it the words "fresh frozen" came to mind, which reminded me of the conversation my mom and I had at the Golden Valley Brewery with a waitress. My mom was interested in ordering a berry cobbler so she asked if the berries were fresh. The waitress answered uncomfortably that they were "fresh frozen". When my mom said "So, the cobbler is made from frozen berries." The waitress defended the berries "Yes, but they were fresh when they were frozen."

Which is a lot like saying "She was alive when she died."

(This has reminded me of a thought that startled me right as I was about to turn left off of Baker street yesterday:

I really do feel like a coconut.

As though I was in the middle of a conversation with someone in which I am trying to convince their unbelieving ears of this fact. WTF?!)

Back to quiches. I am going to give you the recipe for the quiche I made the other day because there aren't enough vegetarian quiche recipes out there already. This one is really good.

You will need:

one rolled out pastry shell

6 eggs
1/2 cup milk
2 leeks
5 stalks of kale
2 tbsp olive oil
2 tbsp of mustard powder blend (or prepared mustard will be fine too)
2 tsp dried thyme
1 tsp salt
pepper to taste


Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Finely slice the leeks and the kale. Heat up the two tablespoons of olive oil on medium high heat in a medium to large saute pan. Add the leeks first and saute until they start to soften. Add the kale and stir frequently. If the kale doesn't wilt and soften within the first two minutes, add a little smidgen of water to the pan and put the lid on for about one minute to steam the kale into submission. Then take off the burner.

Meanwhile, in a medium sized bowl: crack all of your eggs and whisk very thoroughly with the milk, the mustard, and the spices. I prefer to use a fork for this job but I won't judge you if you use an actual whisk.

Add the leek and kale mixture to the pie shell first and spread around evenly. Then slowly pour the egg and milk mixture over it. Pop it in the oven and cook for 40-45 minutes. I always check it when it's been about a half an hour because I've found that the cooking time for quiches are somewhat variable. Generally speaking, when your pie crust turns golden the eggs will have set.

Let cool and then eat the whole thing yourself.

*******

So, what do you all think of my new template? See that super cool header? Angela (of Cottage Magpie) and I took the picture together and then she worked it over with my logo in Photo shop as a surprise for me. I am so tired of the look of my old blog. Yesterday Lisa B. (of The Tardy Homemaker) told me how to add a header picture to a template on blogger and Voila! Am I not super lucky in my neighbors?

Kale: shake it like a dog

(Eat Local Challenge- month 3)

Kale is not one of my favorite dark leafy greens. I know that all the cool cooks love it, but I would much rather cook with chard. It isn't the flavor, which is fine (I guess), but it never seems tender enough and generally I find it in its curly leaved incarnation which has one huge unattractive disadvantage: the curly leaves provide the perfect cover for aphids.

Which gentle washing cannot clean. Cleaning curly leaved kale is a colossal task if you don't like to eat aphids and prefer your produce untreated with the kind of gnarly chemicals that can shrivel human balls. It requires the following tools: a never ending gushing water supply, a microscope, nimble fingers, and a table top centrifuge. Just to get the plant lice off.

Or else you can wash it under fast running water and shake it like a dog over and over and over and over....

Since my centrifuge is in the shop I chose to shake my kale like a dog. I'm 99% sure that I was not able to get them all off. which means aphids are on the menu.

So why buy the kale? Good question. Being sick makes me crave green food, fresh produce, lots of vegetables. Being in the middle of the winter on month three of an eat local challenge means that produce is getting harder to come by. The fresh kind. The green kind. I can still get some produce from Oakhill Organics if I coordinate with their CSA deliveries, but if I just need something right now, from the local stores? Here's what I can get: potatoes, onions, kale, leeks, and mushrooms. Notice how only one of those items is green?

For several days now I have been craving a salad, or some soup with heaps of swiss chard in it, or steamed cauliflower and carrots over cous cous with vinaigrette and feta. For days now I have been craving fresh tangy fruit and thanks to Andrea from California who sent me a bag of kiwis, I actually have been eating the most wonderful fruit ever!!! I have three left and luckily no competition for them. I ate two for breakfast this morning and the body was very happy. I actually got my sense of taste back just as I bit into the first one. It was like green sunshine.

I just made a kale and leek quiche using a few tablespoons of the mustard powder I made for the tutorial. It's such a relief to not be eating potatoes with cheese. I love potatoes with cheese but that's all I've had the energy to make all week and I got really tired of it because being sick like this makes a body want more nutrients, less starch. Whenever I feel this run down I think about the scene at the end of "The Secret Of Roan Innish" where they're all back on the island in the little stone cottage and there's a kettle over the fire with soup in it. It's mostly seaweed, which I hate, but the scene is so visceral for me. It embodies all that is comfort and good and wholesome: shelter, family, warmth, and really really good soup. That's what a body needs when it's sick.

And boy oh boy is my body sick. It's in my chest now too so I've got a really nice cough developing.

I plan to keep up the local-produce-only portion of my challenge as a permanent change. In spite of how little there is available for part of the year. This is where the pantry, the freezer, and the protected winter garden come in handy. This year I find out what I need the most in my diet that won't be available during the winter and plan ahead to meet those needs. If I had had more energy for cooking this past week and a half I could have made all kinds of great meals using what I've put by, but most of those things require more energy to put together than I had. Much easier to throw a couple of russets in the oven and have baked potatoes. Or a grilled cheese sandwich.

The quiche was satisfying. A tiny bit bitter from the kale and a little bit horseradishy from the mustard powder which tasted like Dijon which always has an aftertaste like horseradish to me. Which I don't like. In spite of that it was quite good. I am simply not allowing myself to dwell on the aphid part of my meal. I think tomorrow I will be making a lentil kale soup.

I must report that there have been some shocking food transgressions around here which I absolutely blame on the various plagues that have been malingering in our house for the past two weeks.

1. At 1:30 am two nights ago I ate three handfuls of Cheetos.

2. Yesterday I ate Heinz ketchup on my country fried potatoes because I needed it. I really did. I needed the ketchup to cut the fatty richness of the cheese and sour cream I had put on the potatoes to make up for the fact that I wasn't going to use ketchup.

3. I made cornmeal that came from the Midwest because the stuff I had from Bob's Red Mill was too coarse and I really needed to have polenta. I have since bought a finer grind of it from Bob's Red Mill.

But don't worry, I'm not kicking myself too much over these transgressions. Life happens.

Coffee Liqueur Tutorial

You will need:
1 cup espresso (or very strong coffee)
1 cup sugar
2 cups vodka (80-100 proof)
1/2 vanilla bean split lengthwise

If you plan to make this for gifts you will want to double or quadruple this recipe.

First make your espresso (or strong coffee). Philip has an old Pavoni espresso machine he is very proud of but which I am scared to use because I'm used to using the kind in the coffee houses where you just press a button.

When the espresso is made, mix it with sugar and heat until the sugar is completely dissolved. You don't have to bring it to a boil. Let it cool.

Split your vanilla bean lengthwise to expose the tiny seeds. Put it in a large jar. If you use plastic, make sure it's food grade.

Add your espresso to the jar.

Add the vodka.

Now you must let it sit for two to four weeks before decanting into smaller bottles. If you are planning on giving this for Christmas gifts, obviously you will want to decant it in two weeks. One thing you can do is cut your vanilla bean into smaller bits so that each bottle gets a little piece. If you do it this way you could prepare all your bottles for giving now and not have to decant them later. I did this with my first batch and it worked well enough. However, I like to stick with tradition with some things and the wisdom of letting a whole batch steep together until it's perfect and then straining out the vanilla bean, or fruit, or whatever, seems to me to be a better method.

If you are going to let it all steep together in one happy mess, strain off the vanilla bean before transferring to bottles. With most liqueurs, straining the liquid before bottling is a very good step, I use muslin kitchen towels to do it. This strains off any sediment which makes for a prettier clearer drink. The muslin is tightly woven and so it takes time to do it this way but is rewarding. Another way to do it is to use a few layers of cheesecloth. I recommend taking the time to strain it.

You can substitute one half cup of vodka for brandy if you like. Many recipe variations call for some brandy.

One more note- I have made many liqueurs using 80 proof vodka because I couldn't get my hands on 100 proof. One of the biggest problems I've had is a liqueur that is too sweet with not enough alcohol punch to it. I was lucky this time that I not only got my hands on some 100 proof vodka-but it was also made within inches of my local eating challenge parameter! If you can get 100 proof, use it!

That's it. It's that easy. Most liqueurs will last indefinitely though I did hear from one source that hers went stale within a few months. My last batch was still good two years after making it. A lot of fruit liqueurs aren't even ready to drink until they've aged for three months. It should be stored in a cool dark place.

Now I'm going back to bed to try not to throw up. I've got Max's flu. I just wanted to get this posted as promised. Stay healthy everyone!!

100% American Meal
99% locally grown and made

You could spend a lot of time arguing with me about the origins of all of the foods on this plate, but you should know that I will win. I will win because there is almost no combination of foods more evocative of the American Diner than: grilled cheese sandwich with dill pickles and french fries with ketchup.

The true beauty of this meal is that it was made with 99% locally made and grown foods. The salt is the only part of it that in no way was processed of procured locally. (It came from Brittany) The ketchup is my one precious jar of homemade from my friend Nicole. I was going to save it for later. But when I made this meal last night I knew I had to have ketchup with it. Luckily one jar will last me at least several similar meals. It was really good!

For the potatoes I used a salt/herb mixture that I was testing for the tutorial this week. I discovered that the salt to herb ratio was off and the fries were way too salty. So I have adjusted the mixture accordingly. The potatoes are fingerlings I got at the Portland farmer's market and were creamy and roasted up perfectly.

The pickles were my own, made this past canning season. We are a little worried about how many pickles we've already gone through.

A word on the Coffee Liqueur- It seems that you are going to need to let it sit for about two weeks before decanting it into separate bottles, so this is a gift most suited to give to people you will be visiting on Christmas day, neighbors, or friends close by. You won't have time to ship it to anyone*. But if you make it and are pleased with it, you can plan farther ahead next year. I was going to buy some locally made vodka yesterday, but here in Oregon you can't buy hard liquor on Sundays because it would be unseemly.

I'm all about being seemly.

Both Angeleen and Angela have made some comments about this small town here and how people here aren't the kind to get my humor and that people here might actually care what the neighbors think. This is interesting to me because I have been accustomed to not caring what my neighbors think of me and the choices I make because I knew, as a kid, what everyone thought of my family already (especially when we lived in Ashland, a town that was half the size of McMinnville twenty years ago) and I always had the feeling that there was no point in worrying about it because they could SMELL that we were different. People are animals first and even when they deny it to their teeth, they usually can tell when someone is different or a freak or crazy because if most of us couldn't smell it-the human race would not have survived with such smashing success.

My Aunt in Wisconsin has made comments about "what her neighbors will think" regarding her wall paint choices and I thought it was so weird that it would occur to her that her neighbors might have an opinion on her choice of wall colors or that it could possibly matter to her one way or the other. It seems so 1950's to me. When my Aunt would come to stay in the house that she and my mother owned together in California, she would make similar comments from time to time. It seems that it's kind of like GOING WILD to wear flip flops that don't precisely match your outfit.

I have made many comments about what my neighbors must think of my yard with all it's hideous perpetually unkempt appearance, but not once have I said it with actual concern or seriousness. So, do people around here actually care what someone might think of them if they were seen buying something that has the word "hysteria" on it? I never looked at this community that way. As a community of people so "small town" that they all look over their shoulder when buying things.

I would say that my store is proof of what Angeleen and Angela have been saying about McMinnville- that it isn't a place where my kind of humor and product will be really appreciated. If it was my store probably would have been a smash hit right away. However, I think it's curious that one of my best selling items, besides my aprons, was the "Subversive Crossword" book full of little sweet crossword patterns that say, instead of "home sweet home", things like "Rat Bastard!" I had to reorder that one a few times. Those same people probably would have loved the bath salt kit for "Anxiety and Hysteria".

I had a really great dream last night with antique buttons and Mathew Perry.

But don't start thinking my marriage is in trouble. Dudes-Philip was in it too.





*It might actually not be legal to ship alcohol anyway. Not that I would tell anyone. Who cares about a little homemade?

Food Related Gifts

(That you can make or put together yourself)

Plus three chances to win one of three prizes!!!!

I've given this a little thought today and I am going to list here ten homemade gifts you can give that are food related, because, what is more important than food? It doesn't actually have to be edible (there being some concern about giving people fattening foods they don't want to feel obligated to eat) but I think there are a whole lot of choices that range from easy to challenging, and from inexpensive to more costly.

What I want is for everyone who reads this post to tell me which three projects they would most like to see become tutorials? Whichever three gift ideas get the most votes I will source the supplies, make the projects, and write instructions. Then I will draw three names from the people who voted in this post and I will send each one of them a package with one of the gifts I made from the tutorials. Got it?

1. Bread baking gift basket.

2. Dinner napkin sets from your fabric stash.

3. Dish towels with mushroom appliques.

4. How to put together a gift basket with your own preserves.

5. Homemade coffee liqueur.

6. Custom tea blends in tins or jars.

7. Round pot holders.

8. Pancake mix gift basket.

9. Farmer's market tote.

10. Custom spice blends and spice rubs.

Voting must be swift so that I have time to source and prepare these tutorials. You have until Friday the 30th. That's this Friday in case you're so dazed right now that you didn't know that. Obviously you will need to include a way for me to contact you.


I'm not going to tell you which ones I'm hoping will win the vote. If you tell me it's snowing where you are right now you will be automatically disqualified for the drawing because that's just mean*.




*I'm kidding. I won't hold it against you. I actually just saw the first warning for a chance of snow on my local weather update for next week.

Sour Cherry Tart
(A culinary quest)

This is a sour cherry tart with a vanilla custard.
I will choose this as my last dessert.

Cooking, for me, isn't just about meeting the needs of the body. It's about artistry, science, and the pursuit of perfection. Not a toxic perfection that eats away at my self esteem, nor an impossible perfection such as sculpting the best ass is. I feel a great deal of pleasure in being able to do things well and cooking offers everyone the chance to make something well because of the enormous range of possibilities. If bread baking sounds like as much fun as walking across the Mohave desert barefoot and with no sunscreen, one doesn't need to bake bread. You can make soup instead.

About seven years ago I decided that I was going to master the art of baking tarts. When I say "master" I mean that I wanted to be able to make tarts consistently well, but not just well, I wanted people to eat my tarts and then not be able to stop thinking about it for long after the last crumb was pressed into a fork. There's more though, a tart should be a thing of beauty.

Tarts really aren't difficult to make. But making them well requires that you refine your skills at achieving each step. The first step is making a really good crust. Some people have trouble with this but I follow Martha Stewart's recipe, using my food processor to mix it, and the only trick I've found works well is to completely freeze the rolled out pastry dough before prebaking it. This usually prevents the crust from bubbling up. Two things, I've found, can really mess up a tart dough: adding too much water to the dough will make it hard where the dough is extra wet, and only using half the amount of butter is not recommended.

This is a vanilla custard tart with my canned peaches and my own Silvanberry sauce on top.

The vanilla custard* is the next part to master. I have found making a good vanilla custard challenging because the first time I made it it was perfect (and easy) but I could never remember which recipe I followed and I ended up trying a string of recipes that I had no difficulty messing up. A good recipe is really important. I don't like a rich custard with tons of egg yolks and heavy cream. I have finally found a recipe for a lighter custard that reliably turns out well from the book "Tartine". I used 2% milk (even though it calls for whole milk) and it turned out really well. The biggest challenge is preventing it from being lumpy and my only advice on this challenge is to stir frequently and use a whisk.

Once you have a great crust and a great pastry cream all you have to do is figure out what you want to put on top. My favorite desert of all time (OF ALL TIME) is a fresh fruit tart with vanilla custard, but this is winter, I can't buy kiwis from New Zealand, so I had to think about alternatives from the pantry. I'm misleading you there, I didn't have to think about it at all. All summer I was thinking about how my fruit preserves might be used in the winter to crown some lovely tarts. I was just waiting for the right opportunity.

Luckily I am usually the only one in my family who puts up a fight to preserve traditions like having yams every year with Thanksgiving dinner. It was not difficult to convince my mom, my sister, and Philip to let me bypass the whole pumpkin deal in favor of these tarts.

The result? My mom and my sister think that I have achieved my goal of mastery over the tart. We talked about those tarts for a full half hour after eating them. My family even indulged me in my favorite game of trying to figure out how they might be made even more perfect.

Now all I have to do is keep making them for the next thirty years (if I live that long) until I achieve fame among my friends and family for my tart making abilities. How will I know I've gotten there? I'll know when people start always asking me brightly if I am going to bring one of my tarts to the potluck? I'll know when I hear people talking about tarts past.

I think everyone should settle on one thing to master in the kitchen. Maybe you can master almost everything but you should aim to be known for making something in particular better than all else-it's great for your self esteem and it increases your pleasure in preparing food for others. It's fun to follow a food quest anyway. It's kind of like being a culinary knight only you're less likely to be impaled by a jousting stick.

Just as a side note, I can't make pie worth a damn.

Yesterday my mom, sister, and I went to the Portland farmer's market and I was impressed with the variety still available. This particular farmer's market continues through December 22. I've been meaning to buy some locally grown wild rice and was very pleased to find it there-so I bought a couple of packages of it. I also found (to my great excitement) that one stall had some gorgeous cilantro. I bought four bunches and plan to freeze it in ice cube size portions. I will report on how well it freezes as soon as I know. Cilantro isn't known to retain it's flavor well when dried. I'm sure those farmers are thinking I must be some kind of freak getting inordinately excited to have found fresh cilantro. Who cares? I thought I wouldn't find any more until mid-spring. I plan to make some black bean chili!

By the way, for those of you waiting on packages from Dustpan Alley, they are all ready to go and will be mailed early tomorrow morning. Thank you for your patience! The bath bombs are doing so well I've had to make new batches and am now in need of new supplies which I better get soon. I've gotten much better at making them and if people would like a tutorial I will put one together. Though, I did find some good ones out there already (my previous searches did not yield great directions. Sometimes a single word in a search makes ALL the difference.) I think the bombs would make excellent stocking stuffers and although they can be tricky (I ruined three batches last week), I think they are still easy enough for anyone to try. Each bath bomb costs about fifty cents each to make which makes it really an affordable homemade project.

I'm off to work at the Holiday Market downtown. I hope you all have a great Sunday!

*Technically this is a pastry cream.

Eat Local Challenge
Day 46

You know how they say boy scouts are always prepared? Well, I am too, and I'm not homophobic which is a bonus! As some of you may have guessed, I haven't had a lot of time for cooking in the past week what with getting ready for the Holiday Market downtown and transforming my living room into one we want to live in. I have to admit that when you're doing an eat local challenge, you really better have some quick meals in your freezer to fall back on because most convenience food is not made here in the Portland area. I'm not sure why it is, but most snacky items seem to be manufactured in the Midwest.

The really amazing thing about vacuum sealers is how well they preserve the quality of the food you freeze. This homemade chili (vegetarian, of course) was really good. I didn't make nearly enough of it. My concern with vacuum sealers (or any sealers for that matter) is the amount of plastic you must use and generally speaking, I can't get the bags clean enough to reuse. It's also very expensive. I'm wondering if I can freeze most of my food in glass jars and how sensitive to freezer burn are things frozen in glass?

The biggest question burning a hole in my brain with my eat local challenge right now is: how much of a difference does it make to buy food products from local companies if you don't know where they're getting their raw materials? I need to hear from everyone who has participated in local eating challenges before. The one local meal a week summer challenge...if you found locally made tortillas would you count that as a legitimate "local" product, even if they probably get their corn from nonlocal sources? How deep did you all examine this issue? I have found out that there are a couple of companies that make salsa locally, so I could get salsa all year round from a local source. But obviously they aren't getting their tomatoes from local sources at this time of year. So, is that still within the definition of local?

I'm having a really difficult time deciding this one for myself. On the one hand I think it's a huge step in the right direction for all of us to support companies that are local to us and if that means buying salsa from Emerald Valley instead of Pace, that means I'm putting money into my local economy. But any large company cannot rely on only local sources to make goods. So in most cases you aren't going to be supporting local agriculture by buying that salsa. Maybe during the months that tomatoes are in season here they use local tomatoes, but production doesn't stop for Emerald Valley at the end of the local tomato season, so they have to be getting their tomatoes from further afield.

This issue must be resolved because I need to figure out what fits into my challenge. It's about making a distinction between local raw materials and companies that make products locally. Not the same thing. What does the eat local challenge mean to most people? It wasn't as important to answer this question a month ago because there was still locally grown cilantro at the grocery store. Now it's from California. Now that there is less produce available I am looking for alternatives.

I haven't bought feta in a month and a half. Do you realize how foreign that is to me? I'm relieved to have decided to make Parmesan an exception, but if you were to examine my cells, I'm 99% sure you would find that they have the same DNA as feta cheese, which would explain how come I normally buy large quantities of it. Not buying it doesn't worry me the way not buying Parmesan did. Parmesan is much more difficult to make as it needs at least 10 months to age. It seems I will be needing to make some feta soon. I've never done this before. But I do know it's a lot easier than making hard aged cheeses. I have a lot of crafting and sewing to do before I can tackle this project.

I will admit that I am really missing ketchup on my eggs. My friend Nicole gave me a bottle of her homemade ketchup and I am saving it for a special occasion, like if I'm having a really bad week and not having ketchup on my eggs is the last straw standing between me and going postal. I am aware that loving ketchup is not very haute cuisine of me and is, in fact, rather similar to committing a food crime. My friend Chelsea would say that putting it on eggs is one of the most HEINOUS food crimes of the century. I think she may be sleeping better at night knowing that I can no longer commit this crime against good taste. Whatever. I miss ketchup.

The next challenging moment: facing Thanksgiving without yams. I have eaten yams on Thanksgiving for 36 consecutive years. A year without them is hard enough, but not having them on my favorite day of the year seems like a spiritual sacrifice. I am resolved to get through this though. A huge mound of steaming hot buttery mashed potatoes might do the trick.

Is This Green Enough For You?

Homemade pasta with pesto from the freezer and steamed Brussels sprouts with a mustard vinaigrette.

I think, upon reflection, that I might have done better if I had steamed carrots instead of Brussels sprouts to break up the monochromatic color story of my dinner. I told myself it didn't matter if my whole dinner was green. Hell, people all over the place are trying to get just one spec of green in their meals and I have accomplished an entire work in shades of spring foliage. I told myself I wouldn't care if my whole dinner was green because that's the kind of thing that "foodies" worry about, and I am not a foodie.

Why do I not like that word "foodie"? Hmm, let me think...maybe because it sounds like a muppet gone bad. It aslo makes me think of some intergalactic one celled plague. It also makes me think of sixth grade name calling. This is the kind of thing that the hamburger helper kids called the vegetarian kid. Which was me.

None of those things are good. The worst is that it also sounds insufferable. It sounds like a person who is preciously into their food to a point where they have lost sight of their main goal (which presumably is to eat super good food) and have become obsessed with their food and have become insufferable snots about it. It also sounds kind of like a cult.

Remember way back when people who had a well developed sophisticated appreciation for food were called gourmands? Was this so offensive to people that a new more "user friendly" name had to be made up? How can one call themselves a "foodie" without feeling ridiculous?

Should people with a great appreciation for large gas guzzling cars be referred to as "gassies"?

Sometimes when I amuse myself I am all alone in my amusement. Don't worry, I'm used to it.

This is what's happening on my stove. The corn bread didn't rise much because the batter was too dry. It tastes good. Unfortunately it's also more crumbly than usual which is something Max doesn't usually appreciate. When he was a toddler I fed him cornbread and when it crumbled apart he would start crying as though the whole world was that piece of cornbread and it just broke. He doesn't like messy food.

I photo-shopped this picture but I don't think it's any better for it. I tried to brighten it up. But when a picture is taken at night there's just not a lot you can do to make it look light and natural. Seeing as it's rather dark at night. My house doesn't have the best lighting anyway. Ever.

I already wrote a post this morning but I'm writing this one now so that I can get down to business tomorrow and not get caught up on the computer. I have a lot to do.

By the way, these Brussels sprouts are super good but when they are cooking they smell like old-man breath. I almost didn't give them a chance the other day because when something smells like that you usually don't feel attracted to the idea of putting it in your mouth. On the other hand, people have been putting rotted cabbage and fish in their mouths for centuries and have greedily ingested fungus that smells like poop for as long as man has foraged his supper out of the woods.

I'm way in trouble with Max's teacher. I'm constantly getting notes that Max needs to practice his spelling and that we need to help him. Which we haven't been. Until last night. These young idealistic whipper snappers bring great energy to the public schools, but they really wear me out. I better go make sure my son learns to spell these words he supposedly should already know how to spell.

Pepper Jelly

A couple of week-ends ago at the Hillsdale farmer's market I bought four pounds of jalapeno peppers to make pepper jelly with. Pepper jelly isn't the kind of thing I would normally gravitate to. In fact, when Lisa E. said she wanted to make pepper jelly I'm pretty sure I stated that nothing on earth would induce me to eat a jellified pepper flavored nastiness. She assured me that my head was up my bahookie and I need to try some new things.

The only thing that's true in the statement above is that I was highly suspicious of pepper jelly and that Lisa E. did make some. Lisa is an incredible cook and I will try things that she's made that I might not try at the hands of a less stellar cook. She served pepper jelly with crackers and cream cheese. Yeah, I couldn't believe how good it was. I also couldn't stop eating it. I may even have dreamed about eating some more a couple of times and woke up in a panic because pepper season is done.

Well, I was lucky to have found the peppers. Unfortunately they sat around for over a week and some had to be tossed. However, yesterday, I finally got around to making the jelly. I have never made jelly before. I generally prefer jam. I'm really not sure how it turned out. I made seven half pints but they haven't set up yet. I wonder if they will? They are fully cooled now and still liquid. I used my pretty "Elite" series of Ball canning jars for this jelly. They are so pretty but so expensive! They would make the perfect gift but I feel selfish. I like to see pretty jars in my pantry.

The Hillsdale market was very busy and still had lots of vendors present. A couple of them indicated that they won't be back for a while though. Only one vendor had celery so I bought eighteen pounds of it. The lady who took my money looked like she thought I must be feeding a very large bunny at home.

I don't know what has happened but yesterday I got a sudden swarm of fruit flies in my house. Bigger than the last time. I don't understand where they all came from...the peppers that had gone bad? I didn't think fruit flies liked things like cabbage, leeks, and jalapenos, which were the things I had out on the counter. They aren't just in the kitchen, they are flying all over the house. Like a swarm of biblical locusts. Is this a sign that Armageddon has begun?

Speaking of Armageddon... it seems to me that if a person wants to be largely self sufficient, one should have a nut tree on their property. When things get dark in this world, when depressions hit hard, when economies crash, things like veal and steak are a lot harder to come by. Even milk could be hard to come by. You should always have more than one source of protein on your property. Eggs are one, nuts are another. Instead of making meat balls in lean times, clever cooks make things like walnut and cheese croquettes. So, we are trying to figure out what nut tree to plant. We have clay soil which basically means no nut will be at it's absolute best here, except filberts...WHICH I HATE. We've narrowed it down to three possibilities: pine nuts, walnuts, or almonds. We most particularly are interested in pine nuts.

What would you grow if the end of the world was nigh and you needed to batten down the hatches and be sure to grow food that will keep you alive?

By the way, I don't really believe in Armageddon or other end-of-the-world theories. I do believe in the end of crude oil, and that might turn out to be similar. By the way, has anyone given thanks recently to the dinosaurs for dying in such a convenient way and leaving their carcasses for us to discover and base our entire modern world around? Is it possible for dead people to turn into tar at some point? Would people be willing to continue to drive cars if it meant they'd have to somehow rely on our own dead to supply our fuel to us?* (And how far would one dead person turned to crude oil get a car? Would dead Great Grandpa Vinnie= 1 day trip to Vegas?)

Wasn't the world going to end in the eighties? Also, the San Francisco Bay Area was supposed to be under water by now. At least that's what my mom told me back in 1987, and she used to stay pretty tuned in to end of the world scares.

My one concern about getting a pine nut producing pine tree is that pine trees are susceptible to the kind of diseases that the Ribes family of fruit carries and spreads to them and I just so happen to be planning on getting lots of gooseberries and currants. Is that just asking for plant plagues?

By the way, last night I didn't have dinner planned in time so I whipped out two frozen pot pies and guess what? THEY WERE SO EFFING GOOD I ALMOST CRIED. That was a successful experiment. You cook them for an hour at 375 degrees and they are perfect. I cannot believe I only have two frozen ones left in there. Obviously I need to make some more while I can. This reminds me of my quiche project. I wanted to see if I could make some quiches that freeze well. My girls are kind of slowing down their egg laying so I may actually have to buy some eggs for the first time in a year. Wow, I have not bought eggs in a year! Hens rock.

I have to go do battle with the swarm of fruit flies and do some house work, do some work-work, and eat some delicious 99% local ingredient soup with a big giant spoonful on non-local Parmesan cheese. I hope you all are going to eat good food today too.

*Yeah, I know it took thousands of years for those huge beasts to produce tar pits, smarty pants.

Vegetarian Pot Pie

I was going to try to make a smaller batch of pot pies so that I could give you a recipe for a normal amount of food. By normal I mean the amount of food you might make for one meal. Then I got to thinking about the reasons I never cook just enough food for one meal. It's because I like to maximize my time in the kitchen, I have to provide lunches too and most of our lunches consist of left-overs, (not to be confused with my Dad's famous MYSTERY MEALS). I always make enough of a recipe to freeze some, or save for lunches in the fridge. That is, in my opinion, a hallmark of an urban homesteader's method of cooking.

So I have decided to give you the recipe in it's large form. If people comment about how they don't know how to cut a recipe in half and wish this recipe was smaller, I may oblige. But I offer this one to all the people out there who are trying to make as much home cooked food as possible and who want to avoid leaning on fast food options by making food ahead of time. Who wouldn't want to pull out a few homemade pot pies on those busy tired week-nights when no one has time to cook?

This recipe is not difficult, but it has many steps and is time consuming. Do it on a day when you have time to hang out in your kitchen and enjoy yourself.

You will need:

For the dough:

2 recipes Martha Stewart Pate Brisee (or enough pie dough for four 9" pies)
1 egg, beaten to a pulp for brushing purposes

For the gravy:

4 tbsp white or wheat flour
4 tbsp butter
1 tsp salt
as many turns of the pepper grinder as you see fit
2 tsp dried thyme
1/2 lb mushrooms, finely chopped
3 cups vegetable broth

For the filling:

3 medium Yukon Gold potatoes, diced (any similar potato will do)
2 large carrots (or 3 medium, you be the judge), diced
1 whole onion, diced
1/2 lb mushrooms, chopped chunky
1 large head of broccoli, cut into small florets, use stem if not too woody (diced)
1 cup of frozen (or fresh if you're lucky!) peas
2 tbsp olive oil


To prepare the vegetables:

Parboil the carrots, potatoes, and broccoli separately (but use the same water each time), for three minutes each. Seriously, trust the three minutes to cook it enough. If you cook your veggies too long they will become an unpalatable mush. If you don't cook them enough, they will have an unpleasant crunch. Whatever you do, don't dunk them in ice water after you remove them from the boiling water. Letting them continue to cook a little as they cool down is essential. Plus it's simpler.

In a large saute pan, heat your olive oil on medium high heat, then add your onion and let it cook for about five minutes. Just as it's beginning to soften, add your chunky mushrooms. Saute for about five more minutes, or until the mushrooms are thoroughly cooked. Put all the vegetables together in a really big bowl.

To make the gravy:

Add vegetable broth powder or a bouillon cube to three cups of the water you used to parboil your vegetables in. Set aside.

In a large saute pan on medium heat, combine the finely chopped mushrooms and 1 tbsp of the butter and cook for about five minutes. Transfer them to a bowl. Mix the 3 tbsp flour with the salt, pepper, and cayenne in a small dish. Melt the remaining butter in the saute pan and when it's just beginning to bubble, add the flour to it and whisk it into the butter. At this point the consistency should be like a paste. If it's looser than that, add a little more flour. Constantly stir it in the pan for about two or three minutes and then add 1 and 1/2 cups of the vegetable broth constantly whisking as you pour it into the flour.

This would be a terrible moment to answer your cell phone.

The broth will thicken quickly, when it has thickened and it is mixed smoothly, add the remaining broth. Now it will take longer to thicken up again. Stir frequently. Once the gravy has thickened, add the finely chopped cooked mushrooms back into the pan. Then add the thyme. It is helpful to rub the thyme in the palm of your hands as you add it to the gravy because it smells heavenly and it will release more of it's flavor this way. Turn the stove down to low and let it cook for another five or ten minutes periodically stirring to prevent sticking. If it gets too thick, add more broth or hot water, but only a little at a time.

Now pour the gravy over the vegetables and mix really well so that all the vegetables are well coated with the gravy.

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.

To assemble:

Divide each roll of pie dough into four pieces and roll each one out to about 1/8" thick. Line either Pyrex single serving oven dishes, or foil mini pie pans with dough, smoothing out any wrinkles and trimming off the dough at the edge of the dish. You will need those trimmings.

Spoon the filling into the pies, just slightly heaping.

Roll out tops. Place over the pie dish. Trim the excess.

Crimp or roll the edges and slash a couple of holes in the tops of the pies to let the steam out while cooking.

Doesn't this look just like the frozen pot pies of your youth? Yet it will taste better and be healthier too.

Any pies you plan to bake right away you can brush with the beaten egg which will result in the prettiest pie ever. If you are freezing some of your pies I would leave them plain. Put the pies you want to bake right now in the oven for about 45 minutes, or until the crust is golden.

These are the pies I made to freeze. You can buy the tin pie dishes in most grocery stores. I am looking for a paper version because I prefer to cook with aluminum as little as possible. The paper ones are also easier on the environment when they reach the trash heap.

Any pies you would like to freeze should be put directly in the freezer. Once they have frozen, wrap them really well in plastic wrap to prevent freezer burn.


The yield for this recipe will vary depending on a couple of factors. The size of the pie dishes you use and how thinly you roll out your dough. My Pyrex dishes will hold 1.5 cups of filling, and use more pie dough to cover. The mini pie tins hold just about 1 cup of filling and use less dough. I made 8 pies in the Pyrex, and 4 pies in the tins: total of 12 pot pies. I barely had enough dough for all of those. In fact, two of them had top dough only. Philip felt cheated by the lack of a bottom crust.

Now, will someone please make some and tell me what they think?