Eastertide

A few days before Easter I took the kids for a walk around the park near us. The wildflowers are starting to emerge into the pale light of the Spring sun. Everywhere there are buttercups, grass widows, and lilies.  Noisy northern flickers, red-breasted nuthatches, red-winged blackbirds, California quail, mallards, crows, robins, and I think my favorite song bird- the mountain chickadee, are out defending territories, finding mates, building nests and announcing Spring.

Wild and delicate glacier lilies



Fuzzy catkins

Red-winged Blackbird

This fellow was such a tease. He flew between us and the sun. As the light shone through his wings, it was like looking at stained glass.  Every time I would try to get a picture after he landed, he would weave his way into the branches of a thicket and it was nearly impossible for my "point and shoot" camera to find him.

Easter Smiles

Getting three young children to look at the camera simultaneously is no small triumph these days, so I am content with this photo in their Easter clothes. I would really like to put all the other pictures we took into a flip book so you can watch how one child, then two get distracted.  How the oldest tries to smoosh cheeks of younger ones to face the camera, how somebody gets something in their eye, and how another little person is asked where's mama and points to the sky instead. And this picture is for Nana and Papa- we took it while you weren't home because we thought that's where you'd want to take it if you were.

A little pie crust experiment...

Peach-strawberry pie, strawberry galette, and blackberry peach pie

My mom has always made good pies. She used a proven crust recipe and it made making pies enjoyable. When I was in college, I picked some blackberries at a park and made my boyfriend a pie. (I know now that blackberries are almost a weed in Seattle, so I hope they weren't sprayed, oh well, live and learn. Sorry Hon!) I tried the crust recipe I grew up with, and viola, my boyfriend became my fiance! If only our love story was that simple; however, he does remember the pie so it must have had some effect.

Then later in my twenties, I discovered that shortening wasn't even real food and I got really grossed out and despaired.  I mean, how was I gonna woo my man if I couldn't use the recipe?  A bit later, I discovered non hydrogenated palm oil.  It works just like shortening, but is a real food. I am still a bit unexcited about it though. Then a bit later again, I discovered cooking with coconut oil. So I started mixing ratios of real butter with unrefined or lightly refined coconut oil into the pie crust recipe and it was working.  Even my mom who hates coconut hasn't noticed the coconut taste in my pies.

At the same time I was experimenting with the lipids in the recipe, I was experimenting with the flours.  Whole wheat pastry flour works well in the crust in a ratio of about 3 parts to 1 part unbleached flour.  For my latest experiment, I was making a crust for chicken pot pie and knew I was going in a savory direction so I mixed in some cornmeal and used cornmeal to roll out the dough too. Super yummy I think. 

How can I care about pie crust this much?  Um, how can you not??

Chicken pot pie to go...

Experimental crust crackers (thyme, rosemary, garlic salt and S& P)