Pies =)

Pies =)

My Grandma Bair taught me to make pies.  I still remember her voice telling me the ingredients, her hands showing me how to measure and knead the dough.  It makes me happy every time I use the recipe she gave me to make pies for others.  I play around with new filling recipes all the times, but here is my basic pie dough recipe, straight from my Grandma Bair.  The fun part is it’s sort of a pitch and pour recipe, but I’ll try to make it make sense. 

1 cup Crisco

2 cups and a bit of Flour (the ratio of flour to Crisco is a little more than 2 to 1, so you can make as many crusts at once as you like.)

Some sugar, maybe a quarter cup. 

Pinch of salt.  My Grandma taught me to measure a pinch by cupping my hand and pouring just a bit of salt in, but I think it’s like an eighth of a teaspoon.

Cold water added a bit at a time until the dough balls up.

Then you just need to roll out the dough.  Here I use a trick from my Mama.  If you roll the dough between waxed paper, with a nice coat of flour sprinkled on top and on bottom, then you’re less likely to have to overwork the dough to get it big enough.  Grandma Bair made pies all the time and could just roll it out straight on the counter with flour, but I don’t practice enough.  You want it to be fairly thin.

Then you transfer it to the pie pan!  For a pudding type pie, I bake at 350 for 12-15 minutes.  Be sure and poke the crust with a fork so it doesn’t bubble up. 

For fruit pies, you need a second crust, and you can either crimp the edges with a fork, or by pinching it between two fingers.  I loved it when Grandma Bair taught me to do that, it made it feel like fancy baking =) 

For Serenity’s Thanksgiving banquet today, I made a coconut pie, a chocolate pie with irish cream flavoring, and a cherry almond pie.  I ran out of eggs or there would have been a maple pumpkin pie too!  Have to save that for next time.  Enjoy the recipe!

v

Happy Thanksgiving... a picture of mine =)

Two posts in one day!  That's more like it =)  Well, maybe they're both quickies but still.  Here's a picture of my Thanksgiving centerpiece.  Pumpkins leftover from our pumpkin patch visit, and a floral centerpiece. 

To make this centerpiece yourself, here's a list of the flowers I chose.  First, in a short rectangular vase, start with an antique green hydrangea and an ornamental kale.  They're nice and big so they fill the vase well and hold the rest of the flowers in place.  They hydrangea is a bit pricey but it makes up for it by taking up so much space!  Then I added a lily, some celosia, two peonies, a few cymbidium orchids, and some parrot tulips.  It's a fun mix!

And then here's my menu, which would be a good Christmas menu too.  So I'll go ahead and publish it even though it's too late for Thanksgiving ideas =) 
Carolyn's Orange Rolls
Orange Apricot glazed turkey (Basically just stick orange slices and butter under the skin of the turkey breast, pour chicken stock and brush with apricot jelly, bake as directed on package.)
Green Bean Casserole

Sweet Potato, Onion, Potato, Parmesan casserole (just slice and layer those ingredients, add some chicken broth, butter, and parmesan, then bake for an hour.  Easy and yummy!)

Cranberry sauce

Pumpkin Pie with Cranberry Topping (An experiment this year that turned out yummy!)
Coconut Pie

I was really happy with this because really I managed to do all the prep (except for the dough that I made the night before)  in about an hour and a half in the morning, and then all I had to do was stick things in the oven at the right time.  =)