Jam tarts and Pies.

Favourite recipes for use with amazing pie crust:

Jam tarts. I roll the dough into little balls, then roll them into little thin cookie circles. Place 1 spoon of your favourite jam in the center of each and top with another little thing cookie circle. Roll the edges up like pie crusts, glaze with cream and sprinkle with sugar.....and bake at 350 degrees on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper or or until golden. There are variations. You can roll the dough out in a big sheet and make them like raviolis. Or you could roll out a cookie circle and fold it over like a moon. Make them tiny, make them bigger. It's all good. I like served warm with ice cream best.

I love these best with strawberry jam, next best with red raspberry. They taste like pop tarts only way better.

Apple Pie:

Cut, core, and peel 7 cups worth of firm apples. I like Wealthy apples the very best of all, but Macintosh work too.
1/2 cup brown cane sugar.
1 T of fresh lemon juice
1/2 t fresh ground cinnamon
1/4 t fresh ground nutmeg
2 T cold salted butter

Mix all but the butter together in a  big bowl. Once mixed dump in pie crust, sprinkle filling with butter pieces, and top with more pie crust. Trim edges and press together. Bake at 400 for 30 minutes, 375 until the crust has browned to golden. Let cool for 1 hour before serving.

Strawberry pie. That one I have to still work into a recipe. Basically my success has been heating up strawberry jam, adding fresh cut strawberries, pouring into a pre-baked pie crust and topping with a really thing layer of top crust, glazed and sugared. That doesn't sound recipe ish though. I will make it tomorrow and try and document it better.

Amazing Pie Crust

I know, my Dearest will say, "For Humble Pie?" Indeed. This crust changed things for me. Making this crust made my first successful apple pie. That gave me the confidence to keep going.

Use a food processor. Not kidding, this makes crust making easy as pie.

3 cups of all purpose unbleached flour. I use Bob's Red Mill or the local Paul's Grains High Gluten. Either one works well.

3 tablespoons of raw cane sugar. You can use brown pure cane sugar if you can't find "turbinado" or Sugar in the raw. Cane sugar is key.

3/4 cup SALTED sweet cream butter frozen and then cut into 1/4 inch pieces. I prefer to make my own butter BUT there is no noticible differnce between that and store bought in this recipe.

1/4 cup of frozen lard. Pig lard. I'm not kidding. Use local, pastured pig lard if you can. HUGE difference. (If any of you local ladies want to try it let me know and I'll share a bit.) Cut into pieces.

1/2 cup of very cold water.

Put the dry ingredients in the food processor and pulse to blend. Then add the butter and lard. Pulse until mixture is crumbly. Fluff the mixture if needed. Add the water slowly while pulsing and stop once the mixture starts clumping like course crumbs.

Take mixture out and knead with your hands on floured parchment paper. Form into two balls and squish into disks. Wrap in plastic or paper and stick in the fridge.

(Make your pie filling)

When you are ready to roll out the dough (I use a chilled marble rolling pin, but that's just me being fancy pants), do so carefully and intentionally. Line your pan with one and top the filling with the other.

But wait, there's more. You want flaky crisp top crust? Use WHOLE CREAM and brush on a glaze over the entire top. I cut my slits after the glaze. Then sprinkle generously with more raw sugar. That adds just the right amount of sparkle. I also take the edge trimmings and make them into pretty shapes to top the crust. That's just fun.

I'll post fillings in just a bit.

Our week has been very wet and muddy and magical.....

So our week has been rainy. Lots of flash flooding, power flickers, and constant downpours with a side of mud. Grey, gloomy, wet and mucky. The rain rain rain came down down down.

One of the sunny hours I rushed out to do bee chores and Lily grabbed the back up camera to take a couple pictures of mama in the spacesuit. 

You will see that I do not wear a full suit. I still wear gloves and the veil and the white shirt though. I found that my normal clothes are too predator like in colour. Also that the bees get stuck in my hair. My hand are too busy for their liking as well. This is the get up that prevents me from getting stung. I also usually wear boots, but I forgot and wore rubber clogs and was totally fine. Also, I work the back of teh hives because my belly bumps the front and that tends to get them buzzing more.

I also had to add a box. The cranky hive (the ladies that gave me 10 stings) was finally full and needed more room.  The boxes are beautiful. I am so glad I am apprenticing with Sean at Blue Gate Farm. He really puts a lot of care into the construction of the hives and doesn't mind that I get chatty and ask a lot of questions.

Lily took this picture. She says its proof the grove is enchanted and full of faeries.  My Aunt Deedle will apreciate this, she's a big believer in cameras capturing the supernatural. I think it's poor lighting and a 1.2 MP with a dirty lens. Still, it does look magical in real life too. Minus the ghost bubbles. (Also, see the mud in the foreground? The whole farm is a marsh.)

Pregnancy Update: New Doc, Happy Mama

I met with the new doc for an official prenatal yesterday. There were some complications with the timing of the actual appointment, something happened at the hospital and then the doctor had a death in his extended family. That left me waiting for about an hour before actually seeing him. In that hour I read half a sci-fi novel (and it really was not very good) and then opened up the folder they gave me as a new patient.

Wow. The packet outlined every single visit and what to expect. The cost of each test or exam. What tests were standard and included and what test might come up. It took about 4 pages for that. Then they spent a small section on possible emergency situations and what to expect, including that their C-Section rate, including elective repeat C/S is only 15-20%! That is really amazing. The first group I was with was 35-40%, but to be fair they do take on more high risk patients in general.

Prenatal vitamins are provided as part of the package, but the doc said with my awesome diet I don't need them. I take the ones I already have anyway though. It can't hurt and sometimes I feel like I'm not eating enough veggies.

So the visit itself....the doc sat down and went over all of my pregancy records, from the infertility pre-Lil'Bug through this pregnancy. Asked about every screening, every test, every complication listed. Went over family health history in detail. I mean, he actually read my file. I'm not sure my other docs ever did that and they are the ones who cut me open.

This was the first time I have ever felt at ease with a doctor, let alone a male doctor. I have issues, I know and I work on those issues, but this time I actually felt like the doctor cared. 

He did the belly check and was concerned about the measurement as it put me father along then the charts indicated, but he pointed out that I am short waist-ed and that would account for that. Just to make sure, he asked to do an ultrasound. Yes, he asked. Since I had canceled the genetic screening ultrasound in DM that would check for the spinal deformities that run in my family, I agreed. He checked for the spine and heart health first. Yes, he did the ultrasound himself, not a tech called in. All is well with baby and he even pointed out that the baby looked smiling. That's the note he put on the picture print too, SMILING BABY. So sweet.  The dating is still questionable though, but he said we'll stick with the first ultrasound's date since it is later, December 1st. Another point for the doc, in my book.

He's still ok with us attempting vbac2. He said he would go over my surgical records and make sure nothing was noted that would indicate that I couldn't. He's very thorough. I like that. All in all my actual appointment time with him was an hour and a half. Pretty impressive.

Everything is just right. Even the nurses are kind. :)  Funny thing is that I keep losing track of how many weeks I am, just the due date sticks. So for the record, right now I am 15.5 weeks.