Onedirtland: Time For Pie

Its that time again. You know- pie season!

I love baking pie, but you know, the price of store purchessed fruit makes it not very pratical to put into pie. But, when you can get fruit for free, then your talking my language.

Two years ago I put a few plants in the front of the house where I thought they would do well, all day sun and close to the hose for water. I only picked a few last year, patiently holding back to let the plants get good and strong. Well this will be the year, pie, pie, pie.

Each of the plants has a story, I'll save that for another time. Trust me they are treated like tender children, so you know they were given to a good home.

Rhubarb is sacred to me, I have a childhood connection to it and have nurtured the love of it into my adulthood.

And, the pie commences.

Rosie red stalks, ooohhhhh...... I can taste it already.

The crust is the string that connects me to my heritage. My mom is an excellent pie and crust baker, luckily she has shared that with me, and when I make a crust she is with me.

But, today I got an (Alice) idea. If I'm only going to make a single crust why not just mix all the ingredients together in the pie dish ( I have given away pies already this year, so am out of traditional pans) and then just massage the crust into place, as long as you don't play with it to much it should save a lot of cleaning-YES!

I also discovered something in Florida, when it comes to mixing the crisco with the flour and salt why not use a potato masher? Another YES! It is the best! Here I only had a bean masher, but it worked fine, it will give me a garage sale hunting target.

My pie is a French custard, so for me the crumble on top turns out different every time usually due to my overlooking something. Today it was gloopy (it should never be gloopy) because when I measured the brown sugar I didn't see the water in the bottom of the cup I had used in the crust recipe. This is where Charlie would say "put your glasses on".