Saturday, November 27, 2010

Making Pies


I think you've been privy to my thoughts on Thanksgiving dinner.

Oh, how I envy Morty, George and Ditto going to a Chinese restaurant instead of doing the traditional fare.

My mother, in typical fashion, emailed days before the holiday on what she was having for dinner, leaving us kids to fill in the holes of what was not to be provided. No problem - right?

I immediately emailed back that I'd bring another dessert, as I don't like pumpkin pie - though it was going to be there via my own mother. All my sisters had access to this....as did my mother.

Though I didn't put it on the email, I opted to bring an appetizer as well. I didn't think what I wanted to bring would be repeated, so I was pretty safe.

For the pie, I went for cherry. Not only do I like it, but one of my sisters does as well. I figured it wouldn't go to waste.

We did not make our own crust. The Dough Boy (no, not me!) has uncooked crust, at your local grocer, that just rolls out. This is a huge improvement over their folded stuff that used to rip when trying to place it in the pie plate.

You have to do the lattice work yourself. Pillsbury doesn't have a product for that.

The leftover dough is what you see in the image at the title. Denton made a teeny-tiny tart (no, not me!). Why put anything to waste?

Here was the finished product.

The fail was, there ended up being four pies at dinner that only had 13 folks - and most of those in attendance are kids who don't like pies. We ended coming back with more than half of the cherry pie and then a few pieces of pumpkin for the hubby.

The pre-menu emails mean squat. Communication in our family has been and remains an issue. Clearly.

As for the appetizer, I kind of forgot to take pictures of the process after the first snap.

Honestly, it tastes better than it looks. What you see here is garlic, basil, sun-dried tomatoes and Parmesan cheese. It went into making Ina Garten's Tomato-Basil elephant ears.

It was the first time I had worked with puff-pastry so I wasn't sure how it'd all turn out.

Actually, I liked it. Denton thought it was ok. One of my sisters, who hates almost everything, liked them, so they couldn't have been all bad.

I'd do stuff a little differently. I put the tomato-basil paste on too thick, I think and so the puff pastry didn't puff they I think it should have. Maybe it puffed as much as it would have, but I have no way of knowing. Either way, the goop was on there just a little too much.

And the recipe made for a lot of paste. I used about half. Since my sister was having a second T-giving and she liked it so much, I gave the rest of the unused pastry and filling to her so she could make it. I'm a swell guy.

But I did make the evening break I wanted to. I snagged my oldest niece and nephew and took them to see Harry Potter.

I liked it more the second time. I could focus on a few more details of the story and how/if it correlated to the book, but I really got to take in magnificent scenery and locations. Some of those woods / river/ cliffs / beaches were just incredibly shot....and well scouted.

I know my niece liked it a lot, but Matt is a tougher critic. He wasn't totally sold, but we'll see what he says in a few days.

No shopping for me this weekend either. I don't do stores and barely ventured out the day after. Our 53 degree Tgiving has turned to just above freezing and today we are looking at up to 2" of snow.

'Tis the season.


Song by: Patty Griffin

4 comments:

Cubby said...

We're sitting here in Bay Village this morning watching the low, thick snow clouds come in off the lake heading straight for your house. We put a big sign in the yard pointing your way. Hope you don't mind :-)

david Joseph said...

Now that I have read your most heterosexual post I can't seem to get that song by Warrent, "she's my cherry pie" out of my head.

Blobby said...

There is nothing homo about making pies or Harry Potter. Oh.....wait. Maybe it's all too gay.

..and trust, me, I considered the Warrant song as my post title.


word verification: haters

anne marie in philly said...

mmmmmmm, warm cherry pie...