PIE Cooking class

I had a great day with my next door neighbor. She and I have become good friends and she asked me if I would like to go with her to a cooking class at the local collage near by. It was a PIE special. We had such a great time! I don’t remember the last time I went out of the house with a friend to do something just for fun. It was so great! Our teacher was named Karen, (easy for me to remember eh?) she was really nice.

We learned how to make many different types of pies. This one is an apple cinnamon pie – one of my favorites. My favorite pie is a strawberry-Rhubarb pie sadly we didn’t learn how to do that one but I DID learn some techniques on how to make it.

We learned some different types of pinching techniques (AMBER – I sure was thinking about you a lot today. I told our teacher how you use to make pies all the time at home and how you would always act like snow white and sing when cutting the crust.)

Here’s an easy tip I can share. To give your pastries or breads a little extra golden glow on your crust, just give it a little egg wash. Karen used 1 whole egg and a little milk.

This is a “British” apple pie, they use reasons (usually presoaked in rum), and lemons and orange zest and stuff.

A different way to make the pie crust edges.

These are mincemeat pie tarts. This was my first time having a mincemeat and I have to say, I’m surprised it wasn’t bad. Did you know that there actually isn’t any MEAT in mincemeat? It’s has something that comes from cows, but it’s not meat. Weird hu?

This is another pie edge technique, (REALLY easy to do by the way – just cut and separate to alternate sides) this was for an “Orange-pumpkin pie” I’ve never had ORANGE-Pumpkin pie before, derick really loved it. The top effect is simple too. Just make the swirls and the drag in opposite directions on the top with a knife or toothpick.

This is a Strawberry-raspberry pie (very tarty!) with a weave crust. You do the crust on top of paper and THEN toss it on top of the pie. Cool tip hu?

It was really great getting to talk to Karen she was very nice.

As I was talking with Karen she gave me the sweetest comment. She said “you have a flawless completion, you have such beautiful skin” I was so SOCKED that I just stood there with my mouth open. NO ONE in my life has EVER said that to me! and I told her so, it was the kindest complement I’ve received since July 4th… yeah I actually do remember the date cause I had to take Andrew to the ER and the only way I could calm him down was to sing to him and a lady came down to my little curtained off room and told me that she just had to tell me that she was grateful to me for me singing, that it made her feel so much better and that I had a beautiful voice. It made me feel SO nice, and I needed something to make me smile, I mean I was IN the ER for crying out load. I think my message here is ladies, ALWAYS give a complement if you can, you will ALWAYS make someone’s day by doing that.

Charlie Brown flash back

EVERY time I make a big pile of leaves to jump into, I think of my brother. Every time he jumped into a freshly assembled pile of leaves, he would retell the lines from the Charlie brown cartoon when Linus jumps into the pile of leaves with a wet sucker. Now I’m reliving the memory with my kids. I thought I actually already post this but don’t think I did. I wanted all of yall to see how cute the kids were rolling in the leaves in the back yard.

She’ll be come’n down the mountain when she comes

Missed out of posting these, I thought they were up, but don’t see them. The kids got to play in the leaves and rolling down the little hill. This was the kids first time to really DO this. We don’t have many trees back home that give off enough leaves to roll in. perfect fall-fun eh?