Perfect Pie Crust

My mom and I have a tradition that every Thanksgiving Eve, we bake pies together for the next day. How fortunate that just last month, I found a recipe for perfect pie crust while making a chicken pot pie. This dough was beautiful: pliant, easy to work with, and with all the best qualities of both butter (rich flavor) and shortening (flakiness and holding its shape). This makes 2 pie crusts.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Perfect Pie Crust

1/2 c. vegetable shortening
1/2 c. cold unsalted butter
3 c. all-purpose flour
1 tsp. kosher salt
1 c. ice water

Mix the shortening, butter and salt into the flour with a pastry blender until very crumbly. Add water until the dough comes together into a ball. Cover dough in plastic wrap and refrigerate at least 1 hour, or as long as 24 hours.

When ready to make pie, roll the dough out on a floured surface until it fits your pie pan. Fold in half, then in half again, and transfer to the pie pan. Now unfold it. Do the same with the top crust, tucking the extra dough under and crimping the edges. Bake as indicated in your pie recipe.

Bodega Bay

This is how we began: cerulean sky and an expanse of water, right outside our window.

The next morning was more like:

Every day I spent there, I wrote. Not literally as I must when at work, but as a poet might. I tried to see everything as an artist. I'd nearly forgotten I had it in me.

But I found plenty to inspire...



Crab sandwich and clam chowder? Check. Salty wind and view of the Bay? Check. Random bluesy Elvis crooner? Check.

When the clouds blew past us, we were left to enjoy a silver-tinged landscape.




So we did.

On Being Cozy

Cozy is the name of the game this week

Things I love about this week:

- Soup is on the menu 3 times! Lentil, Split Pea, and Tomato, oh my!

- After an eternity of procrastination, I finally knit a perfect square. One perfect square. That means I am on my way to a scarf ... soon!

- Looking forward to a weekend in Bodega Bay, Sebastopol, Freestone, and the ocean. It’s been months since I’ve seen the sea. Plus, the last time we went there it was simply awesome.

A Food Lover's Seattle

When people ask me what we did in Seattle, I never really know what to say except that we ate. Some people learn a new place by sight-seeing, but it seems that we do so by eating.

We couldn't have asked for a better start to our trip than a sunny corner of Volunteer Park Cafe with a hot cup of hot chocolate and a slice of wonderful slice of blueberry coffee cake. (A copy of Bon Appetit and a rustic wooden table didn't hurt either; I felt right at home instantly.)
From there, Seattle's food continued to wow us at every turn. I got to eat the best sandwich of my life, a cuban roast pork sandwich from Paseo. Believe the hype, the flavors were outstanding.


We had breakfast at The Crumpet Shop before hitting Pike's Place. Here's my lemon curd-ricotta crumpet.

I have to say that one of the highlights of the trip was visiting Delancey, the restaurant owned by famed blogger/author Orangette and her husband.

There was just something about experiencing physically what I'd only read about and imagined - actually tasting the wood-fired pizza, roasted raddichio salad and the bittersweet chocolate cookie sprinkled with salt. We opted for a pizza with homemade sausage and roasted padrone peppers:

I think the best thing I ate on the whole trip was likely the maple walnut trifle we had for dessert. It was the kind of dish that you take one bite of and tell yourself, "I have to figure out how to make this at home." I'll work on that one.

We ate Chicken-Spinach Manicotti made by Mario Batali's father at Salumi:

And bacon-wrapped Mehjool dates at Tango, a tapas restaurant:


On a cold Saturday morning, we made a trip to a great Farmer's Market, where I bought salted caramels, allium flower bulbs and fresh pasta and stuffed it into my suitcase to take home with me. Then, our noses frozen, we curled up in a cozy spot appropriately named Nook...

...where everything on the menu is based on biscuits:

And then it was time to head home. But of course we couldn't leave without one last tribute to this wonderful city:

Cheers, Seattle! Thanks for a lovely trip.

Foraging Walnuts

This weekend we enjoyed wonderful warm fall weather and took advantage of it by taking a trip to up Apple Hill. We drove away with fresh cider, a dried lavender bouquet, Pink Lady and Rome Beauty apples, and a bag full of walnuts we had foraged from a streetside tree. Then, a friend offered to let us gather walnuts from her tree as well.

The good news:

The bad news:

We still have a long ways to go, but just think - bags and bags of free walnuts to last a year! (That's how long they keep in the freezer.) I'm a big fan of adding nuts to all sorts of baked goods; cakes, cookies, and crisps are all better with some toasted nuts. Here's to free food!

Pumpkin Lasagna

The garden yielded us a total of 13 pumpkins. I'm pretty sure the packet of seeds we planted said New England pie pumpkins, but these guys are way bigger than we expected them to be! We are going to have plenty of pumpkin for Thanksgiving next month and more than enough to share with friends.

Now I'm on the hunt for pumpkin recipes, especially those that take pumpkin beyond pie status to the dinner plate. I have read that any recipe calling for butternut squash can use pumpkin instead, so I have lots of room to experiment with that hypothesis. Here is my version of a recipe that I tried this week for Pumpkin Lasagna.

I was a little trepidatious when I first envisions a pumpkin lasagna, thinking of cutting into a square and finding a thick layer of pumpkin filling, but it wasn't how I imagined it - it was much prettier and tastier. The pumpkin puree is blended with soft ricotta and other cheeses for a creamy golden layer that sits besides your traditional layers of pasta sauce, noodles, meat and vegetables. I love the versatility of lasagna as a season dish that you can throw zucchini and eggplant into in summer, then pumpkin in the fall. This is definitely a recipe I would make again.

Pumpkin Lasagna

1 medium onion, chopped

4 to 6 garlic chopped
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 pound lean ground beef or Italian sausage, casings removed
4 handfuls baby spinach
2 jars of prepared pasta sauce
Kosher salt, freshly ground black pepper and spices, to taste
1 pound low-fat ricotta cheese
1 cup shredded mozzarella cheese + extra for topping
1 cup shredded parmesan cheese
2 eggs
1 1/2 cups pumpkin puree
1 pound no-boil lasagna noodles

In a large heavy skillet, over medium heat, saute onion and garlic in the olive oil until translucent. Add meat and cook until brown, breaking it up with a wooden spoon as it cooks. Add spinach and cook for 5 more minutes. Set aside.

In a large bowl mixing together the ricotta, mozzarella and parmesan cheeses. Add eggs, pumpkin puree and salt and pepper, to taste. Mix very well.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

Build your lasagna in a large (9 by 12-inch) starting with a layer of sauce, a layer of pasta, a layer of half the sausage and a layer of half the filling. Add another layer of pasta, sauce, the remaining sausage and the filling. Finish with a layer of pasta and a layer of sauce. Sprinkle some mozzarella cheese on top and bake for 25 minutes. Let cool for 15 minutes before serving.

Health Food at the Dollar Store?

A while back, I went to the Dollar Store in search of "real" food. I generally think of the food sold there as horrible both in quality and nutrition - you know, Banquet pot pies and generic soda pop. Then my co-worker told me he sometimes finds actual healthy food there, randomly. Their selection isn't consistent, but will sometimes offer unexpected pleasant surprises. He advised me to go with an open mind and see what I could find.

I took his advice and the next time I went to the Dollar Store, I wandered the food aisles. I was pleased to find a bag of whole fax seeds, an fantastic source of Omega 3 fatty acids. But what to do with them? I added some to a fruit smoothie once, but today I may have found the best use ever: multi-seed bread.

This bread had an excellent flavor and texture. I loved the subtle little crunchy bits of seeds tucked inside the slightly sweet, freshly baked bread. I have a feeling that my whole flax seeds are going to find their way into many more loaves of bread. And the best part is, they only set me back a dollar.

Seed Bread

2 cups of warm water

¼ c. honey

2 ¼ tsp (1 package) active dry yeast

¼ c. olive oil

1 tsp. kosher salt

2 ½ c. whole wheat flour

2 ½ c. bread flour

½ c. sunflower seeds

½ c. flax seeds

Dissolve honey in warm water in a large bowl, then sprinkle 2 1/4 tsp of yeast over the top and let proof for 10 minutes. Then add oil and salt. Next, stir in all flours and seeds with a wooden spoon until flour is dissolved. Turn onto a clean surface and knead until the dough is smooth. Place dough in an oiled bowl and let rise for 1 hour. Divide dough into 2 loaves and place in 2 oiled bread pans, then let rise again for 45 min. Bake at 375 for 30 minutes.