Thursday was left over night. I had little containers of almost an entire week of cooking and I heated everything up and Tom and I was able to finish off most of them. I needed the left over containers out of the refrigerator to make space for upcoming cooking.
Friday was a unique day as I had some Global Freeloaders spending the night. Peter and Sally were from New Zealand and they are here in the states on a 4 month adventure and they are busy driving Route 30 (The Old Lincoln Highway). We spoke early morning on Friday and I told them I would be cooking dinner for them and they were very appreciative of the gesture. What I didn't share is that they would be subjected to my cooking project, smiling.
Once I was home from work, it was time to assemble my next recipe. I had on my menu (meant for Tuesday, but that didn't happen) Spaghetti. I decided to make this because it was a short time frame and I needed it ready by 6 p.m. dinner time. Here's the photo taken after we had it for dinner, so this is left overs.
Once again this was a recipe with tomatoes, onions and peppers. Tom is believing that I am really trying to poison him now. But think about it. There are a ton of recipes that include those ingredients. There was another ingredient that was unique to this recipe. Bacon. Did you raise your eyebrows? I did. The first step in this recipe is to cook a couple strips of bacon crisp, then remove the bacon and then saute the onions and peppers in the bacon fat. Then add your ground chuck, spices, then drain, then back on the stove and add tomatoes chopped and paste. Cook on simmer on stove 30 minutes. This was a piece of cake for me.
I served it with wheat rotini pasta, spinach salad and garlic bread. My guests Peter and Sally enjoyed the pasta and I tried to get everyone to see if they could taste the bacon in the recipe. They didn't taste the crumbled bacon, so I finally shared my secret ingredient with them. One of the guesses was anchovies! LOL. We had a nice evening enjoying the company of Peter and Sally and learning more about life in New Zealand. I thought the dish was OK. Not fantastic, just OK.
The next morning I was up early to start preparing breakfast for Peter and Sally and I decided to make Fresh Strawberry Pie with No Roll Piecrust. I was making the pie to take up to Pemberville to be dessert for dinner with friends Brenda and Larry. Brenda and I go back to the days of Pampered Chef and she ordered goodies from my last show and I wanted to deliver them to her and spend some time visiting with her. So I was excited for the day but was anxious about making the pie.
The reason I had such anxiety was that my past experience with pie crust is NOT GOOD. I had a dear friend tried to show me how to make it and I wasn't successful at all. This pie crust seem easy. You make it all in the pie plate and then press it out with your fingers. The catch however was in baking time. It didn't give me a baking time in the recipe. It said "bake until brown at 375." So once again I googled how long to pre-bake a pie crust and found out it is about 11-14 minutes. So I set my timer for 10 minutes, and cooked it 15 minutes before I decided it was brown enough. Oh yes, and I remembered about pricking the pie crust too. So I did that. It came out looking pretty good for someone that doesn't have a pie crust clue.
Next was putting everything together for the pie. By this time, I had already made my batter for my blueberry pancakes and had the kitchen prepped to start working on breakfast and Sally came down to see what I was up to. I explained I was taking my first stab at a fresh Strawberry pie. She looked amused as I was trying to cook the strawberries on the stove per the directions to "thicken them." Another confession I have is that the recipe called for "crushed strawberries." I had no clue how to crush them. I had to google that too. Oh my, it is just using a potoato masher to do the job, well I have one of those!
I followed the directions on cooking until thickened, then cool. Then you slice up remaining strawberries, stir into mixture, pour into piecrust and chill until time to serve with whipped cream. Here's my photo of the finished pie:
We had to drive two hours to Brenda and Larry's home and I worried about keeping the pie cold enough for the trip. I was able to keep it iced down in the trunk. We had a great visit with Brenda and Larry and Brenda who follows my blog here, did some of her own Mrs. Wilkes cooking with making a lasgana from scratch, fried zuccinni, and fresh green beans. Dinner was great but after a couple of hours of visiting past dinner it was time to sample the pie.
Brenda asked me to cut it and serve and when I looked at it, I could tell that it didn't set up firm. It was still on the runny side. She smiled and took the plates and gave me bowls instead. We both commented that while it may be "soupy" it will probably taste good. I laughed and said I am used to eating some pie with my whipped cream and thought maybe I should serve more whipped cream than pie to cover up the runny issue. Instead I decided if anyone asked that it was supposed to be more cobbler than pie! NOT!
Once it was time to taste the pie, it was good for my first scratch attempt. The piecrust was a little salty but I agreed with Brenda that the saltiness was good with the sweetness of the pie. Larry and Tom enjoyed the pie. Tom was happy that we got to take the pie back home with us. While I was disappointed the pie didn't set up, I was happy that I pulled off piecrust and willing to make another. Thankfully Brenda is going to forward to me another Strawberry Pie recipe to try.
Today I have a full day with grocery shopping and cooking for dinner tonight and my Mom is the guest of honor. Here's hoping that taste and texture is present and accounted for too!
It was great fun to be able to participate in the Wilkes year-long cooking project! The pie was runny, but delicious! It just needed more gelatin to make it stiffen up. The saltiness of the crust was a great contrast to the sweetness of the pie. If you like a salty-sweet combination, which I do, then you will like this! It kind of reminded me of the strawberry-pretzel jello salad, only better. Runny or not, the pie was great and all bowls were empty! Thanks for sharing it, and your cooking experiement with us Marlene! It was great to see you and to meet Tom. Happy cooking! I will forward you the recipe from my mother-in-law for strawberry pie. It is "no-fail." Maybe you can combine them. Marlene told me that she always cooks from a recipe. I don't, and therefore know I would not have the patience for what she is doing. I would be altering every recipe!
ReplyDeleteBrenda Ward
It was great to see you and to share the food with Larry and you! I just wish I would have brought the cookbook with me so I could have showed that to you as well. I think there's a lesson in this process for me. That lesson is focus and discipline. I am giving it my all and even though the texture may be off, it seems the flavors are still there and it is reinforcing my confidence in that I can cook Southern food!
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