Let Us Pretend This is Peach Pie

 I took a week off of the cookbook challenge to focus on canning, and then took another week to be a guinea pig for GAT and Lizzy in their cookbook challenge.  I then got wrapped up in reading The Enchantment Emporium, by Tanya Huff. I will write  a review on that later, but the one thing I will say about the book right now, is that it put me in the mood for pie.

Realizing that my hiatus in the challenge will only put me further behind than I already feel that I am, and knowing that I had fruit that I needed to use up, it was time for me to crack open a cookbook and get back to work. Choosing one of the many dessert cookbooks that I have at random, I figured there had to be a pie recipe in there somewhere.

Pie Time!

 When I think about pastries, I think about turnovers, pies, and filo pastry. I do not often think of savory dishes; but surprisingly there were a fair amount of savory dishes available in The Best Ever Pastry Cookbook.  I had pie on the brain and could not be persuaded despite how delicious some of the dishes sounded.  I was in luck. There was a lovely recipe for Peach Leaf Pie. It even had a crust recipe and didn't have the audacity to assume that I know how to make a crust.  It has been years since I have made a pie from scratch, much less made a canned pie.  Crust has never been something I have excelled at. Pie isn't something that is normal in my house. Cakes and cookies reign supreme, until now. Pie might become the new cake.  Not to mention it freezes better.

Bald Not- Peaches Peaches

I pulled out my ingredients and looked over the recipe and I seemed that I had everything, but one critical item needed for peach pie. I didn't have any peaches. The peaches that we did have, were used the night before on the grill with and devoured with vanilla ice cream. It was a noble peach death.  All was not lost. I did have some nectarines and a few golden plums from the local CSA.  Nectarines are just bald peaches, or at least that is what I am pretending.

Balls

Assembling the dough was easier than I thought and I am pretty lethal with a fork. Mostly because out of all the kitchen gadgets and thing-a-ma-jigs that I own, I do not at this time own a dough blender.  I decided that I could just fork it into submission. It worked, and that is all that matters.  Molding the dough into two butter filled balls, I shoved them into the fridge and started to slicing the fruit.

There is something magical about fruit in sugar. It gets all syrupy and sticky. It is delicious and I could have eaten a bowl of the not peaches in sugar and fallen into a sugar coma if I were a person of less restraint.   Rolling the dough out, I filled the center with the delicious goodness of seasonal fruit goodness.

Iggins in the Cabinet

The recipe called for dough to be cut out into shapes of leaves and piled onto the pile and a very beautiful time consuming passion pattern. I do not have a leaf cutter. The idea of doing it all by hand while I have I have an Iggins begging for my attention or cat food did not entice me to cut out three dozen dough leaves by hand, add veins to them and arrange them onto the pie.  I do however have ninja cookie cutters. Pie crust is nothing but a dough, and cookie cutters are made to cut through dough. It was perfect. My pie is covered in ninjas.  They are in a constant battle over the peaches. It is awesome.

I think that I will make more pies in the future and that they are more visually appealing to me when decorated with things that appeal to me.  I think that the Peach Ninja Pie would appeal to people. Especially if no peaches were harmed in the process. Maybe for Thanksgiving I'll make a Blueberry Dinosaur Pie, or a Sour Apple Snowflake.

In other news. Two more cookbooks have been added to the challenge. My mother in law brought me a lovely cookbook back from down south, and I compulsively bought a new cookbook and chocolate. My rational was that I didn't own a chocolate cookbook, and I needed more chocolate in my life. I will be updating those books to the list on Library Thing soon. Total number of cookbooks is now 60. Total of 9 out of 60 have been completed.

Trouble in Tea

I am not an expert at reading tea leaves. I probably have about has much training as any person that has read Harry Potter.  There isn't a class local to learn Tasseography and the local tea houses don't really get into it.  I am mediocre at empathy, which mean divination is probably not my strong suit.  I can look into a cup of tea and see something, that is probably based on my mood more than anything. Someone else can looking into my cup of tea and see some thing else in those leaves.

Tree or Severed Head?

 After  particularly long day at work, I glanced down into my cup looking for perhaps a little bit of sanity mixed into remaining drops of delicious caffeinated refreshment, and I saw a skull staring back at me.  I was not sure if it was a sign for me to to call it a day or perhaps a mental projection as to what would happen if my phone rang one more time. I snapped a picture and decided to call it a day. When I got home, I posted the picture up on Facebook and asked people what they saw. Surprisingly enough most people saw a tree. And when I mentioned that I saw a head/skull, they could suddenly see it too. Which to me means, they obviously don't have murdering running through their veins unless provoked. For a little bit of help on possible meanings, I turned to ReadingTeaLeaves.Info for a little guidance. After all, the internet wouldn't lie to me. 

Whale?

The little experiment made me wonder, if perhaps I only have severed heads on my mind when my own head feels like it is going to explode.  I though that I would try taking picture of my tea every day for a week and see if there was trend, or if my tea was as unique as the day itself. 

Monday: I look at this and all I think of is a whale. Most particularly the Bubbie from The Marvelous Misadventures of FlapJack. I wasn't sure what I whale was supposed to mean, other than I should probably watch more cartoons, or if I was going to be eaten by a whale later in life. I decided to look it up.  Whale: A prediction of personal danger which may be averted if you are cautious. I think that it is a lousy prediction for the week. 

Howl For Me!

Tuesday: I think that the tea leaves are messing with me. The first thing I saw was a wolf or dog howling. Looking up didn't give me any warm and fuzzies. Wolf: beware of jealous intrigues. Beware of an avaricious and hard-hearted neighbor or friend. Not a real positive after the previous days whale and the possible warning of personal danger that I could avoid if I was cautious.  

Sushi Anyone?

Wednesday: This was a hard cup of tea. There was not a lot to me to see, and frankly it was a little bit of a stretch to see it to begin with, sort of like the constellations. I saw a bear eating a salmon. Bear:  a long period of travel. Fish: good news from abroad; if surrounded by dots, emigration.  I want to think that this a positive, but the whole eating thing has me worried. I seems that I am destined to travel or get good news from distant places, but it gets devoured?

Face in the leaves

Thursday: I see a cheeky face person with a bunch of ravens flying.  I am pretty sure that I have no talent for Tasseography. Everything I see tends to look bleak, and I never really thought of myself as a dressing person. Raven: this bird is an omen of gloom and despondency, disappointment in love, separation, failure in work; it is also a symbol of death for the aged. Death for the aged; disappointment in love, divorce, failure in business, and trouble generally. Face didn't really give me a lot to go on and said that it goes with what ever sign is presented with it. Lucky me there I drew the face of death. Perhaps I should lay off reading so much fiction before bed, it is clearly addling my brain. 

What sharp teeth you have!

Friday: I surrender. I see a tea pot, and a monster with sharp teeth. I decided that I didn't even want to look it up to see what it mean. I think that my cup of tea has made a point. I should spend more time just drinking the tea or else I will be looking for monsters at every leap and turn.  I can guarantee that if you looked at these cups, that there is a good possibility that you won't see what I saw, or perhaps see something even more.  For those that do have aptitude in this arena, tell me the truth. Are my tea leaves leaving me a death threat? 

What is that Popping Sound?

What is that popping sound? Please let that be the pickles.  Either that or the cats have gotten a hold of a cap gun.  I am trying to make a healthy stab at my cookbook, before I impulsively add more books to the list. It is canning season, or as some people call it, August.  Prior to this year, I have never tinned, jellied or jammed a single thing.  My mother is an accomplished jelly maker and I have been able to use her jalapeño jelly as a bargaining tool, but that accomplishment has not been passed down to me genetically.  This is the first year that I have ever been involved in adventure, and I think I am in love, or at least my taste buds are.

After making jellies with my mom and with Lizzy, I decide to see what Betty Crocker has to say on the matter of canning.  Picking one of the remaining Betty Crocker cookbooks by random, I found that the 1988 Edition had a simple to read, possibly won't burn myself recipe on making Garlic Dill Pickles. I also had about 8 cucumbers in the fridge that needed to be used. The cucumbers I am using are in no relation to the Sea Pig, which is also a cucumber. I don't think that Garlic Dill Sea Pig Pickles would be all that tasty.

The one blessing about Betty Crocker, whom I feel should just be referred to as Betty here on out, is that her instructions are simple. She assumes that every one is an idiot when it comes to cooking.  I like this, because sometimes I am an idiot when it comes to cooking.  I am aware of my talents enough to know that there is a lot that I don't know when it comes to the kitchen and that pressure cookers scare me.   Thankfully the Garlic Dill Pickles do not require a pressure cooker, and had reduced the possibility of me dying due to a dill pickle marginally.

In fact the Garlic Dill Pickles seem deceptively simple. Slice cucumbers, toss it in a jar with dill and garlic and a few slices of onion and pour a brine over it and process in a cauldron of boiling water.  When it is done processing, let  the jar sit until cool, and there should be a popping noise to signify that the jars are sealed. I have no idea if the pickles have actually turned out,  mostly because I need to let them set for 6 weeks before opening.  Once they are opened and tasted, it will become evident if I have created a killer cucumber.  Until that time, I am just going to assume that everything is normal and hope for the best.

Experiment 452

  I think that if you are going to experiment on people, you shouldn't always let them know that you are doing it. It ruins the experiment, because it isn't a controlled test. How do you know that the results are really the results if the test subject knows that they are being experimented on?  You don't know.

Which brings me to one of my coworkers, I will call her Experiment 452, mostly because I would not want to embarrass her by the multiple tests that have been ran through her programing without her knowing.  This is the one case, where I have let the test subject pick the experiment that she was going to partake of.  There are mixed results.

In my quest to use at least one recipe in every cookbook that I own, it becomes rather obvious that I have an issue with Betty Crocker.  I own six Betty Crocker cookbooks, and I am not ashamed yet of it.  When I was growing up, my mother used to use a Betty Crocker cookbook for lots of stuff, and it is what I learned to cook and bake out of. It is as much of my childhood as my kid brother was.  As an adult I strive to try and find the same exact Betty Crocker Cookbook version that my mother uses. It was not to be found. Instead I found a bunch of other versions.

The version that I used was a picture less paper back, that is just recipes. It is a very compact version and really handy if you needed to take it traveling with you to the grocery store, or to work. I let Experiment 452 pick out several recipes that they would be inclined to try.  I was amazed and shocked, Experiment 452 put some thought into the recipes she chose (about  half a dozen) and the theme was readily apparent. I was going to be making a soup and sandwich combo.

Curried Chicken Salad (page 485) and Mulligatawny Soup (page 559) was the final decision.  I have no idea what Mulligatawny Soup was, and it sounded a little bit like a golf term. Thankfully after a quick scan of the recipe and a cross reference of the Internet, Mulligatawny Soup is a curry flavored soup. Curry was going to be a theme, and considering I am a fan of curry, this was a very smart selection of Experiment 452.

Gathering my ingredients for the soup and the chicken salad I felt like I murdered a flock of chicken to make broth and to divide it between the soup and the salad.  Both the soup and the salad were really easy to put together. There is something to be said about simple clear concise instructions.  You have not guess work as to what you are to be doing and or house to do it. I have done some recipes where it is 2 parts guess work and 1 part crossing your fingers that you made the right choice in how you combined the ingredients.  Both the Mulligatawny Soup and the Curried Chicken Salad  required a very low skill in culinary mastery and provided you trusted a child with a knife, they could make this easily.

But how does it taste?  That is what Experiment 452 was for.  I needed an un bias taste tester. Packing a lunch for her and I trotted off to work.  Experiment 452 loved it and thought it was awesome.  I on the other hand was a bit of skeptic. It wasn't horrible, but love was a really strong word for it. Mulligatawny Soup smells really good when heated up but was not a super strong curry flavor. The Curried Chicken Salad was alright. It wasn't something I would write home about. It has rice in it, which makes it really unique for chicken salad.

Two days later I brought Experiment 452 more soup, but added rice to it. The rice was needed to add more body to the Mulligatawny Soup. You don't even realize that it needed rice until you tried it with the rice.  Overall I would keep the recipe, but add rice and noodles to it. The broth hits a happy spot, and as noted by Experiment 452 this would be a really good fall soup. The mace in it is reminiscent of nutmeg and makes you want to finish up with a piece of pumpkin pie.

The only remaining to talk about is the Curried Chicken Salad. It didn't knock any socks off. I have been eating it for a week, and all I can think of is this is what people who don't really like curry would want curry to taste like.  There was such a small amount of curry in there compared to all the other ingredients that it was almost ashamed to have curry as an ingredient.  I wanted to love this recipe, and so did Experiment 452, but the sad truth is that there is not a lot of flavor in the chicken salad and that you would be better off with a regular chicken salad then trying the Curried Chicken Salad.

It is a sad realization the Betty Crocker just isn't' that interested in the full potential of curry. The recipes are all middle of the road and don't get all that wild or exotic with the ingredients. The most exotic ingredient that was actually hard for me to find was the Mace, which I later discovered is just a different version of nutmeg and comes from the same plant. I can only hope that I have better luck with flavor and spice in other Betty Crocker recipes and I want to thank Experiment 452 for being a good sport about this.

FYI- 7 of 58 achieved.