New toy means more Pie.

I bought my first (and quite possibly last) piece of kitchenware from William Sonoma last weekend after Crate and Barrel failed me by not carrying a pastry cutter. In honor of my new toy (and the continued sale on peaches) I made blackberry peach pie. Since I was already baking and had some cream to use up I also made cream scones which you can see behind the finished pie. There's even a hungry dog eying them in the background. I made the crust with milk instead of water this time and can't actually say that there was much difference in the taste although the dough itself handled a bit differently. Also I added both tapioca and corn starch and the pie juices thickened much better this time around. Some of that may also have been that I actually let this pie cool before slicing it.

We grow things!

I've never managed to successfully grow anything. It probably doesn't help that among other things I'm allergic to grass. Every now and then though I get struck with an urge to try again so a month and a half ago I pulled all the weeds out of the window box I bought a few years ago during my last "let's grow things" phase. (That one was spoiled by a cat who liked to sit on the herbs I planted). I planted some butter crunch lettuce and like magic it grew!
Isn't it pretty?

For good measure I've also got some basil

And together they help to make really tasty pizza:

This was topped with pesto, provolone cheese, heirloom tomato, mushrooms, butter crunch and arugula and a bit of parmesan cheese. It was an attempt to replicate one of the flatbreads from the California Grill during the last Disney World trip and if not exact, it was still really good.

So what if it's hot out, let's make creamy peach pie.

Tonight was creamy peach pie night. This is the first one crust pie I've made and it came out fabulously tasty. The filling is made up of 3/4 cup of heavy cream, six peaches (on sale for $0.88 a pound!), cinnamon, nutmug, 1/2 cup of sugar and 3 tablespoons of flour. The crust was baked for approximately 5 minutes prior to adding the filling in and then the whole thing was baked for about 40 minutes at 400 degrees. The best part was that the peaches stayed nice and firm and didn't become mushy.

It was incredibly hot out today here so baking both pie as well as pizza and stuffed mushroom (more on those later) was perhaps not the brightest idea in the world, but hey I signed up for my first grad school class so celebratory food and wine was in order.

A New Toy

I've been in Maine for the last week and bought a new toy while I was there:

Now I just need to decide what I should make it in it first. I'm leaning towards a fruit tart.

I do think it is a bit of a shame that I didn't get to make pie while in Maine. My little brother's desperately wanted me too, but unfortunately there weren't enough blueberries left from when they went berry picking. That and I was too busy enjoying ice cream. There is no where in the city to get ice cream as good as any of the three places you can walk to from my house in Maine. I hear there might be good ice cream in Brooklyn, but ice cream shouldn't be something you have to plan out in advance. I had Cookies and Cream, Blueberry, Peppermint, and Peanut Butter ice cream. I wonder if you could make ice cream with chunks of pie crust and berries.

In other news about a week ago I was tipped off to someone blogging about making a pie a day. I can't even begin to imagine the amount of butter that would take.

And lastly, the food porn alone makes Julie and Julia worth seeing. There's nothing like sitting in the fifth row of the movie theater staring as scene after scene of tasty concoctions go by.

Apple Pie Milkshake

I went for dinner last night at Stand down on 12th and University Place. There was a tasty burger and fries but most importantly there was an apple pie milkshake. I've seen a lot of milkshake flavors before but not this one. So obviously given my current pie fetish I had to try it. And it was mighty tasty. In fact if I could drink that every day I'd be one happy camper...also the size of a whale but that is a different issue. However while the apple pie milk shake was an amazing combination of whipped cream, ice cream, apple pie and cinnamon it leads me to want to make all kinds of pie shakes. Of course this means that I need to get a blender in addition to the food processor I want. But for triberry pie milkshakes I think that will be worth it.