St. Gladys of the Mincemeat

Today is All Saints Sunday.  "Saints" sounds so Papist and so foreign to my middle-America protestant upbringing that I am surprised to find myself not only knowing when it is but actually dressing for it this morning.  One of the great things about attending church regularly it getting into the ritual of the whole church year and learning that such frivolities of special days and seasons are not just for Catholics.  So this morning I lit a candle for Gladys, my personal saint of pies, and we rang a bell for family friend Jennie who couldn't beat the odds on her cancer prognosis indefinitely.

Gladys is my maternal grandmother, and I absolutely never called her Gladys (or "Saint of Pies" for that matter), just Grandma.  She was a great pie craftsman and I've been wanting to write about her all year, but I keep tearing up every time I do so.  Pie week, spring break back in March, included the anniversary of her death, and the anniversary of our last conversation, about pie.  I'm sure that there were medical issues going on, but from what most of us could tell, Grandma stopped caring about living when her son died in October of 2000, and by spring break 2001, she didn't have much of anything left.  I was fortunate to be able to see her at a home and made some awkward conversation.  The least awkward, most animated, conversation was about pie.

I asked about favorite pies and while she was thinking about it, my Mom answered for her, "chocolate cream, right?"  Suddenly feisty, Grandma snapped, "No, that was [your father's?  your brother's?  your?] favorite.  It is good but it is not my favorite."  Then she launched into a long discussion about how you couldn't get good mincemeat anymore.  She enjoyed mincemeat pies with store bought mincemeat, but that wasn't anything like what they made on the farm to preserve the rest of the hog's head.
Peach was pretty good, too.

Last year's mincemeat, from a jar, in foreground.

I stopped by a grocery store to make her a pie.  They didn't have any mincemeat.  They didn't have any frozen peaches.  There was no fruit in season.  I made a horrible peach pie using sticky peach pie filling and took it to her in the hospital the next day.  I don't know through what love or will she downed that piece of peach pie, but I don't think it was just because Grandpa was force feeding her and I'm pretty sure it wasn't because she wanted more of it.  I'm still mortified that that pie was her last meal, and strangely honored by it.

Grandma's birthday was last week, and I was thinking about her as I was baking chocolate tarts.  I look like her and my cousins look like her and I'm not sure she's ever very far away.  She's been with me today as I look for suet to make "real" mincemeat and will be there on Thanksgiving when I unleash the mincemeat on my in-laws.

Thanks for being around Saint Gladys.

Obligatory Autumn Catch-Up

Or maybe I'll just post a photo of a leaf with galls, Aster and Dianthus with one of their cousins, the tarts I made for a Fall Festival and a ninja and a pumpkin with a moldy carved spaghetti squash.

Somehow, there are no pictures of soccer season, a very long rag-weed allergy season, bed bugs, clogged dryer vents, the 1,000 plants where I expected 300, or even the third grade choir concert.

Yes, one costume is the same as last year, and yes, they have grown (compare here).

Goopy Pie

Examination of my list of pies baked (previous post) and flipping through recipes for pies led me to the conclusion that I have entirely missed the category of "goopy pies" so far this year.

Ever the amiable sort, The Mister agreed that I should bake him such a pie, one with caramel or fudge, or some such goop.  Looking through Magpie, we settled on S'Mores Pie with a granola crust and homemade marshmallows.

Cake on birthday

Between his birthday, when we shared warm chocolate cake with the kids of the church community, and when I baked his pie on Saturday, we had a chance for bonus goopy pie.

The food bank had a sculpture contest with a food truck festival to promote the new food and resource center.  As we were drumming up support for the crab, we ordered Millionaire's Pie from a grilled cheese food truck, without knowing what Millionaire's Pie entails.  During Year of Pie I order whatever new pie comes my way.

As soon as we bit into the pie, The Mister commented exactly what I was thinking, "Bloat* in pie form."  It was something.

Millionaire's Bloat Pie 

The actual s'more pie was very good.  I was impressed with the homemade marshmallows (candy thermometers and gelatin are rarely things I use and they involved both) and the chocolate filling tasty, but I am unsure if it would be an improvement over chocolate cream with a whipped cream or meringue top.

*Bloat is anything called a salad that include mini-marshmallows, cool whip, marshmallow creme, pudding, or some combination of the above.  I was well into adulthood before I realized this term is not in widespread use.

Marshmallows roasted on gas burmer

45!  (Mister's age, not the President)

Progressing with pie, but not to the fair

One of the unwritten goals of Year of Pie was to enter a pie competition.  Our county fair was just last week, and there was no way I was going to get a pie to the fair on Wednesday after Labor Day, so I set my sights on the State Fair, which includes an live judged pie contest next weekend.  And then I found out that registration was due over a month ago.  So I don't know where or when I am competing with my pies.

In the meantime, I baked with students again last week, and we ended with 6 apple and pear pies, several of which were really good.  So I am succeeding at the written goal of teaching people to bake pies.

I also bought (and ate) Oatmeal Cream Pies on our way home from the eclipse. I don't recall if eating convenience store foods wit pie in the name is a written or unwritten goal, but I am succeeding admirably, and don't need (or want) another Oatmeal Cream Pie any more than I need or want another Moon Pie.

As far as actually baking pies, I think I am exceeding my original goal, and I do need to keep track.

September (7 so far)
Fresh Fig Tart on leftover pastry- just now
With students: two crust apple; apple crumble-top (2); apple lattice; pear, cranberry, raisin, and walnut with plaid lattice; and the extra apples and pears baked together.

August (4)
Two beautiful peach for a church picnic
A weird, crustless, gluten-free peach for the eclipse-watching
Buttermilk for the chemo crew

July (4)
Lemon meringue for Aster's birthday
Chocolate chess and apricot for 50th anniversary celebrations
Apricot with all-lard crust as a house guest

June (9)
Pie party: beet; plum; gluten-free no-bake plumberry; lemon meringue; chocolate chess; coconut cream

Some slightly overdone, a few both overdone and underdone.
All tasty.

Blackberry-rhubarb
Kale Blue Cheese
Blueberry-blackberry

May 2, April 7, March 8 plus 5 more with students and the official start bastilla in February. 47 pies baked so far.

(Just a Little Bit on the) Passing of Time

Ten years ago (10!) I wrote (on this very blog) about my elder niece starting kindergarten.  It stunned me then, that she could be that old (or rather, that I could be that old), just as it stuns me now that she is starting sophomore year as a student at my high school.  Ten years ago I wrote that the kid born the day Dirtdog walked into Physical Science S and sat next to me, despite all of the pleading in my head for him to choose any other seat, could legally drink.  Now that kid would be 31.  Had the Dirtdog-Sparkling Squirrel mating happened, and the Dirtdog-Sparkling Squirrel progeny mated at that same young age-- Dirtdog and I would be grandparents now-- OF ONE OF MY NIECE'S CLASSMATES. (Needless to say, Dirtdog, our parents, our fictional progeny, and I are all much happier that did not happen-- but wow-- grandparents of a high school sophomore [which of course, my parents are, but they seem to be better equipped to take their granddaughter to field hockey practice than I would be]).

Sophomore in high school and 50-year-weds (and the rest of us)

Kids are growing up.  Parents are growing up. People married 50 years ago have been married for a very long time.  Time is passing.  Nothing insightful here; every once in a while I just need to step back and wonder how it keeps going by.

First day 1st and 3rd grade

A representative sample of candles

Waiting for the sky to go dark.

1:06 in the afternoon.  About 20 minutes after above photo.

Apropos of not much:  the eclipse was crazy.  We had missed meetings with friends, we had debates about exactly which small country road we should park on, we had cloud cover, we had rain and grumbles about how we could have watched it rain without driving a long way.  And then evening birds emerged in the "twilight" to eat the evening insects.  And it got dark.  Crickets started chirping.  And it got darker. And it was an amazing event to witness with friends on a muddy minimal maintenance road in rural Kansas, even with the clouds.  I'm making my way to totality in 2024 and hope you join us.

Why I Don't Teach Summer School and Why I Am Going To Kansas

Every summer I get asked some version of, "Why don't you teach summer school?" especially if it is known that summer school pays well relative to college teaching overall.

There's a practical work-related reason: As a field biologist I need to do research in the summer should I want to publish original science and have a chance of advancement in my field.  But anybody paying attention knows that I have not been spending most of the summer analyzing data, and in fact have steered clear or my office even when I have been in town.

Sometimes I'll mention needing a break, and anyone who has taught will relate to this, and more so if I mention the other kinds of activities (like re-painting my cabinets or going to the dentist) that I can only do in the summer.

If I mention my kids, most people will gently nod, "Oh, of course, your kids won't be little forever." That's completely true and I love traveling and baking and experiencing day-to-day life with Aster and Dianthus, but honestly I took off on an 8 week road trip (after a two week trip to Ecuador) in the summer of 2007, long before I had kids (and yes, you can read about those trips on this blog), so it is not just my kids.

Part of the reason I don't work in the

summer is my parents and my in-laws.  All four of them are healthy people around whom it is fun to be (that awkward sentence brought to you by my parents' voices in my head who still believe in not ending sentences with prepositions) and that won't always be the case (the healthy part).  As I was weeping about aging the other day, The Mister pointed out, "That's why we aggressively spend time with our parents and make sure that the boys really know their grandparents."  The ability to meet family in Yellowstone or Vancouver or Hilton Head or Tuscon (not to mention at their houses in Kansas and Colorado)  is a great reason not to teach summer school.

But kids and parents are not my main reason not to teach in the summer.  My main reason is because, much as I love my job (and most of the time I do), it is not all I want to do with my life.

I'm still surprised by the surprised reactions I get when I go out of my way to have fun rather than to work more.

My friend J, undergoing chemo to keep ovarian cancer at bay, and her new husband JR, undergoing radiation for cancer all over, get similar reactions when because they have a costume box and dress-up at the drop of a hat.  Some of their relatives act confused by how willing they are to have fun.  Based on conversations with them, they dress up, try new artistic endeavors, re-paint furniture with bright colors and explore herbal cocktails because it is fun.

I'm confused as to why this surprises people.  It's not a secret that our time here is limited and that possessions do not lead to happiness.  That seems to be repeated in most every thoughtful self-help book I've ever seen, not to mention religious practices and, well, common experiences. I am very fortunate to be in a position where I do not need to spend every moment working for survival.  I've been given an opportunity.  I'm not going to squander it.  

My family is driving 389 miles tomorrow in order to see a full solar eclipse on Monday and drive 389 miles back on Monday evening.  I'm really really hopeful that it will be an amazing experience to watch the stars come out at one in the afternoon.  But even if clouds obscure the dark side of the moon as it passes between us and the sun, and there will be another total solar eclipse closer in 2024, it will be worth the craziness of making alternative assignments for the first day of class, because it will be an adventure with friends, and if we are all here in April 2024, then I'll be up for a second once-in-a-lifetime eclipse adventure.

Just today I asked someone to cover my classes then.

[Waterfall images are completely gratuitous, by the way, and since I am up late writing disconnected thoughts, I should mention that they Mississippi kites were lining up and acting very unsettled this morning  (and very loud this evening) perhaps they are leaving early this year.]

Not being silent

I want to write about cake and pie and squirrels and books I've read, and to brag, just a little, about how great our kitchen looks* now that we've removed, sanded, primed, painted, and re-hung all of our cabinets with freshly toothbrush scrubbed hardware. I still have thoughts about Aster's surgery and a back log of flower images, prairie, garden and mountain.

I don't want to write about racism, violence, and people acting deplorably.  And just because someone shares a nationality, Northern European ancestry and allegedly a religion with me, does not make me responsible for his actions (any more, than say, one of my Muslim students is responsible for ISIL terrorism).  But somehow some expect an Imam to call out every gunman, and the Black Lives Matter organizers to make statements that it is not okay to shoot a cop. If so, then I, a white, Christian, native-born American (as with most of my readers) must publicly and loudly proclaim that it is not okay to drive a car into a group of people intending to murder them.  It is not okay to celebrate slavery (nor is it a slight to your ancestors to suggest that neither they, nor the society they created, was perfect).  It is not Christian, American, or "okay" to proclaim that hate is the way forward to a supreme white society.

I don't have good words for this.
I don't think that is a bad thing.

Here are some other words from fellow, white, Christian, native-born Americans who could not stay silent as they preached this morning: This is a link to a recording of the sermon at our church this morning, "Christian, Get Out of the Boat" and the transcript of the sermon from a former pastor of our church, "It's Time to Break-Up"

Don't be okay with racism.  It is not okay.  Okay?

*Except it doesn't yet look great because we are still rearranging as we return the cabinet doors.

Birthday Pie's da Bombe*

"A" Pie

Aster is now 6 and Dianthus is now 8 (and this blog is 10 and a half!).  Aster requested a lemon meringue pie for his birthday and Dianthus wanted a version of a charlotte royale after we told him that it was sometimes called "brain cake".

New 6 year old expression?

Rolling his own cake

Extra whipped cream and chocolate served sauce on the side

Baking notes:  The lemon meringue was from Kate McDermott's The Art of Pie using the Magpie pie crust.  I've settled on both as excellent.
The charlotte royale was inspired by the Great British Baking Show (here's Mary Berry's recipe and lots of images).  I had a recipe for "Scarlet Empress" in the charlotte section of the showcase cakes of Rose Levy Beranbaum's The Cake Bible, which Aster and I started to follow.  However, we did substitute cherry preserves for the raspberry in the exterior jelly roll.  Then we filled it with cherry ice cream instead of making a Bavarian cream.  The chocolate cake (from The Cake Book, my go-to cocoa and hot-water based chocolate cake) was an addition after we realized that there was no way that one recipe of biscuit roulade would be enough for both the side rolls and the base.  This was my first rolled cake, and the very light dry cake (eggs beaten separately, no butter) made for easy rolling (it is included in the cookbook just for that reason) but was not the tastiest cake (unlike the chocolate base, which is).

*This clever title is probably not funny unless you know that 1) a bombe is a term for a molded layered ice cream or cake and ice cream dessert (see Brownie Bombe  and Ina Garten's Ice Cream Bombe) and 2) in the mid 1990s, "da bomb" was used to indicate something great.

All roads lead to cemetery

In rural Oklahoma and many parts of Kansas, the smaller roads off of the small roads have an official road sign pointing the way to "CEMETERY".  In our travels the last few years, the Mister and I have joked, over and over again, "All roads lead to cemetery." [In Colorado, similar roads are similarly labeled, but "All roads lead to sanitary landfill," doesn't have quite the same profundity.]

Great Sand Dunes, June 30 2017

As with most years, we've been travelling a great deal this summer, although we covered a smaller swatch of the country.  Unlike most years, death was more on our minds, even when we weren't passing the cemetery signs.  I visited with two friends with hard-to-treat cancers, and I'm going to meet another tomorrow (the new husband of my good friend J whose "chemo crew" I am serving on).  I may very well not see them again.  I certainly hope to see them again, and life is full of uncertainties both miraculous and dreadful. Still the 44-year-old has a death doula and the 73-year-old has outlived an early prognosis already. The father of another dear friend is in palliative care and one of mom's long term friends has moved to a memory care unit for the rest of her days.  All roads lead to cemetery.  Visiting such friends it is hard not to see those roads and remember that the cemetery roads are not just for them, but for all of us.

Cheap nachos not nearly as exciting as the $1 ice cream
Or the final score Grand Junction 17, Orem 8

I was in his sights and his father was soaked

And somehow the travels were still amazing.  Dianthus learned to swim.  I baked nine pies. Dianthus and Aster added 5 new Junior Ranger badges to their collection (Great Sand Dunes, Chimney Rock, Mesa Verde, Black Canyon and Colorado National Monument).  We saw both sets of grandparents at their homes and in the mountains, the German cousins, a minor league baseball game, a professional soccer game, quite a few rodents, three waterfalls, one bear, and a lot of stars.

All roads lead to cemetery, but there is sure a lot to see on the way.

Yes, that is my mother zip-lining with no hands

Creek playing at 9,000 feet-- cold.

Pie Party

Last weekend was the annual croquet party at my parents' house.  As per recent tradition, we didn't actually play croquet.  In keeping with longer-running tradition (this is the 30th year of the party), we had great food.

The theme of the party was PIE (in all caps) and I baked a great variety: coconut cream, plum, lemon meringue, beet, chocolate chess and a gluten and dairy-free plumberry meringue.  My mother baked a key lime and other friends brought strawberry rhubarb, fruit pizza, ice cream pie, another key lime and rhubarb with a crumble top. It was my kind of event.

Plum prior to baking

For those following recipes-- the chocolate chess, an overall hit, is from the first or second recipe that pops up on google (the one that calls for 5 Tbs of cocoa).  The lemon meringue from Art of Pie is slightly easier (no double-boiler required) and slightly more lemon-y than that from Susan Purdy's As Easy as Pie (which my mother had baked a week prior to almost instantaneous devouring from my family).  The beet, which was a beet-forward rich custard with lots of beets, from Martha Stewarts early 1980s Pies and Tarts, was the best sweet beet pie I've ever had, but it wasn't great and I'm not that interested in beet pie to figure out how to make it great. The coconut cream is from the Magpie book, as were my crusts. The plum was made following the basic recipes in Art of Pie and the Plumberry included all sorts of fruits left in my parents' kitchen, cooked with some sugar and folded with microwaved marshmallows and placed in an almond flour-coconut-pecan-date crust.  Indeed, I made that one up.






As I am keeping records, I should add that I baked a rhubarb-blackberry with a twisted lattice earlier in June while we were still in Oklahoma.  For it I made the cream cheese crust from Rose Levy Beranbaum's Pie and Pastry Bible.  It was flakier than the Magpie crust while warm, but didn't necessarily taste better and the texture did not hold to the breakfast leftovers.

Pulling out of the environmental discussions and other books

As regular readers know, I agreed to host a discussion of Rachel Carson's pivotal work, Silent Spring, here on the blog.
I'm pulling out.*

I did not read Silent Spring this spring.

The reasons have far more to do with me than with Silent Spring.  I finally realized that I wasn't reading anything because Silent Spring was sitting there and I couldn't bring myself to learn how long we have known about the connections between environmental pollutants and human health, particularly cancer, as multiple friends in their 40s are battling cancer and people elected to represent me suggest that I am an enemy of theirs, or the country, or progress, or the economy, because I think that environmental protections should be cherished. Silent Spring hits a raw place.  That this is raw 55 years after publication makes it more so.  I couldn't.

Fortunately I began to read again after I stopped trying to get through Silent Spring and started picking up children's novels.  Also fortunate, my streak of picking a depressing book did not extend to everything I read recently (but extended to enough that, during the most recent book, the Mister asked, "So, do these ghosts have cancer, too?).

Some things I have read:

Nick Hornby A Long Way Down  This is a one of those great books that I have no idea to whom I would recommend it.  The premise is that four people meet as they are attempting to commit suicide.  It is funny and very well written.  Nothing gets resolved and it is unsentimental and reading it for pleasure (and it was pleasurable) makes one question one's taste.

Anne Lamott Hard Laughter  In one of her wonderful non-fiction books (probably Bird by Bird), Anne Lamott describes her father's cancer diagnosis and searching in vain for a funny book about cancer.  Being unable to find it, she decided to write it and it became her first successful novel.  I came across Hard Laughter recently and was expecting a funny book about cancer.  If that was the intent, Anne didn't fully succeed.  Most of the time I was wondering, "Just how old is this?" (it was written in 1979) and "I am so glad that Anne Lamott is sober now," because, while this isn't supposed to be autobiography, it clearly is, and the main character uses a lot.  Another book that made me wonder, "Now just why is reading this pleasurable?"

Ronlyn Domingue Mercy of Thin Air  I asked a literature-teaching friend from Louisiana for a fun, Lousiana-based book for my trip to New Orleans.  She suggested Mercy of Thin Air, about which I was dubious, because the first person narrator is a ghost.  I didn't manage to get it read before New Orleans, but found myself describing it to The Mister recently on the road.  "There was a plot twist that I didn't see coming.  But of course I should have seen it coming, because it made everything make sense.  But the ghost didn't see it either."  After trying to follow this, The Mister concluded, "So basically the plot twist worked the way a plot twist is supposed to?"  Overall very well-done.  Full of old people love and young people love, and plenty of death, but not too sticky sweet.  Recommended for my mothers and many of their friends.

Deb Caletti  The Secret Life of Prince Charming  As we were leaving town on Thursday, we stopped by the library to turn in Summer Reading logs (because the program ends before we return from our trip!) and as I returned Mercy of Thin Air, I realized I had no book for me to read on the road.  So I grabbed the best looking (of the three) paper backs on the sale table.  The Secret Life of Prince Charming was it.  And as far as relationship books about divorced parents and a high school girl coming to terms with the idea that her father is a womanizing loser, this was well done. I'm not sure any of my readers are exactly in the target demographic, but if you need reminding that, "porches with one leaning pole will collapse, even if the other is strong," you could do worse.

Ealier in the year, even the children's books I picked up were making me cry.  I read Maniac McGee (by Jerry Spinelli) to Dianthus and had forgotten how explicit the discussion of racism is. The book is still excellent, but I want it to be outdated.  It is not.  Aster brought home Bravemole (by Lynne Jonell) from the library.  I'm all about picture books about rodents.  Except that it is a book about the September 11th attacks and I was not ready for that, so wept unceremoniously as I read about the brave worker moles who had thought that the dragons were gone for good.

Kashmira Seth's Keeping Corner is about a pre-teen widow in India.  In itself it is not a tear-jerker, although the idea that someone can be a shaved outcast from the age of 12 is horrifying, and I would recommend it for the mothers, GK, LT and such.  When combined with the recent National Geographic project on widowhood, and profiles of Indian women dumped by their families as widows sixty-some years ago, it is sobering and saddening. [To be clear, these are currently alive women who have been shaved, begging, dead to most of the world widows for over 60 years, since they were 10 or 11].

More brief bits about books:

Gail Carson Levine Ella Enchanted  (a re-told fairy tale).  Among my favorite Cinderella re-tellings, but I have a bunch.

Jessica Day George Tuesdays at the Castle  (a book about my last name) It is packaged as a book that looks purely whimsical (the castle changes shape every Tuesday!), so when the parents die in the second chapter, I groaned to The Mister about how cursed I am with orphan books.  It turns out the book is mostly whimsical, but not nearly as much as suggested,

Shelia Turnage Three Times Lucky (a luck book!)  Also less whimsical than the cover suggests.  Another orphan.  More alcoholism and domestic violence.  Still pretty fun.

Speaking of the times not changing, orphans and unexpected domestic violence, The Mister and I watched the Netflix series Anne with an E.  I was of very mixed opinion (This is super-well done, fantastically casted and the writers respect the characters, even if they are forging their own plot lines. The tongue-in-cheek feminism thing is actually very fun, if depressing.) until the last episode, which includes character assassination and is just plain wrong.  If there is another season I won't be watching it.  Probably.  Except that I watched that horrible Martin Sheen PBS thing on Thanksgiving, and I went to Prince Edward Island for Anne tourism, so I probably will.  I am re-reading Anne of Green Gables right now, and have learned that a few of you haven't read it, and you should.

The book about obsessive birding I was reading last summer, Dan Koeppel's To See Every Bird on Earth started out with concentration camps (and if I left it at your house, let me know.  I think I made it halfway), and this year's book about obsessive birding,  Big Year by Mark Obmascik, hits failed marriages pretty hard in the early chapters.  Both left me wondering exactly what I got myself into.  Big Year is quite an acheivement-- both the concept of Big Year birding (a competition with very specific rules without known competitors or prizes), and the book that manages to make it fascinating for a book-length read (Thanks E for the book!).

I haven't seen the Big Year movie yet (I still don't get how it could be done with a celebrity cast), but I did watch a childhood favorite bird movie, Condorman, while in Kansas at the end of April.  It is slightly less cheesy and less dated than I would have expected, but I think I had really low expectations.

Oh, I also read LaVyrle Spencer's Hummingbird for bird year, but can't shut off the "rape culture should be called out" part of my brain long enough to enjoy such silly historical bodice rippers anymore.

What have you been reading?

And if it is Silent Spring, how can I facilitate conversation without having read it?

(*Once again I hope me of the future doesn't get any of the allusions to current events)

Funky Pie and Progress

Blue cheese, kale, onion and a little bacon

Old blue cheese smoldering in the fridge and some vague recollections of a blue cheese kale tart recipe, led to this umami bomb of a dish, which I somehow insisted on calling a pie rather than a quiche.  It was full of caramelized onions, kale from our garden and lots of blue cheese.  I was pleased.

The other half of the pastry dough went toward a blackberry blueberry pie with a crumble top.  While it was delicious fresh out of the oven, it was actually better chilled the next morning with time to set, and, of course, blackberry pie makes a fabulous breakfast.  Blackberries were from the farmers' market and blueberries commercially frozen.  Pastry was the Magpie recipe (butter and stick form Crisco) with one cup (of the 2 1/2 total) of the flour whole wheat.  Filling was mostly from Art of Pie (tapioca thickened) and crumble top was made up on the spot.

Blackberry blueberry cut while it was too hot

In other pie news, I know my mother-in-law loves me because she baked a peach pie (using the last of last year's frozen Colorado peaches!) for my birthday celebration with them.  (True, my mother-in-law has never been anything but open and loving and has expressed affection with words and deeds, but peach pie with Colorado peaches is my language).

The Mister's extended family has an annual pot-luck after a gathering at the cemetery on Memorial weekend.  There were several pies available-- goopy cherry, goopy strawberry, goopy cherry cream (which I later learned was cherry cheesecake, but if you are going to bake it in a pie crust and top it with a bunch of pie filling, I am going to consider it a pie). and mincemeat.  I ate the mincemeat because I am sure it must be a family specialty of one is serving mincemeat in May.  I had a bite of Aster's strawberry, which just reminded me that whole strawberries don't make a great pie, and I avoided the other's because I have become a cherry pie snob (I love a good cherry pie and I have no interest in pre-prepared cherry pie filling.  I was like this before MiL further spoiled it for me by sharing pies made with the rare tart cherries from her trees.)

On the way back to Oklahoma from Kansas, we bought convenience store  Moon Pies.  They needed more moisture and more flavor, but I suppose they were okay.

Yeah, we melted a plastic tray, but baked some great cookies

Every batch had issues, but every batch was tasty

In other baking news, during finals I baked macaroons (the delicious French sandwich cookies, not the delicious balls of coconut) with Aster, Dianthus and some college students.  They were tasty although disasters ensued.  Dianthus and I have since made macaroons from a mix and Friday night he rolled sushi as he is practicing for competitive cooking, and both macaroons and sushi trays were challenges on the recent season of Master Chef Junior.  I made not-quite-macaroons for the Mister Family Pot-Luck and for friends in Kansas, where we covered them with chocolate ganache, while chocolate coconut cream and strawberry-rhubarb sauce.

Rolling sushi

Yes, someone has shorter hair now, too.

Pies Baked Year of Pie (Continued)
June
Blue Cheese Kale
Blackberry Rhubarb
May
Coconut Chocolate (sweetened condense milk base.  Just fine.).
Rhubarb
April 30
Dairy free coconut custard (invented at the last moment.  Just fine.)

Herons and more

I have seen my "spirit animal", the great blue heron, a great deal recently.

It makes me feel like my life is on the right track, even if so much else isn't.

Wildlife adventure before even putting in the boats

Besides a heron that didn't stay around for a photo, and a great egret, on Cane Bayou May 18 we saw a diamondback watersnake eating a catfish, eyes of several alligators, a gray snake in a tree, a cricket toe in the kayak smaller than the Mister's toe, a green tree frog, several red eared sliders and possibly some other turtles, a squirrel that didn't move (in a tree, mid-day.  We stayed away from that squirrel), a parent osprey feeding two chicks, and a dragonfly that ate a damselfly while I was explaining the difference to the other groups.  While out with the excellent Canoe and Trail Adventures (Canoeandtrail.com-- source of these photos) we also heard bronze frogs and pig frogs that we did not see.  Our guide told us we might see a Mississippi Kite soaring if we were lucky, but we certainly wouldn't be so lucky as to see one perched.  And in Louisiana we didn't see any, but we must be really lucky in our small town in Oklahoma, for there seem to be even more patrolling our skies this summer.

Cricket Frog. Not The Mister's foot.
Canoeandtrail.com photo

While I'm listing birds, I should add that on the recent trip to Kansas, besides the herons, we saw eastern kingbirds (lots of westerns here in Oklahoma, along with scissortailed flycatchers), large families of Canada geese with goslings of different ages, shrikes, hummingbirds, cardinals, blue jays, hawks (mostly red-tailed), cattle egrets, nighthawks, bluebirds, house finches, gold finches and oriels.

My shins (only) sunburned.  They are peeling now.

OSPREY BABIES!

Witty watching caption goes here.
Photo also by Canoe and Trail Adventures.