Fourth of July Cherry Pie

This year, we were invited down to Keuka Lake where friends have a cottage. The cottage is a charming little house, right on the lake. Even though we were having a scorching hot day (at least what passes for that in Rochester), the breeze off the lake was wonderful. We were all invited to bring a dish to pass, and our hosts provided roast turkey and veg enchiladas. Those might seem like rather odd Fourth of July foods, but since both are native to this continent, I think they were actually spot on! The enchiladas weren't like any I have ever eaten, but they were good just the same.

We also took a bouquet

J and I chose to make pies -- which are kind of our specialty. We have made a lot of apple pies together, and it is soothing to work side by side at something we have done so many times. We decided to make cherry this time, because cherries are in season now, and you can get good local ones. I got up early on Saturday and went down to the city market and scored us 4 pounds of nice local sweet cherries. At noon, yesterday, we set to pitting them. J had done some internet research, to try to determine the easiest way to go about it. But we ended up both working with our little paring knives, cutting the cherries in half and then prying the stone out with the knife. Kind of brute force, but it got the job done. Thirty minutes later we had 8 cups of cherries ready to be employed.

Cherry Pie, strusel topping!

I make the shopping list every week, and J does the shopping, so it was my fault that we only had half as much pie crust as we needed yesterday. Yes, me, the queen of all things homemade, uses roll out pie crust. Well, I'll tell you: I'm no good at making a pie crust, so I take the easy way out. So I found myself short of a 2 crusts. We decided to go with a struesel topping this time, and it was a great choice. Easy to make, too -- I just dumped flour, sugar and a stick of butter in the food processor and pulsed a few times. Pour it on top of the pie, and there you go - pie done. The strusel topping got good reviews, too. I usually make a latice top, and although they look nice and impress some people, they aren't as tasty as that struesel topping.

Cherry Pie with Struesel Topping

Cherry Filling

4 cups of fresh pitted cherries. I used sweet because that's what we had. But sour would be ok. just be sure to taste and adjust the sugar as needed.
1/3 cups white sugar
1/2 teaspoon real vanilla extract
1/3 cup flour. I know most recipes online call for tapioca, but I didn't have any and this is what my Betty Crocker cookbook calls for. So there.

1 bottom pie crust, rolled out and place in a pie plate

Strusel Topping

Brown sugar
Flour
1 stick butter. Yes, butter.

1. Preheat the oven to 425 degrees.
2. Mix the cherries, white sugar, vanila and 1/2 cup of flour. Pour it into the prepared pie shell.
3. Put the ingredients for the strusel topping into the bowl of a food processor, and pulse a half dozen times until the mixture looks like course meal. Pour the topping on the pie, making sure it is fairly evenly distributed.
4. Bake for 45 minutes,  until the filling is bubbling. Enjoy!

Breakfast for Dinner: Rasied Waffles

J and I like breakfast for dinner, and during the winter I probably cook waffles, pancakes, or omlets once a week. But in the summer, I don't usually think of breakfast for dinner. But this week, I was a receipe for raised waffles, something I have always wanted to try but never gotten around to. So last night that's what I did!

Raised Waffles
This recipe makes about 4 waffles, enough for two.

1/2 packet of dried yeast
1/2 cup warm water
1 cup buttermilk, or regular milk
1 cup flour
1 tablespoons sugar
1/4 cup melted butter

1 egg
1/2 teaspoon baking soda

At breakfast time, Dissolve the yeast in the warm (not hot) water. Let it sit for about 10 minutes.

Heat the milk until it just barely bubbles. If you use buttermilk, you will notice that it thickens slightly and water seems to seperate from the milk itself. Don't be concerned about this.

Mix the yeast, milk, butter, sugar, and flour in a large bowl until well mixed. Leave the bowl on the counter until dinner. The mixture will double in size, so use a big enough bowl to accomdate it.

At dinner time, mix in a beaten egg and the baking soda until everything is well mixed. Bake the waffles according to your waffle maker's instructions. Serve with real maple syrup and butter -- why would you use fake when you have these beautiful waffles????

My Garden

I used my Flip Video to make a little video about my garden. Warning: my panning skills aren't great so take your motion sickness meds before viewing! :-)

Mirbeau Spa Get-Away

This weekend Joanne and I got away for a little pampering to a place I have wanted to visit for a long time, but never could quite afford: Mirbeau Inn and Spa, located in Skaneateles, NY. Recently, LivingSocial offered a pretty good deal for a weeknight stay at the Spa. For $350 we got the room, three course dinner for two, and $100 credit in the spa.

Mirbeau Spa and Inn

We went down on Thursday. Skaneateles is only about an hour and a half from our house, so we timed our visit so we got to Skaneateles at noon. I was hoping for a reprise of our Doug's Fish Fry visit of last summer, but J felt like something a little less fried, so we stopped a the Sherwood Inn. I had a bratwurst, red cabbage and German potato salad. It was good -- but it wasn't our personal favorite: Johnsonville Brats. J had a much more disciplined lunch of a salad with grilled chicken.

After lunch, we made our way to the spa. First up were side-by-side manicures and pedicures. The young ladies who took care of us were really lovely. They took a lot of time -- the mani and the pedi were one hour each.

We then had some time in the hot tub, which was more like a stream than a tub, actually. I'm sorry I didn't take a picture, because it is kind of hard to describe. Off of the resting area, where you wait to be called for your spa treatments, is a little courtyard, beautifully landscaped (like everything else at the spa!) We enjoyed the hot water, and also a cool drink from the bar.

When we returned to our room, we found 6 of the most lovely strawberries, dipped in chocolate. Usually this is kind of a throw away thing -- the concept is better than the actual execution. Not in this case. The chocolate was really wonderful.

Our room was gigantic. We had two king-sized beds with those bed toppers where your body heat makes an impression in the top, so you are lying in a perfect you-shaped cradle. There was a fire place in the room, but given that it was about 95 degrees outside and 95% humidity, we decided to pass on the fire. The bathroom was equally huge, with a multiperson shower (4 people could have showered in there!) and a soaking tub.

View from the Porch

Dinner was on the porch. Our SocialLiving deal got us a three course dinner -- 2 appetizers, 2 entrees, 2 desserts. There were no restrictions on the menu, which was pretty amazing. We selected calamari and tuna poke (raw marinated tuna). The tuna was wonderful, but the calamari was only ho-hum. We both chose steaks for our main course. They are dry-aged on the premises, and mine was really wonderful -- very deep flavor and everything you might want in a steak. We ordered onion straws and sauteed mushrooms as sides, and although I wished later that we had ordered an actual vegetable, the onions and the mushrooms were lovely. Finally, we had desert. My pick was creme brulee, and J went with a pudding. Her pudding was actually more like a very dense, moist cake.

Our dining companions

After dinner, we went for a stroll around the grounds. Everything was beautifully landscaped. I got a couple of ideas for plants I want to add to our own gardens, based on what I saw. We also noticed that someone had arrived in their personal helicopter. The Spa has a landing pad!

We had a very restful evening, and then stopped for breakfast before heading home. Again, the food was great -- house made granola and yogert, fruit, cold cuts in the European style.Well fortified, we headed for home.

I heard that the Spa will be doing another LivingSocial offering sometime soon. We will definitely buy another deal and return to the Spa. It was one of the nicest places that we have visited!

Linwood Gardens

 Have you ever gone to a new place and wondered how it could be that you have never gone there before? That's exactly how I felt when J and I visited the Linwood Gardens on Saturday. Linwood Gardens is located in Pavilion, NY and is a short drive from Rochester.

The Linwood Gardens are located on a former country home created by William Henry Gratwick II, of Buffalo, in 1901. In 1933, WH Gratwick III moved his family to the estate and set up the Rare Plants Nursery. The Japanese Tree Peony became a feature of the nursery and the gardens. Oh, how I would have loved to visit that Nursery! We only have one tree peony in our garden. That would be the plant I spent $50 on, and every year I hold my breath to see if it will come back. But after spending a beautiful summer afternoon with these beauties, I asked J to consider taking out one of our roses (that has never done very well, anyway) and replacing it with a tree peony. I think she may have thought I was kidding, but I was serious. 

View from the Italian Garden

Now the Gardens are open a few weeks of the year, and for $10 (or $15 for two), you can wander through the Gardens and enjoy what must be some of the most spectacular flowers ever. When we were finished walking through the gardens, we enjoyed a cookie and some lemonade while we listened to a group of recorder players. It was about as perfect of a day as I could imagine. 

"Carry a Poem in Your Pocket" Day

Today is "Carry a Poem in Your Pocket" day. A very, very long time ago, I gave my first love a poem to carry in his pocket.

Parting   By Emily Dickinson My Life closed twice before its close; It yet remains to see If Immortality unveil A third event to me, So huge, so hopeless to conceive, As these that twice befell. Parting is all we know of heaven, And all we need of hell.

Biscuits

My dad is an expert biscuit maker, and we had them frequently when I was growing up. Later next month I'm going to see him, and will get the REAL recipe! But until then, this will have to do! The key thing is to handle the dough as little as possible to make a tender biscuit with the maximum rise. Using the food processor to do the mixing of the flour and butter seems to avoid activating the gluten in the flour. And that's a very good thing when you are making biscuits!

Biscuits

Makes 10

Ingredients:
2 cups all-purpose flour, plus more for dusting the board
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
6 tablespoons unsalted butter, very cold
3/4 cup buttermilk

Method:
1. Preheat the oven to 450 degrees F.
2. Put the dry ingredients in the bowl of a food processor and pulse several times until the are well combined.
3.Cut the butter into several pieces -- say 12 -- and add them to the flour mixture. Process until the flour resembles coarse meal and the butter is completely mixed in.
4.Pour the flour mixture into a bowl, and add the buttermilk. Stir with a fork, and the dough will come together.
5.Turn the dough out to a floured counter, and, handling the dough as little as possible, knead it a few times until the buttermilk is totally incorporated.
6.Gently pat the dough into a round about 1/2" thick.
7.Using a biscuit cutter, cut the biscuits. Take care not to twist the cutter when you are cutting the biscuits as doing so will inhibit the biscuits from rising.
8.Bake for 10 to 12 minutes.