Apple Pie Crust made with Vodka and Whole Wheat White Flour

Wow, the crust dough substituting Vodka for 1/2 of the liquid was very easy to handle. Especially since I used a flour higher in gluten with the potential to make his crust as hard as a rock, but he Vodka did its job from keeping the gluten from forming, incredible!

I think for a regular recipe, the crust would be incredibly flaky. for me reduced-fat as low as one can go and still have an edible crust, the Vodka helped much to reduce the gluten in this pie. Cooking the apples on a very slow heat, about 140F, to remove some of the liquid and concentrate the apple flavor was a terrific idea. This is the heaviest apple pie I have every made. Heating the apple slices on the stove in a Dutch Oven worked great!

Please note their are no sweeteners or thickeners among the apples in this pie,nothing but apples and 2 teaspoons of cinnamon as we love it! I cooked a mixture of apples including Melrose, Mcowen, Wiesap, etc. together. Some apples turned to a lumpy sauce, while other were tender and held a bit of the apple slice shape.

In this pie I used King Arthur's Flour, white whole wheat flour,which has a bit of a higher gluten content than most flours. I recently switched to white whole wheat as am trying to get away from the standard unbleached flours.

I prefer glass pie pans as no problems with acids and I like to see what is going on in the baking of the bottom crust. I baked this apple pie on a heated cookie sheet.

I started at 425F and after maybe 15 minutes, reduced the heat to 375F and baked it until it looked just right, some light brown on the bottom crust and the same light brown color all over the pie crust.

More Thanksgiving 2014

The top photo is my dinner plate for today. I have a temporary crown in a premolar as the back of the tooth broke down to the bone. I planned on making only soft foods today for Thanksgiving. I did not make my usual fresh cranberry-orange relish, fresh cranberries remain in the freezer. The stuffing is not our usual crispy crust type, but as soft and flavorful as possible. The turkey tenders are just that, very tender turkey, no need to cut with a fork.

Our appetizer today was tomato soup. My Mom made the best-in-the-world tomato soup from tomatoes from her garden and mine. I can not reproduce her soup, although I saw her work on removing the skin and seeds from the tomatoes with a piece of equipment I inherited. It does not look like fun to me. She would carefully place each bit of tomato puree in a plastic bag and freeze it very flat, so that she could fit many into her freezer space in her refrigerator. Thanksgiving was my Mom's favorite, the holiday we would also spend with cousins and I miss that very much.

While my apples are sweating, keeping them around 140F or below in a Dutch oven, softening them up before placing in a new, homemade pie crust. The pie crust I am trying today, replaces 1/2 of the water with 80 proof Vodka, to see if I can stop the gluten from forming. If I ever needed soft everything, this is the year. Should it be good, the recipe will end up in one of my upcoming cookbooks, but no fear, if really good, I will post to this blog.

I am not using expensive Vodka in the pie crust like Grey Goose, but Smirnoff, which was less than half the price. I hope the Vodka does not leave a flavor in the pie crust? Guess it is bye until the pie is finished as they say . . .

"Time to bake the donuts."

Happy Thanksgiving 2014

Since my Mom died 3 years ago, we go to the Cleveland Zoo for Thanksgiving, but I think it is a bit too cold and snowy for us to go today.

I am still testing recipes for my cookbook on desserts and am trying a low-fat pie crust today subsituting 1/2 of the water in the crust with Vodka to try to get a flakier crust to stop the gluten from forming?

Pictures coming later as I just put the turkey tenders and stuffing in the oven. Since I am in the middle of dental work, everything has to be soft this year. I put white, whole wheat flour on the tenders as thick it might thicken up a bit as my husband is a "gravy lover." He will eat almost anything as long as I can come up with a really great gravy!

Coconut Bars --- Cleveland Bars

My husband was helping me test recipes for my upcoming cookbooks. The coconut bar recipe is more of what my sister calls "assembly" as one need not bake the cake used, but can buy a pound cake.

The recipe is simple and includes Hershey's Chocolate Syrup and coconut that is flakes thin in a coffee
grinder. For those that prefer larger pieces of coconut, this works fine too. We prefer unsweetened
coconut as the chocolate syrup is sweet enough for our tastes.

Hope you enjoy the coconut bars, if you want a more detailed recipe or have any comments, email
me per the side bar email signup. The important part of the recipe is to keep things separate, keep the
chocolate utensils separate from the ones that spread the coconut on the chocolate-covered cake.

Also, if the cake if frozen, it will be easier to handle and will not fall apart, while it is covered in
chocolate syrup and coconut. Coconut bars freeze well!

Chagrin Falls

Since I uploaded an article to be published, and the upload worked on my first try, I decided to reward myself by driving to Chagrin Falls.

We have had much rain and my kale is growing tall in huge bunches. I packed a kale shake for both of us and we drove to the falls pictured below.  I made the kale shake with Almond Milk, bananas, and about 4 long leaves of the wonderful Heirloom Kale growing in my garden! The Heirloom Kale does not have the many white flies my red-leaved kale has. I poured dish washing liquid on my red-leaved kale as it was loaded with white flies, but luckily, they did not attack my Heirloom Kale growing immediately next to the red-leaved kale!

We stayed away from the wonderful treats in downtown Chagrin Falls, but decided to go for lunch at Hunan by the Falls, down on Washington Street. We had Hunan Chicken with steamed brown rice for lunch and the best spring roll in the world!

On the way home we stopped at Patterson's Fruit Farm and purchased an entire half gallon of the tart cherry syrup (80 calories in 2 tablespoons) and I am mixing mine with sparkling water. My husband does not like sparkling anything, so I mix his with plain water. We love the tart cherry juice and it is reported in the literature to be a natural source of melatonin. Having the highest level of antioxidants,  I figure it can not hurt. Since I am doing heavy physical labor these days per all the yard work, I will try anything that is reported to help with joint pain.

The sparkling water plus tart cherry juice reminds me of a drink I liked when we were first married. We only ate out maybe once per year, but on our first and second wedding anniversaries in Columbus, Ohio, we ate dinner at the Jai Lai Restaurant -- their Slow Gin Fizz was my favorite. Our third wedding anniversary was spent potting tomato plants in The Ohio State University greenhouse. When I think back to my husband traveling all week and coming home to help me work in the greenhouse, I am truly amazed!

My youngest sister, age 12-13 years at the time, also helped me water the hundreds of plants in that old greenhouse! She is the third author in the article I submitted for publication this morning.

The title of the article is "Mentoring Power: Key to Sustainable Economic Growth and Innovation,"
to hopefully be published in JOTMI, the Journal of Technology, Management & Innovation.
Authors are William Sharp, Rosa Raskin, and Maria Shine Stewart!

Tart Cherry Juice

As a baby boomer starting to have problems both falling asleep and staying asleep, I recently read that the sour (tart) cherry is one of the few sources of natural melatonin. I was very excited to read about natural sources of melatonin and noticed many articles about tart cherry juice.

My Mom, who was born and raised in Germany, loved sour cherries. We planted a sour cherry tree in her backyard. The tart cherry is the cherry in commercial "cherry pie filling." Unlike a sweet cherry tree, the sour cherry tree does not need two trees to produce wonderful cherries. Unfortunately, the deer in our area get most of the cherries these days, along with the birds and other animals that love this treat.

Here is a photograph of my Mom at age 94 with the sour cherry tree blooming in the background. The tree was loaded with tart cherries. I made several cherry pies from the cherries in the tree and froze the cherries too as the tart cherry freezes wonderfully.

Per the pits in the cherry, one must always be careful, same true when eating commercial products made with these wonderful cherries, one might find a pit among the pitted fruit. It is interesting the sour cherry is used in many German recipes. I know that my mother never had any sleeping difficulties, but her three daughters do. Maybe some of the German recipes, like Schwarzwälder kirschtorte, named for the Schwarzwald  or Black Forest in Germany, might have a secret to sleeping like a baby?

Karlsruhe, Germany, my birthplace, is considered the northern area of the Black Forest region in southern Germany. The cake named after the forest is the "Black Forest Cherry Cake" or "Black Forest Gateau". This cake is a most famous German dessert, one of the few that I have never made. I wonder if the cake holds some secrets per sleep? It is heavy in whipped cream. In the authentic cake, one must use only tart cherries as my Mom told me many times. The cake also includes Kirschwasser, a clear liquor made from the same tart cherry! The cake is a light chocolate alternating with sour (tart) cherries layered with whipped cream. The cake is frosted with whipped cream and has more sour cherries as an adornment on top of the cake. It is not unusual to go out for dessert in Germany and just buy a piece of this cake. I can not imagine trying to eat even a slice of the cake after a meal, but the cake is an afternoon delight in many places in southern Germany.

After reading about tart cherry juice, I called my youngest sister and I learned that she had been drinking some tart cherry juice. I found a bottle of "First Pressed" juice at Whole Foods and then at a local fruit market, I found the true tart cherry concentrate and cherry preserves.

I am giving tart cherry products to both of my sisters whose birthdays are in August. I am shipping juice to Georgetown, Texas, via Amazon.com and my local sister will get the tart cherry preserves and bottle of the concentrate.

I think the juice tastes better than any wine. It is not as sour as I would have expected.

Per the concentrate, it says to take 1-2 tablespoons. Per the juice, I drink about 4-6 ounces per day, but I could drink the entire 32 ounces as it is so very delicious!

From here forward, there will be no wine in our house, only tart cherry juice!

Here is a link to research articles on tart cherry juice:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=tart+cherry+juice

Dr. Oz also did a show on the juice and termed it an amazing antioxidant!

http://www.doctoroz.com/videos/amazing-antioxidants-tart-cherry-juice

If juice is in your diet program, this is one that you might enjoy both for its taste and for any health benefits.

I am flavoring my plain, nonfat Greek yogurt with the cherry preserves. The concentrate would be wonderful over ice cream. If one makes cherry juice from the concentrate it is to be diluted by seven
times it volume with water!

Enjoy!

First Ripe Blackberries and Monarch Butterflies

The first ripe blackberries coincide this year with our seeing the first Monarch Butterflies on Milk Weed plants at North Chagrin Reservation

The Rain in Spain Stays Mainly on the ?

It has been raining cats and dogs yesterday, all night and today. Some areas are under water, some areas have flooded. I am waiting for the pond to form in my backyard. Maybe I will get some tadpoles, anything but snakes! We are lucky so far, trees still standing, but look at those branches almost touching the ground!

My garden is doing well, as much kale as we might want. Someone continues to dig in my pot of arugula on my front porch, but who?
                                                                             

No need to wash the deck furniture or the grill, nature is doing it for me, can't paint the deck when it is soaking wet every other day, so I get to take a rest?

I have multiple barriers for my hydrangeas as our starving deer love them, but per our difficult and very long winter, the coldest on record in years, my hydrangea just started blooming this week. Mine are younger, but the older plants at my Mom's house have not yet started to bloom and last year they were  truly gorgeous!

                                                                           

Wow, and the branches of my Thornless Honey Locus trees (that are not so thornless) are nearly
touching the ground this morning per their wet leaves! Will the branches break off? Stay tuned!

Grilled Veggies, Baby Arugula Salad, and Salmon

The very top photo is my baby arugula growing in a pot next to my house, thus when I need to make a quick salad, I do not have to run in the backyard to my garden. Someone has been digging in it. I cut what I need and it grows back. Later today I will plant more seed in the dug out area of the pot.

I lightly coated the salmon with a bit of oil, a very tiny coating before placing the pieces, skin side down on the grill. I love Costco's Copper River Wild salmon - I buy a big slice and cut it up. When I have lots of company, I buy a whole salmon at Costco and grill the entire fish, very impressive for my nephews!

 However, I grill my vegetables first until tender and then take them off the grill before cooking the salmon as I am always afraid of contaminating something, having been trained as a microbiologist over 40+ years ago!

Try to get an assortment of colored vegetables to grill. My theory is if we have a variety of colors, it is healthier than our entire dinner plate being of one single color, like all brown. My middle sister used
to give this advice to her family when eating out, order a "colorful plate," not all "brown food," for
example.

The vegetables include sweet potatoes, vidalia onions cut in half, zucchini, and yellow squash. I had cut the squash into strips as the eggplant was cut into circles. My husband dislikes eggplant, but will eat anything from the grill.

While the food was cooking, my sister and I enjoyed hummus and blue chips on the deck.

I make humus and baba ganoush (eggplant hummus) too, but these are subjects for another post.

In regard to grilling salmon, I put it on the hot grill skin side down, reduce the heat to about #2 on my grill, cover, and leave it alone for about 10 minutes, perfect every time! Of course, I cleaned any remaining scales off the skin before placing on the grill and I do wash my fish in cold water as do not like seeing scales. The skin holds the fish together and I do not mind if any of the skin sticks to the grill.

I have to use a timer as do not want to eat undercooked fish and hate overcooked salmon.

The most wonderful part of grilling out is "NO pots and pans."

Wonder what I will grill tonight?

Baby Sister Coming to Dinner

My youngest sister, who is my "baby" no matter her age, is coming to dinner tomorrow night. I had to bake her favorite pie, pumpkin and her favorite shortbread cookies. I rarely bake in the summer, and even more rarely in July. Both of my sisters' birthdays are in August, so baking in summer can sometimes not be avoided.

I love using natural brown waxed paper to roll out a pie crust and always use parchment paper for baking cookies as it is fast.

I have little time as it may get hot today, but it is cool at the moment. I use the oven for multiple tasks on days like today!

I made a whole wheat pie crust with white whole wheat flour, photos included.

Some of the cookies are a bit overbaked for shortbread cookies, but we like our cookies to at least have a bit of a brownish area on the outside. These cookies are very, very, delicate.

Here is how I made the pie crust, I roll it on the brown waxed paper and move the paper over the
pie pan and deposit it on the glass pie pan. Using a scissors, I cut any extra and paste it if needed.
I pricked one pie crust with a fork but not the other, and do not see much difference in the pre-baking process. Since we dislike 'soggy" crusts, I bake the crust for about 10 minutes before adding the pumpkin filling.

For the cookies, I mixed the dough and placed it in the refrigerator while the pies were baking.

Here are the photos, my Mom made the most beautiful cookies, I rarely make a decent one!

I rolled the dough in long tubes and rolled into the wonderful brown waxed paper and refrigerated longer as my pies are in the oven. I have a double oven, but only use the top and try to put several items in it to bake, if I am going to bake!

I unrolled two of the rolls and froze the third one without the wax paper, and placed in a freezer bag in my freezer for another cold morning when we have company, as these butter cookies are NOT in our diet. I baked the cookies in two rows in my oven.

Here are the baked pies and cookies, now the problem is I am not to eat this until my sister comes over tomorrow. Guess, I better get a cup of coffee, sit on my porch, and dream about them as the smell is incredible, or get back to one of my "volunteer" projects!

Oh, and the dishes, luckily I put them in my really deep sink, so I do not see them, but here they are as no munchkins live in this house to clean up my kitchen!