The world needs more chubby babies and curly headed toddlers. There just aren’t enough.
One of the more idyllic things I did this summer was pick cherries in Montana and promptly make a pie. My mom’s neighbor has a cherry orchard. Just beautiful rows of cherry trees right next to her house. No big deal. Expect, yeah, that would be pretty stinkin’ awesome. Something to write home about. With a huckleberry pie under my belt, I was feeling the flow and ready to go for a cherry pie. We walked down to the cherry orchard and an hour later walked home with full bags ready to be pitted. If you haven’t pitted cherries before, it’s a labor of love. Knowing there’s a cherry pie at the end makes the whole process a little more bearable.
A month prior to visiting Montana, I was at The Pie Hole in Los Angeles with a friend. The cherry pie I ate there had such a unique almond flavor with a graham cracker crust, that I wanted to somehow incorporate almond into my pie. Here’s the recipe I used (slightly adapted to include fresh cherries) from Taste of Home. Instead of a graham cracker crust, it had a tradition lattice top crust. It was quite homey and just perfect for this experience!
Ingredients
- 6 cups pitted tart cherries
- 1 cup sugar
- 1/4 cup cornstarch
- 1/8 teaspoon salt
- 2 tablespoons butter
- 1/2 teaspoon almond extract
- 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1/4 teaspoon red food coloring, optional
- Pastry for double-crust pie (9 inches)
- 1 egg yolk, lightly beaten
- Additional sugar
Directions
- In a large saucepan, combine the sugar, cornstarch and salt; gradually stir in cherries and their juice. Bring to a boil; cook and stir for 2 minutes or until thickened. Remove from the heat; stir in the butter, extracts and food coloring if desired. Cool slightly.
- Line a 9-in. pie plate with bottom crust; trim pastry even with edge. Pour filling into crust. Roll out remaining pastry; make a lattice crust. Trim, seal and flute edges. Brush lattice top with egg yolk. Sprinkle with additional sugar.
- Cover edges loosely with foil. Bake at 425° for 15 minutes. Remove foil. Bake 20-25 minutes longer or until crust is golden brown and filling is bubbly. Cool on wire rack.
Do you ever feel like you can see your child’s personality from birth? It comes out more during the toddler years and once they are in elementary school, you can predict how they’ll react to a certain situation. And it’s almost like first born children know they need to be responsible, middle children march to the beat of their own drum and the youngest wants to do everything themselves…don’t even think about helping them!
Jake is my oldest and he’s 11 and a half. That half means a lot right now. He’ll disappear for long periods of time in his room. If one of my other kids had disappeared for a length of time, I’d be checking the roof or worry about the art project I’ll need to clean up. But, Jake loves detail. He put together this lego rock band a few months ago. Brent and I always try to guess what career path our kids will take and we are convinced this guy will do something meticulous. Something only he will have the patience for. Because love is in the details for this guy.
Okay party people…wanna know what I did for my birthday last month? My always-amazing husband took me to Palm Springs. We hid out at The Parker, which has become a favorite. My friend Laura introduced me to the hotel a few years ago. From top to bottom, they take care of every detail imaginable. And if you stay there in the summer (when the temperatures are 110+) you can get a great deal!
The last time we were there, I took some photos of the lobby. This time, I wanted to share photos of the room and a few from the grounds. Here’s a link to the photos I took last time.
I can’t say enough wonderful things about this place! They call you before you arrive to see if there’s anything you need prior to your visit. When you arrive you can arrange to have free french press coffee delivered to your room along with a newspaper of your choice. The patio is enclosed with local desert greenery to make each area feel private. Even the room key is embellished with a tassel and picture of an antique key. The bathrooms are stocked with everything you’ll need in the desert (sunscreen, lip balm) along with the essentials.
Jonathan Adler designed the decor and you see his fingerprints everywhere, from the tapestry pillows to the pottery and choices of reading material in the rooms. Every where you walk on site is a little nook with a seating area, a fountain or a fire pit. So many lovely little places to sit and chat. We were so inspired by the grounds, we wanted to try to re-create a bit of it in our own backyard!
It’s the little things. Like soft sweet newborn skin and fuzzy hair. Teeny tiny fingernails and feet that have never touched the ground. Even better is when older siblings are in awe of all the little things and let me document it with my camera.
Love.
If you know me well, you know I go for it. Recover my patio furniture- sure, rehab a 200 year old sofa- why not?, make a pie from scratch- let’s do this. I definitely have a history of failures, but I also have successes under my belt, so I’m not afraid to try. As in, not afraid to try a new crust recipe that my veteran-pie-making-mom wasn’t so sure about. But, guess what? It turned out pretty fantastic. A bit of a weepy pie, but a delicious one. One that you might just have eaten for breakfast the next day.
Let me tell you a bit more about this pie. The story starts in Blodgett Canyon outside of Hamilton, Montana. We were hiking and fishing with the kids. It took a few hours for the kids to get the hang of fishing and my dad wanted them to be able to catch their own. The go-for-it-girl decides to collect some huckleberries while we were hiking around. Let’s make enough for some pancakes, was my first thought. When that was accomplished I moved on to an ice cream topping and as my back was aching from all the foraging, I decided we would not go home until we had 5 cups. Enough for a pie. Well, we couldn’t remember if it was 5 cups or 6, so we went with 6 cups. Which also meant that we had enough for pie AND pancakes.
Huckleberries are most like a blueberry, but smaller. So, you can imagine how long it took us to collect that many huckleberries. Thanks mom and dad for putting up with the obsessive-ness about making this pie!
The recipe we used was from Saveur…and as I said, very tasty! If you don’t live in an area where you can get huckleberries, either buy frozen or use blueberries. Click here for the original recipe.
FOR THE PASTRY:
2 1/4 cups flour
1/2 tsp. salt
8 tbsp. butter, chilled and cut into pieces
8 tbsp. vegetable shortening
11/2 tsp. cider vinegar
FOR THE FILLING:
1 cup plus 1 tbsp. sugar
4 tbsp. quick-cooking tapioca
1 tsp. ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp. freshly grated
nutmeg
Pinch salt
5 cups fresh or partially thawed frozen huckleberries stemmed
2 tbsp. fresh lemon juice
2 tbsp. butter, chilled and cut into pieces
1. For the pastry: Sift together flour and salt into a large bowl. Using a pastry cutter or 2 table knives, work butter into flour until mixture is flecked with pea-size pieces of butter. Add shortening and work into flour mixture until it is flecked with pea-size pieces of shortening. Combine vinegar and 6 tbsp. ice water in a bowl, then stir into flour mixture 1 tbsp. at a time, mixing until dough holds together. Form into a rough ball, then divide dough into 2 balls, one slightly larger than the other, wrap each in plastic, and refrigerate for 2 hours.
2. For the filling: Combine 1 cup of the sugar, tapioca, cinnamon, nutmeg, and salt in a large bowl. Add huckleberries and lemon juice, gently toss, and set aside for 15 minutes.
3. Put a baking sheet on oven rack in lower third of oven. Position another oven rack in middle of oven. Preheat oven to 450º. Roll out larger dough ball onto a lightly floured surface into a 12″ round and fit into a 9″ pie plate. Fill with huckleberry filling and scatter with butter. Roll smaller dough ball into a 10″ circle, place on top of filling, then fold edge under and crimp. Brush pastry with water, make 5 slits in top pastry for steam to escape, and sprinkle with remaining 1 tbsp. sugar. Bake pie on baking sheet until pastry begins to brown, 20-25 minutes. Transfer pie to middle rack, reduce oven temperature to 350º, and bake until pastry is deep golden brown, about 50 minutes more. Set pie aside to cool completely.
I’m having a hard time knowing where to start today. I took a few days off from blogging. I’ve got tons of photos to share and I just don’t know where to begin. We’ve spent way more time away from home than being at home this summer. Collecting adventures has been our past time. The kids have dirt underneath their fingernails most days, they’ve been eating way to much sugar and staying up past their bedtime. But, I have decided that September is a good month to get back into routines and for now, we’ll keep on making memories.
And today, I’ll gather my thoughts (and photos) to do a bit more sharing of jobs and adventures.
Do you ever go to the grocery store without make up? And scraggly hair? Those are the days that you see people you know. Instead of running up to greet them, I tend to hide behind cereal boxes. I know, it’s probably not my best characteristic, but I just don’t like to be seen at my worst. Two summers ago I was standing in line at the airport in Missoula, MT after a week of visiting my parents when I saw a girl I went to high school with. She was the star singer of the chorus- an adorable petite blonde. I of course, was coming off a week of camping and hiking. ie- NOT my best. I didn’t let my pride stand in the way and called out her name. She was just as sweet as I remembered and we chatted for a bit. Fast forward through the months and we are friends on facebook. She asked if I’d be visiting home this summer and lo and behold, I was going to be there the same week as her family. We took it as fate and she hired me to take her family’s photos. I loved the location she chose and the fact that even though her husband and kids didn’t grow up in Montana like we did, they were so at home. It was a perfect evening that I hope they’ll always remember.
I’m guesting this week on the Little Skye blog! Click here for full directions on how to make this super cute felted flower headband.
Over the last few weeks, I shot a lot of Oilily at home and at Hume Lake. It’s such cute stuff, so I wanted to share it with you here!
