Tag: plum

Blackberry Plum Pie

Summer is the time of lovely fruit, and the time for pie.  This is a kitchen sink pie – not enough of any one fruit to make a pie.  So, 2 kinds of plums – black and sugar – and a whole bunch of blackberries.

Prepare to make thy pie!

Preheat oven to 450 F for a metal pan; 425 F for a glass pan.  Make pie crust first.  While it chills in the refrigerator, prepare the fruit.

Pie Crust – makes two 9” crusts
2 c. flour
1 tsp. salt
2 T. sugar
7 T. cold butter   (100 g)
6-7 T. cold water

Cut butter into small dice.  Place in bowl with flour, sugar, salt.  Cut butter into flour mixture until it resembles coarse meal.  Add 6 T. cold water; mix well with fork but do not overblend.  If it seems a bit dry, add 1-2 T. more, 1-2 t. at a time.  You may also use a food processor to make the dough, just be sure not to over process once you add the cold water.

Gather together into a ball.  Wrap with plastic wrap and let rest in refrigerator while you chop fruit – about 30-60 minutes is fine.

Pie Filling

4-5 cups of fruit, clean, washed, picked over. This pie was about 3 c. plums and 2 c. blackberries.
Juice of 1/2 lemon – about 1T.
1/4 – 1/2 c. sugar (some of the plums were a bit tart)
2-3 t. Chinese Five Spice form Penzey’s (China cassia cinnamon, star anise, anise seed,         ginger and cloves)
3 T. small tapioca
2 T. flour
1 T. butter – to dot fruit when it is in the pie dish, before the second crust is added.

Chop fruit. Stir in with all other ingredients to set up and meld flavors.

After you have finished with the fruit, take the pie dough out of the refrigerator.  Let sit at room temperature about 10 minutes.  Cut in half, with one side slightly larger for the bottom crust.  Roll out crust, place in pie pan.  Place fruit into pan.  Dot with butter.  Roll out second crust, place on top.  Roll edges over or under to seal pie.  Crimp with fingers or flatten with fork.  Slash top crust for ventilation.

Bake pie at 450 (425) for 10-12 minutes, then drop oven temperate to 350 F (for metal pan) or 325 F (for glass pan) for another 45 – 60 minutes, or until crust is done.  Remove from oven, cool.

Retrospective Introspection

Admittedly I have been feeling rather sorry for myself.  I get like this when I have no time to sit down and think about life and what I want to do with it.  Thursday I walked into my office at work and was just unable to make choices as to what to pursue next.  Oh, there were a lot of things to be done, but it seemed just so overwhelming and the mere act of choosing what to do was impossible.   The best thing to do in these circumstances – for me, at least – is to sit down with paper and pen and begin to write.  Five pages later, the world was in order once more.

Writing is therapeutic.  It’s like the pensieve of the Harry Potter stories.  I pull out thoughts and ideas and frustrations, and when they are all placed onto paper, there is structure found amidst the chaos.

Painting is much the same process as writing; however, I often feel pulled into different directions.  I never focus on one style.  The consistent factor is my use of water-soluble media and paper, but other than that, I don’t have a particular style.  Consequently, I am not as accomplished as I would like to be in watercolor.  I like many of my ink paintings and the simpler watercolors that are based on sumi-e.  Traditional watercolors are often disastrous failures.  Acrylic paints are not my favorite medium, but there are times when I have used them to create more graphic pictures.

Today, I went through my hard drive to look at some of the paintings I have scanned or photographed over the past year or two, and pulled out some which appealed to me for whatever reason – sort of a retrospective of the work of the last few years.  Here they are, not in any particular order, but just for me and anyone who wants to look at them to see and consider.