Strawberry Rhubarb Pie

I tried a new rhubarb pie recipe this year, and I think we've found our family favorite now. Normally, my husband isn't as much of a rhubarb eater as I am, but he really enjoyed this pie.


Ingredients:
Pastry for 2-crust, 9-inch pie
3 cups rhubarb, chopped
1 cup sugar
3 Tbsp. corn starch
1 cup strawberries, sliced

Mix rhubarb, sugar, and corn starch until rhubarb is well coated. Stir in strawberries. Place in unbaked pie shell; cover with top crust. Sprinkle a little sugar over top.

Bake in 400-degree oven for 1 hour or until crust is brown and rhubarb is tender.

Blueberry Banana Muffins

We had guests stay over recently, and I was really thankful to find a muffin recipe that wouldn't require a trip to the grocery store.

As usual, I made a few changes. I cut the amount of sour cream in half and used "light" instead of regular sour cream. But you'd never know it by the result. They were really good!

Ingredients:
1 cup butter
1-1/2 cups sugar
1/2 tsp. salt
4 eggs
2 cups mashed bananas
1/2 cup light sour cream
2 tsp. soda
4 cups flour
2 cups blueberries
1 cup chopped walnuts

Mix dry ingredients together in a bowl and set aside.

Cream butter and sugar together until light and fluffy. Add eggs, sour cream, and bananas alternately with the dry ingredients. Fold in blueberries and nuts.

Bake at 350 degrees for about 25 minutes, or until golden brown and a toothpick inserted in the middle of a muffin comes out clean. (Makes 2 dozen muffins.)

Almost No-Knead Bread

I've been baking quite of bit of bread lately, and this is one of the loaves we've really enjoyed.

It's so easy, it really does deserve the name "Almost No-Knead Bread" and, as usual, I've altered the recipe just a bit for our personal family taste, and I simplified the method just a bit, too.

The original came from Cooks Illustrated, and I think that recipe was a take-off on another that I read online on the New York Times website some time ago.

While the original recipe calls for just all-purpose white flour, I've been using 1 cup whole wheat flour and 2 cups of bread flour, for a more whole-grainy taste and a chewier crumb. And then I've found that with the time that I allow for raising the bread, I don't need to use the rapid-rise yeast that the original recipe requires. I use ordinary regular-rise yeast with great results. (Note: You don't have to use nearly as much yeast as most bread recipes require because of the long time that you give for the initial rise.)

Ingredients:

2 cups bread flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
1/4 tsp. yeast
1-1/2 tsp. salt
3/4 cup plus 2 Tbsp. water (room temperature)
1/4 cup plus 2 Tbsp. mild-flavored lager
1 Tbsp. white vinegar

Whisk the dry ingredients together in a large bowl. Add the wet ingredients and stir until a shaggy ball forms. Cover bowl with plastic wrap and let sit at room temperature for around 18 hours. (Note: I don't worry about being specific with this time. I just mix it up after work one night and bake it sometime the next day.)

Spray a sheet of parchment paper with nonstick cooking spray and lay it into a covered 2-quart Pyrex casserole dish. Cover the dish with plastic wrap and let sit for another 2 hours until the dough has doubled in size.

Preheat your oven to 450 degrees, and then turn it down to 425 when you open the oven door to put your Pyrex dish inside. Be sure to remove the plastic wrap and then place the casserole dish cover on top of the dish, forming a little steam oven for your bread as it bakes. After 30 minutes, remove the Pyrex lid and let the bread back for another 30 minutes, or until the internal temperature reads 210 degrees Fahrenheit.

Remove the finished loaf from the dish by carefully picking up the parchment paper under it, and let the loaf cool on a wire rack. Cool a bit before you cut into it for the nicest looking slices. Your bread should be deep golden brown with a really nice crusty crust and a chewy interior.

Raspberries from our garden

I haven't had the time to grow vegetables in a garden for at least the last four years. I picked that number because that's how long it's been since I took a job with a long commute...But that job is with a ministry, and I really love the work. So, the lack of fresh veggies from my own garden is a sacrifice for a very worthwhile cause.

So, this summer, instead of tending my own garden, I've taken to making regular trips to our local farmers market. But one thing that my farmers market hasn't had is, thankfully, the one edible (beyond herbs) that we can eat from our garden. We didn't have many, but we did have raspberries this year.

This photo shows about one half of our 2008 raspberry "harvest". The plants are only two years old, so hopefully we'll have more in years to come. The plants were a gift from my husband's cousin, who is married to a botanist, so everything she gives me from her garden grows really well in this area. We enjoyed raspberries on ice cream one time, and then one time we added them to a fruit salad. They were wonderful! I hope there will be more in 2009! :-)

The gate to our future Asian-stye garden

My husband has been working a lot in our backyard, as of late. Most impressively, he built this beautiful Asian-style garden gate. It serves as the opening in a new fence that he installed between the part of our backyard that our schnauzer, Charlie, considers his domain, and the part that, Lord willing, we will start to develop into a Japanese-style garden next year.

At this point, I'm just starting the research stage of trying to determine what to plant. We're looking at mainly perennials in this garden, so they have to be hardy to Zone 3. And because of all of the lovely tall trees in our yard and in the neighboring yards, they must also be shade tolerant.

On the sunnier side of this fence, we planted eight Miss Kim lilacs, which should only grow to between 4 and 6 feet. That will be enough to eventually cover the fence, and we probably plant lilacs or other bushes on the Asian side of the fence as well...Again, that's a project for another year.

We're doing this on our own time with our own labor, and we're working hard to keep it all within our limited budget. The wood chips that you see in the background of this photo were all free for the hauling during our city's annual clean-up day in June. We hauled seven trailer loads of wood chips to our yard and spent all morning and most of an afternoon one Saturday spreading them around. We'll move them around a bit more when we get ready to start planting in 2009.

The little lantern and dry pond that you see in this other photo was my husband's first effort toward our Asian-style backyard getaway. We live in a low-lying area and had to install a waterproofing system in our basement, which includes a pump that drains into the south side of our backyard. So, rather than have a swampy place to deal with, my Sweetie dug a little bone-shaped "pond" and lined it with river rock. Then he added the little stone lantern and the ferns that you see here. We named this little "pond" in honor of our dog, calling it "Little Bone Lake."

Pinwheel Coasters and a New "Garden" Blouse

While we're on the theme of gardening, I've been doing some garden-inspired sewing as well.

I saw a post on another blog with a tutorial on making pinwheel coasters, but I knew that I could make them much faster and easier using a strip-piecing method. I cut a few 3-inch wide strips of two different colors of calico and then cut 3-inch squares from the strips. Then I paired together one square of each color and sewed them together on the diagonal. I trimmed at a diagonal leaving a 1/4-inch seam allowance, and then ironed them flat. Then, taking four of these bi-color squares, I sewed them into pinwheel shapes. With a solid square for backing and a square of low-loft poly batting, I had a set of six pinwheel coasters in just a couple of hours. I think they turned out really sweet, and it was fun to tie them together for a gift for my husband's aunt.

Then, I made myself a new blouse with a garden theme. I had purchased this calico quilting fabric several years ago, but I had never figured out what I would be doing with it...I used to buy fabric all the time without a real plan for how to use it. These days I don't do that. Instead, I'm trying to use what I have on hand, only buying new fabric when there is a specific need that my fabric stash can't fulfill. I consider my stash to be a blessing, but it would be better to only buy when there's an actual need.

Anyway, this was an easy pattern, and it's been a fun blouse to wear with shorts and capri pants. Now, I'm working on another blouse, one that is sleeveless that I hope will work in the fall as well as the summer time. It's another calico from my stash, but the pattern is paisley in beige, brown, and off-white. I'm think that it should work well in the fall with my beige cardigan for warmth.

Planter hangers for our front deck

My husband is always doing thoughtful things to make our home even more home-y. This summer, he added shepherd's crooks to our front deck so that I can hang hanging plants.

Even though life has been pretty stressful now for the past four months because of a project at work, every time I see the front of our house, it makes me smile. I am so grateful to the Lord for His gift of a thoughtful, creative, and talented spouse. I really don't know what I would do without him.

Salty the Sea Dog

We finally made time last night after work to take our canoe out to the lake across the road from our house. It took less than five minutes to drive the trailer with the canoe to the boat launch, and less then 10 minutes to unload the boat, drive the car and trailer back to the parking area, and then walk back down to the boat. So we were in the lake in less than 15 minutes...Why haven't we done this before? Probably because we had to make time in our busy schedules to do it.

Anyway, it was so worth the time. We canoed for about an hour and a half. We probably paddled two or three miles round trip around "our" little lake. We didn't see all of it, but we did see enough to know that we want to go back.

I didn't bring the digital camera because I was nervous about it ending up in the lake. But my husband made a good suggestion for bringing it more safely next time. I'm going to pack it up in two layers of ziplock bags and keep it in a tummy pack when I'm not using it.

So, instead of posting photos of the beautiful blue herons that we saw, or any of the lovely patched of water lilies in various stages of bloom, I have a photo that I took before we left the house. This is Charlie, our schnauzer, also known as "Salty the Sea Dog" when we take him out in a boat. And he has his own little life preserver to wear now, thanks to a sale at Drs. Fosters and Smith. Sure, most dogs can swim, but this makes my husband and I feel better about taking Charlie with us in the canoe. He isn't thrilled to be wearing it, but he does look really cute. And after he's had it on for a few minutes, he seems to forget about it and just enjoy being able to come along with us.