Nevertheless, it’s a wonderful winter pie and I’m sure you’ll find some time or other during the next month or two when trotting out a beautiful, tart-sweet, brightly-colored, vitamin-C-rich fruit pie will be precisely the right thing to do.  It hearkens to other pies I love, Shaker and Amish in origin, that use dried fruit when the fresh versions are so out of season as to be almost unimaginable.

To make it, you will need the following

• Pie crust sufficient for a double-crust  pie
• A 9  or 10 inch diameter pie dish
• 4 cups fresh cranberries, washed and picked over
• 2 1/2 cups dried tart cherries (lightly sweetened, which is typically how they’re sold, is fine)
• 1 to 1 1/2 cups granulated sugar (depending on your tastes, and whether your cherries are sweetened)
• juice of 3 medium oranges
• zest of 2 medium oranges
• 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
• 3 Tablespoons ginger liqueur, such as creme de gingembre or Domaine de Canton
• 1/2 cup King Arthur Flour Pie Filling Enhancer OR about 1/4 cup powdered arrowroot starch mixed with 1/4 cup sugar

1.  Preheat the oven to 350F Roll out one half of your pie crust and line the pie dish with it.  Blind bake the bottom crust 20-30 minutes, until well set and golden in places.

2. While the bottom crust is blind baking and then cooling, simmer the cranberries, dried cherries, orange juice, orange zest, liqueur, cinnamon, and sugar together in a large saucepan until some of the cranberries have burst and the cherries have begun to plump up and the whole is nice and hot.  Remove from heat and let cool somewhat before adding the Pie Filling Enhancer (or the DIY equivalent), and stir thoroughly to combine and distribute the thickener evenly throughout the mixture.

It will look a bit like this:

3. Pour the pie filling into the prepared pie crust.  Top with a second crust in whatever format floats your boat.  With pies like this one, I like using a cookie cutter to cut out little pie-crust shapes, then laying them on top of the filling.

4.  Bake at 350F for about an hour, or until the filling is thoroughly cooked and set and the top crust is nicely golden.  Cool well before cutting, as a too-hot cranberry behaves, in the mouth, in a manner uncomfortably reminiscent of napalm.

                          

Pie is no exception.

This pie has a total of 10 ingredients.  11 if you count water, which traditionally doesn’t get counted in recipe-writing. Your pie could have even fewer, potentially, and still be glorious.

Pie crust should not scare you.  If you own a food processor it is so easy it’s almost embarrassing.  Even if you don’t own a food processor it’s not exactly juggling spent nuclear rods whilst rollerskating down the Filbert Steps.

Here is the ratio you need for a good basic sweet pie crust, sufficient for one 9 inch double-crust pie or 2 single-crust, with a little left over for baking in little strips as a snack.  Because snacks are important.

• 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon table salt
• 2 Tablespoons sugar
• 16 Tablespoons unsalted butter (or vegan margarine), chopped into quarter-inch cubes
• 4 Tablespoons nonhydrogenated solid vegetable shortening

Have your fats ice cold and by ice, I mean put them in the freezer for 12-24 hours.  Having your flour be cold is also a good idea.  I store mine in the freezer.  The colder the ingredients the flakier and nicer your pie crust will turn out.

When you’re ready, make yourself up a big measuring cup or small bowl of ice water.  Pack it with ice cubes, then fill with water.  Stick a tablespoon measure in there so you have it ready when the time comes.

Place the dry ingredients in your food processor.  Pulse once or twice to combine.  Add the fats and pulse until the mixture resembles coarse cornmeal.  Not sure what that means?  Well, if it looks like wet sand looks when you stir it up with your toes, that’s about right.

When you get to this point, pour this mixture into a large mixing bowl and grab a fork.  Sprinkle 7 Tablespoons of ice water over the top and begin to stir it in.  The mixture will clump, which is what you want.  You want to encourage the clumps to get bigger and to incorporate more and more of the flour/fat.  This takes some strength!  Some force!  This will not come together like iron filings clumping onto a magnet, you have to push and mash.  But do use a fork, because the heat of your hands can toughen the dough. Work quickly.  Pie crust making is a brusque and short process.  Don’t think you have to baby it.

Sprinkle on another tablespoon or two of water once you get to the point where no more will incorporate easily.  It should take no more than 10 T total (and may take somewhat less) to get all the dough to come together.

When it has come together and you have a nice big heavy dense mass of dough, turn the dough out onto a floured surface.  Cut it in half.  Pat each half into a disc about as wide as your hand from heel to fingertips.  Pat the edges so that there are no big cracks.   Work quickly and handle the dough as little as possible, because again, the heat of your hands can toughen the dough.  It doesn’t have to be pretty!  Wrap each one in plastic and put it in the fridge.  The cooling off time will let the flour absorb the water without creating gluten (which would toughen your pie crust).

So you have a pie crust.  Now, what to put in it?  This time of year in the northern hemisphere I strongly recommend some kind of apple situation.  Here’s what I put in the one pictured above.

Apples — I used Bramleys, which are an outstanding cooking apple.  Any good cooking apple will do.  Cooking apples are tart, dense, and hard, not the crisp sweet things people look for as eating (dessert) apples.  Some possible varieties: Pippin, Empire, Northern Spy, Pink Lady, Gravenstein, Hubbardston.  Some apples normally used as eating apples, like Granny Smith, will make a decent pie.  But others, such as Honeycrisps or Red Delicious, do not make a good pie at all.

I usually prep my apples for pie this way: quarter, core, and peel, then slice across the quarters the short way into thin slices (7-9 slices per quarter apple).  This lets them stack evenly in the pie, increasing the likelihood that your filling will be dense, which is both satisfying from an eating perspective and architecturally preferable to ones that run all over when you cut into the pie and have to be served with a spoon.

Dried tart cherries — entirely optional, but nice.  You could as easily toss in a few handfuls of whatever other dried fruit you liked, chopped into small bits if required.  Raisins are good, so are chopped unsulfured unsweetened dried apricots.  But you can also just have apples.

cinnamon, nutmeg, and allspice — these are the classic seasonings for an apple pie.  Heavier on the cinnamon than the other two, and you’ll be using them in a powdered format.  Season to taste.  I’m also fond of Penzey’s premixed Apple Pie Spice, which is delicious and convenient.

a little sugar — if your apples are super tart, or you just like a sweeter pie, add a little sugar.  A few tablespoons, no more.  It doesn’t matter what kind of sugar you use.  White, brown, maple, whatever you have that you like.  But you don’t have to add any sugar at all if you don’t want it.  And sometimes you don’t.

Mix your prepped apples, dried fruit (if using), spice, and sugar in the same bowl you mixed your pie crust in.  Don’t wash it first, you want the remnants of flour and butter to get mixed in with the apples to help thicken the filling.  If you did wash it already, just toss in about 2 Tablespoons of flour when you mix the apples/spice/sugar, then dot the top of the fruit with a few small pats of butter before you put the top crust on the pie.

OK, so now what?

Now you roll out the pie crust.  Get your rolling pin out, and the pie plate you’ll be using.  You’ll need a big flat surface to roll on, and some flour to dust the surface with so the crust doesn’t stick.

Roll one half of the pie crust out so that it’s in a rough circle (this is not geometry class, don’t stress) that is about 3 inches bigger around than your pie crust.  It should be evenly thick.  If it tears, moosh the torn edges back together and pat them down gently.

Transferring the rolled crust to the pan can be tricky unless you know how.  I’ll tell you how.  Loosely and gently roll it up around your rolling pin, then lift the pin and the crust over the edge of the pie plate, then unroll and drape the crust across the pie plate.  Gently tuck it down into the pie plate so that the crust conforms to the shape of the plate.

Fill the pie!  With most fruit pies you want the fruit to stack pretty densely.  For apple pie, this means that most (not all, you needn’t get all obsessive about it) of the apple slices will lie on their flat sides.  I also believe in filling a pie fully, which for fruit pies means that they need to appear slightly over-filled when you put them in the oven because fruit cooks down.

Obviously, the amount of fruit will vary depending on the size of your pie plate and the size of your fruit pieces: larger pieces take up more room, smaller ones can be compacted into less space. For a 9-inch apple pie, though, I usually end up using 7 or 8 apples.  More if they’re tiny, fewer if they’re huge.

Pat the fruit gently into place to ensure that it is happy.

Roll out the top crust the same way as you did the bottom crust.  Place it over the top of the pie with the same rolling-pin transfer method.  With a paring knife, trim both bottom and top crusts to the same size, leaving yourself an inch or a little more of seam allowance — where the crusts touch at the side of the pie — all the way around.

Pinch those “seams” together and fold them up and in toward the center of the pie to make a rim of sealed pie crust.  You can get decorative if you like, with pinching little divots into it or whatever, but that’s totally optional.

The last steps, before you slide this bad boy into a preheated 350F oven, are two: steam slits and a cookie sheet.  Steam slits are the slits you cut in the top crust with a sharp knife to let some of the steam escape while the pie bakes.  Otherwise the top crust will end up soggy instead of flaky.  You can make these decorative or you can just stab the thing a few times and call it good.

A cookie sheet (preferably one with a rim all the way around — jelly roll pans are great for this if you own one) is what you put the pie plate on before you put the whole thing in the oven, so that in the not unlikely event that the pie oozes some juice out of the pie plate, it doesn’t end up on the floor of your oven.  It’s easier to wash a cookie sheet than it is to clean your oven.

Then you bake your pie.  How long?  Until the top crust is sweetly golden all over.  Not brown, just gold.  But definitely not pasty white.  The small amount of browning is crucial — the crust tastes better, the texture is better, and the additional cooking time it takes to get the pie nice and golden is a good way to make sure your fruit is thoroughly cooked.  Usually this takes about an hour, maybe a little more or less depending on your oven and whether you’re cooking anything else in the same oven at the same time.  You’re allowed to start peeking to see if doneness has been attained at around 45 minutes of baking time, but remember that every time you open the oven to peek, you let heat out and so it will actually take a little longer than you think.

If you do this a lot it becomes second nature and you can whip out a pie in barely more than 2 hours start to finish including the time it takes to make the crust and peel the apples.  And during that second hour, you can clean up the kitchen and still have time for a cup of tea and some quality time with a crossword puzzle.  Or Minecraft.  Or your cat.  However you roll.

p.s.  The leftover scraps of pie crust?  Collect them, moosh them into a ball, roll them out thin, cut into strips, sprinkle with cinnamon sugar,  and bake for about 15 minutes while the pie is baking.  When they are golden brown, pull them out and let them cool a little, then eat them with that cup of tea.

                          

• A salad: ripe nectarines, pitted and cut into wedges + peeled chunked fresh cucumber in equal volume to nectarines + slivered raw sweet onion, as much as you like + shredded fresh mint leaves, a handful or so + fresh lemon juice, plenty + good olive oil, a healthy drizzle + salt to taste + freshly ground black pepper.  Toss, wait 10 minutes or so for the flavors to mingle.  Eat.
• A warm dessert: ripe peaches, peeled and sliced, sauteed in butter (or your favorite non butter substitute that is butteresque in flavour) over moderate heat until they begin to caramelize.  While they are cooking, in another pan, saute rolled oats in a small skosh of butter (or see above) until just beginning to take on color, sprinkle with several tablespoons brown sugar and a little ground cinnamon, stir and saute until sugar is melted.  Pour the oats over the peaches.  Eat.
• A frozen dessert:  Freeze several ripe peeled bananas that you have cut into chunks.  Do the same with several ripe peeled peaches, or several cups of ripe peeled canteloupe or other melon.  When everything is frozen, whiz the bananas in a blender until smooth and slightly fluffy.  Whiz in the peaches or melon.  Serve in a tall glass and eat with a spoon.
• A somewhat more adult version of the above: Freeze the bananas as described above.  Whir them in the blender with a healthy tot of chocolate liqueur.  Stir in a handful of dark chocolate chips.  Fill your glass(es) or bowl(s), then pour another healthy tot of chocolate liqueur over.

Read:

• Jonathan Spence, The Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci.  One of the best-written biographical histories I have ever read.  A beautiful, seamless, multidisciplinary piece of exemplary historiography on a very interesting and complicated subject.  Colonialism, missionary efforts, culture clash, empire, learning, philosophy, and the massive and critical enigma — in the eyes of the West — that is China.  A book that becomes more relevant every time I read it.
• Matthew Frye Jacobson, Whiteness of a Different Color: American Immigrants and the Alchemy of Race.  There are few books that do as well at demonstrating the ways in which categories of “race” are constructed as this one.  For this reason alone, it’s an important book to know, because we live in a racist world and we participate daily in racist systems whether we are conscious of it or not as well as whether we intend it or not.  Because the book deals primarily with how pale-skinned European people of various backgrounds, classes, and social milieux gradually became part of a unified “white American” category, it is particularly useful for how it removes the opportunity to indulge in the common misperception that race is a type of natural or de facto human division based on skin color or facial features.  In reality, what “race” is, who belongs to what “race,” and how those things get decided are changeable social factors whose transformation Jacobson traces over time.
• Jane Shaw, Octavia, Daughter of God: The Story of a Female Messiah and Her Followers.  This is a juicy doozy, somewhere between biography and straight-up archival/documentary history.  The subjects are choice, in the way that only people who seem to halfway occupy a reality we all recognize, and halfway live in their own very special and specific universe that exists at a slightly odd angle, can be.  Shaw does a lovely and fair-minded job of keeping her subjects human and sympathetic despite their concerted strangeness, self-absorption, and, sometimes, downright delusion.  This book only looks like it’s going to be a big heavy academic title.  Trust me, you want a big bowl of popcorn with this one.  I’m only halfway through it myself and I find myself slowing down because I’m enjoying it too much to have it end.

                          

In many ways, I think a gluten-free piecrust is one of the easier things to attempt so far as GF baking goes.  Piecrusts, after all, are meant to be handled as little as possible so that they don’t develop too much gluten.  The flakiness, crispness, and crumbliness characteristic of non-gluten doughs are precisely the sorts of qualities that a good pie dough is supposed to have.

On the other hand, gluten-free doughs can get sandy easily, and that’s not precisely what you want in a pie crust.

Finding a happy medium seemed key to me, so after having perused a half-dozen GF pie crust recipes online — Shauna Ahern‘s is one I plan to try in future, but didn’t have the gumption to go out and acquire four kinds of GF flours I don’t normally keep in the house in addition to the two I do right now — I picked up a box of King Arthur Flour’s GF all-purpose baking flour mix and figured what the hell, I’d make my regular pâte brisee with it, just to play into the potential for sandiness, and see how it worked out.

Answer: Pretty well, honestly.

Can you tell which one of these three pies has gluten?

A couple of tips, based on this experience…

• Rolling out gluten-free doughs is tricky.  They break and tear very easily.  I decided to take a cue from cracker- and beaten-biscuit making and pound the dough thin instead of trying to roll it.  Whacking it firmly with the rolling pin (I use either a French or a Asian-style one-piece wooden “dowel” style rolling pin, depending on which one my hand lands on when I open that kitchen drawer) got the job done without tearing it.
• If even beating the dough is not getting the job done, you might consider simply pressing it into the pie pan like you would if it were a pâte sucrée and not a brisée.  It’s not like anyone’s gonna know, once the pie is filled.
• Moving gluten-free doughs once they’re rolled out is tricky for the same reasons.  Lacking one of the snazzy bigass (this is a technical term) metal spatulas they sell at King Arthur that can move an entire pie crust while supporting it the while, I gingerly lifted the edges of the beaten-thin crust and slid my forearms under it, then had my Belovedary quickly slide the pie dish underneath.  I still had a little bit of cracking, but nothing that the oven heat didn’t sort out.

                          

This one’s for you, Alysia.

                          

Bred in 1918, "Mermaid" is a tremendously thorny, ridiculously vigorous rose that rapidly makes itself into a first-class high-security fence if you grow it along an existing fenceline, as I am along our back alley.

The Mermaid Fence.

Baby white peaches, var. "Peregrine," bred 1906. It is said to be to white peaches what Cox's Orange Pippin is to dessert apples -- the gold standard. It's in its second year in my garden, so I should soon get to find out!

My blueberries are starting to look like they might eventually be edible.

HRH Fez, our bronze Egyptian Mau, busily claiming the new daybed for catkind and challenging us to do something about it.

A sentiment Fez wholeheartedly endorses, and I do also. Spotted on a lamppost across the street from the hardware store.

A nearby house sports this fine, subtle piece of ironwork. I walked past it a number of times before I realized what the "spindles" below the handrail were made of.

                          

A raspberry sorbet that can be made any time of year, thanks to frozen fruit.  A bit alcoholic.  Not too sweet.  Can be made non-sugared if desired.

12 oz. frozen raspberries

1 cup simple syrup OR unsugar syrup made with 1/4 cup Truvia brand sweetener dissolved in 1 cup water

6 Tablespoons raspberry liqueur (I like Clear Creek‘s)

Juice of 1 lemon, strained

1 egg white

Combine all ingredients in blender and liquefy.  Pour into your ice cream maker’s bowl and freeze/churn until thick enough to hold peaks.  Due to the alcohol, this will not harden completely in the ice cream maker, but will need a stint in the freezer.

If you are fussy about raspberry pips: Liquefy the raspberries with the simple syrup in the blender, then pass through a fine mesh sieve to remove the pips.  Press as much of the pulp through the sieve with the back of a spoon as you can, since the pulp contributes to the body of the sorbet.

This could probably be made with other non-sugar sweeteners as well, but I haven’t played with them.  It’s a simple formula, so do feel free to experiment.  Do bear in mind that the liqueur has some sugar in it, regardless.

                          

This is a simple process, but a little fiddly.  Because you are dealing with fruits that produce quite a bit of their own pectin, you don’t add any: the marmalade has only three ingredients, fruit, water, and sugar.  I typically make preserves like these only with organic fruits, because when fruits are sprayed it tends to stay in the peels/rinds, and marmalade is all about those.  Let your conscience be your guide.

I make citrus marmalades by volume — some confiture is done by weight, you don’t want to mix them up, because if you are measuring some ingredients by volume and weighing the others it may be enough to banjax your results.

Meyer lemon marmalade is a 1:1:1 marmalade by volume.  6 cups lemon, 6 cups water, 6 cups sugar.

To prepare the lemons, take well-scrubbed Meyer lemons.  Halve them from pole to pole, then slice each half into quarters, also from pole to pole.  Slice out the inner core of membrane and set it aside in a bowl.  Also remove and reserve all the seeds, and if there are any places where the membrane between sections is right at the edge of a wedge of fruit, peel that away and reserve it as well.  Slice the fruit wedges very thinly, including the peels.  You will do this until you have 6 cups of seeded, somewhat de-membraned, finely sliced lemon.

Place the sliced lemons into a large, heavy, non-reactive pot.  Pour in 6 cups cold water.

Put all the reserved membrane, seeds, and such into a scrap of cheesecloth, twist it into a pouch, and tie it shut with some kitchen twine.  Leave a long end on the twine so you can tie it to the handle of the pot you have your lemons and water in.  Toss the bundle into the pot — this is your pectin bag, because all the things inside it produce lots of lovely pectin that will make your marmalade gel.

Bring the pot to a boil, then simmer until the lemon is tender when you taste a piece.  Remove the pectin bag and set it aside to cool.

While the pectin bag is cooling, you can do the following:

• Put a few (4-5) saucers or sauce dishes or small plates in your freezer to get cold.
• Sterilize your canning jars, and prepare the lids and bands.
• Get your hot water bath canner full and warmed up so you can bring it to a boil quickly when needed.
• Get out your candy thermometer.

When the pectin bag is cool enough to handle, knead and squeeze it out over the pot, so that you squeeze out as much of the thick, gloopy, lubricious pectiny goodness as possible.  (Discard the pectin bag after you’ve gotten what you came for.)  Stir the pectin into the fruit and water and bring the fruit back to a low boil.

Add the sugar and stir until it is dissolved.  Bring the mixture to a boil and cook it at a steady boil, stirring occasionally and scraping down the sides of the pot when needed, until it reaches about 218F (about 103C).  Test by getting one of your cold plates from the freezer and placing about 1/4 teaspoon — just a small blop — of the boiling preserves on the plate.  Give it a few seconds and tilt the plate.  If it’s still runny, it isn’t ready yet.

Most of the time, marmalade will be ready between 220F (104.4 C) and 223F (106.1 C).  I have, once or twice, had it be ready at a slightly lower temperature, which is why I tell you to start testing at 218F.

Test again on a clean cold plate with each successively higher degree in temperature.  The marmalade is ready when you test it and it mounds up, a little like an egg yolk, is not runny when you tilt the plate, and when you poke the surface of the blob and you get a little wrinkling in the surface.  That means the pectin is gelling properly.

The instant this happens, turn off the heat under the marmalade and ladle it into your prepared jars.  Leave about 1/2 inch head space.  Lid and band your jars and process in a boiling water bath 10 minutes.  After removing the jars from the processing bath, let cool completely and check the seals on the jars before storing in a cool, dark place.

A batch that starts with 6 cups of lemons will make a generous two quarts of marmalade.

                          

I’ve never had problems getting people to like these dishes.  They are all eminently lovable.  I’ve only had problems getting people to try them, to warm up to the idea that sweet and savory can not only be friends, but be greater than the sum of their parts.

Which is why I am coming to you now with this very simple, very satisfying, delicious winter soup.  There are lots of recipes for this basic soup floating around.   There are different ways to spice it, and different ways to finish it, but the basic soup itself is simple, cheap, and delicious and it takes advantage of winter produce. You can make it for a weeknight dinner, because it is quick and the prep work is pretty minimal.  It also keeps well and freezes beautifully.

Basic Cauliflower-Apple Soup

2 small or 1 large onion, minced

3-4 cloves garlic, thinly sliced

1 small head cauliflower, diced fine

4-5 medium cooking apples (I like Winesaps or Northern Spy), peeled and diced fine

2 quarts stock (this works well with either chicken stock or an onion/celery/carrot veg stock)

olive oil

salt

Heat a large heavy-bottomed pot and add just enough olive oil to coat the bottom.  Add the onions and sweat them for several minutes until they begin to get translucent, then add the garlic and give it a minute or two to become fragrant.  Add the cauliflower, toss to coat, and then do the same with the apples.  Now add the stock — the stock should at least be equal in volume to the cauliflower and apples, if not slightly more.  You can add a little water if you need to.  Simmer until the veggies and apple are soft, about 15-20 minutes.

Using an immersion blender OR in small batches in a blender (you do not want boiling soup to spurt out the top of your blender, trust me on this), puree the soup.  You can puree it completely so it is silky smooth, or you can puree it partially so it is slightly chunky, up to you. Return it to the pot and simmer another 15 minutes or so.

While it is simmering, taste the soup and salt it, adding salt gradually and tasting after each addition.  How much salt you need will depend both on whether or not the stock you used was salted, and on how salty you like your soup.  Remember that you can always add more salt, but its a real bitch to remove it once it’s in there, so do be careful.

This makes a good basic soup that is nutritious, reassuring, and satisfyingly substantial.

There are Many Happy Variations you can also try:

Creamy Cauliflower-Apple Soup: Substitute a quart of milk or unsweetened faux-milk of your choice for a quart of the stock.  Be careful not to let it boil, especially if you use dairy milk.

Protein-Enhanced Cauliflower-Apple Soup: Puree 12 oz. soft silken tofu into the soup.

Coconut Cauliflower-Apple Soup: Substitute two cups unsweetened coconut milk for two cups of stock.  Phenomenal if you also do one of the spice variations along with the coconut milk.

Curried Cauliflower-Apple Soup:  Add your favorite curry powder to taste during the second simmering period.  This need not contain hot chili, although it certainly can.

Masala Cauliflower-Apple Soup:  Instead of curry powder as above, use your favorite ground garam masala blend.

(You can try many other spice mixtures in this soup, too, as it is a great canvas for that sort of thing.  Ras el hanout is great, so is Chinese five-spice mixture.)

Try strewing the soup with roasted crispy salted pumpkin seeds, as a garnish.  Or make some nice crunchy garlicky croutons with olive oil and garlic-rubbed stale bread and scatter those on top.  Or fry some cubed tempeh until it’s crispy and brown and use that.

And so on.

It’s good, I promise.

                          

I also highly recommend going out to pick when it is raining, or when the sun and/or the bugs are ferocious.  A little sunburn and eyes that have been stinging with sweat, a proper selection of insect bites, or a good goose-bumped chilled ride home with your goodies, will help you remember later on that the food does not arrive magically at the store or on your plate.  It’s about gratitude, and remembering that you have a bunch of people to thank for everything you eat that you weren’t personally responsible for growing and harvesting and transporting.

This morning, we went out in the rain to pick blackberries.  It was my Belovedary’s birthday yesterday, and he wanted to go berrying, and since we are neither of us sweet enough to melt and we planned to use the fruit immediately after we got it home, we figured picking in the wet would be okay.  Which it was.  It was quiet and lush and very, very wet, and we picked ten pounds of berries and got soaked to the skin.

We brought our berries home, along with some red raspberries and some peaches from the same you-pick, and set about making blackberry pie and blackberry sorbet.  The day being as warm and wet as it was, the pie crust completely refused to behave, but I’m of the school that says it can be ugly as long as it tastes good, so I persevered.  I even took a photo, because I recall some of you folks were curious about what a pie bird looks like in use.  This is what a pie bird looks like when it’s in an ugly, patchworky, lumpy blackberry pie.

We also ate several bowls of berries plain, between the two of us.  There’ll be no scurvy in this household anytime soon, that much is for sure.

With the rest, we made blackberry sorbet.  Blackberry puree, creme de gingembre, a little lime juice, a little agave syrup, a little slug of vanilla extract, and it’s the most lovely fruity mellow thing, with a great texture and a gorgeous color.

Tomorrow it’s back to work with both of us, but we’ll have sorbet and pie to look forward to when we get home, and that’s no small thing.