For Something Lighter...

This is Georgie, my mom and Paul's adoring pooch. She'll lick your feet with love. She likes pie, too...

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Home, Sweet Pie

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There's a reason I've been slow to post lately - I'm west of Seattle (yes, there is something west of Seattle), land of intermittent internet connections. The north Kitsap Peninsula contains trees, salmon, old loggers, new yuppies, rocky beaches, tons of berry bushes, my huge family, and hundreds of pie bakers. I come back here and I'm put in my place. Of course you make the crust from scratch. And my family will tell me if there's too much cinnamon or the filling is undercooked in the middle. They like my pies, don't get me wrong, but it's a far cry from the city kids I usually eat with. Turns out I'm a bit of city kid myself when I get back; the lazy days and long drive to the grocery store (well, to anything) throw me off at first. Then I adjust. I don't go online, I wander the seaweed-y beach, I tromp around for hours searching out berries ... I couldn't live like this all the time, but it's pretty good stuff for a couple weeks. Morgan an...
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Wild Weather, Wild Berry Pie

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Hurricane Ike isn't looking good. As of this morning parts of Harris (i.e. Houston's) county are under mandatory evacuation, and we look set for a pretty bad hit. Morgan, the kitties, and I will hunker down with her parents in their sturdier townhouse. Three nervous cats, two nervous dogs, and us...and maybe no power for days. But who knows. The storm could shift. Nobody quite knows what to expect. The good news? I don't have to teach the writing workshop on Saturday morning, I'm guessing. The bad news? I have to turn the ENTIRE draft of my novel into my master's workshop next week, and I may not have the ability to plug in my laptop after Friday night. I should be more worried about windows breaking, probably, but hey. It's the perfectionist in me. I'll print the whole draft today and at least then I can work by hand and flashlight. Needless to say, I'm not firing up the oven. I thought I'd post photos of the wildest of pies, though, to match the w...
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Made For Each Other: Strawberry Rhubarb

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This is a summertime classic, warm and gooey, with sour rhubarb to offset the sweet-but-predictable strawberry. It's a family favorite and definitely one of my pie staples. Plain old strawberry pie verges on saccharine, so you need the rhubarb to kick it up. You know how it is. The best couples usually have a sweet/sour factor going for them - good cop/bad cop, social butterfly/nerd, dreamer/breadwinner, Obama/Biden. Rhubarb is grown in huge quantities in the Northwest but it's hard to find in Texas. In fact, I bought a bunch at the grocery store here and the chec ker asked, "what is this? Is it some kind of red celery?" Gasp, no. It is heavenly. For this pie, I like to go fifty-fifty on the rhubarb to berry ratio, and I slice the strawberries only in half, so you get nice fat bites of them. One caveat: cook and sweeten the rhubarb before filling and baking . It's kind of a tough customer, though nothing a little heat and sugar can't fix. Strawberry-Rhu...
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