Blessed cool

 Temperature in the 70s, cloudy, wonderful.

When you see headlines like this do you feel as if you need a calculator to find out where it came out? 

This is how lawyers who know the backstory write. The rest of us struggle. How many negatives make a positive. What made the chicken cross the road, and was there an injunction in place in the junction?

In the rest of the news, this is all your doing, Ellen, I ordered a used silk sari, half-price in an Etsy sale. Figuring on maybe glam pajamas. Using the pant pattern.

This was after staggering  in sticker shock at fabric prices. Long time since I bought fabric,  clearly. I could get beautiful natural fabric at Dharma Trading, very reasonably, but it's white or natural or black. I fancied a jazzy readymade print.

My other trouser fabric source plan is a big size skirt from the thriftie once I get in there again, already washed so it won't shrink. We'll see what they have.

Meanwhile back at the stove, Handsome Son was visiting today, so we needed snacks.

Black and red plum crumble, with maple syrup in the crumbly bit. 

The top picture includes my lunch, top right, a test run for a new invention.

No idea what to call them, suggestions welcome. Same old dough, now my all-purpose material. Good for tortillas, the original idea, for pasties, for crackers with herbs rolled in, and now Tiny Veggie Pies.

I think I could make beads with this dough. Seriously, I might try it. 

Ages ago I made Tiny Apple Pies using wonton wrappers. So this dough seemed like a candidate for that shape, too. Couldn't find any cutters so I used a wine glass.

Stuffed with the roasted vegetables and hot sausage, sealed with egg white I had in the freezer in case I ever found a use for it, brushed with same. 10 mins at 400°f.

Gone in short order, once introduced to Handsome Son, who declared them potpies and very good. I thought it would be good to have a nonsugar item for once with our tea and dessert .

He changed a lightbulb for me too, one of those high up ones in the bathroom I could climb up to but better not.

And we discussed his current soldering experiments on a diy electronic music thing he's building. Our experience intersected in wire and soldering, mine from long ago, art not electronics. 

He's deep into the kind of from-scratch music player  creating that nobody would pay you to do nowadays.  Which he patiently explains to deli colleagues wondering why he's not working in that industry and earning millions!

Frankie and Grace. I watched the first half of season one, and I think I'm done. Just couldn't go on trying to enjoy it. Too fake, too fifties, too Hollywood Gets With It. But I gave it a fair try. 

I continue to be engrossed in the latest Stacey Abrams, While Justice Sleeps. She's a terrific writer, great suspense, knows her stuff, being both politician and lawyer, both fields starring in this novel of suspense. 

Probably F and G suffered from comparison with Abrams'  excellence. This happens sometimes when you experience an okay work along with a wonderful one. Everyone doing their best. One's a swing and a miss, in its genre,  one's a home run, bases loaded, in its own genre.

Moving along, I'm thinking seriously about those beads. Or miniature teacups and saucers. This musing led me to search for this, made from a similar dough I made, nearly fifty years ago

Small apple included for scale. Made and painted  by six year old Handsome Son. The kitty doesn't need to rest on the saucer, she's balanced to crouch alone. You just slide the saucer under her chin.

The fact that I found it among my most valued jewelry tells you all you need to know! 

 

When daisies pied, and violets blue, etc.

Well, this morning the Montauk daisies budded up to almost opening, and there are tiny pies happening, so Shakespeare described my kitchen this morning.  

Labels

Yes, I know his pied daisies meant something different, but I can take poetic license, too, if he can.

Anyway, here's the making of the tiny apple pies.  
 

and at the same time a recipe of bread, wheat and white, rising.

They'll all bake later today, just heat the oven once.  That cloth is in fact clean from the laundry, though it looks a bit weary.  You know how the cookbooks tell you to use a CLEAN cloth, as if you were going to throw the dog's blanket over your bread.

The filling for the pies is: Staycrisp, I think that's the name, apples from the farm, two, sliced up on the slicing side of the grater.  I never used that before, always looked at it wondering what it's for, then realized, oh, cheese, apples, slicing, maybe.  Works fine.

That's macerating with sugar and molasses (equivalent of brown sugar which I don't have in the house) and a big spoonful of cornstarch.  I may add in a bit of cinnamon, fresh ground.

And the wonton wrappers are thawing ready for use.  I've made half moon pies in the past, but this time maybe I'll make round ones, full moons, nice single serve equivalent.  There will be a follow up if this works out.


Speaking of which, last Friday night's dinner with Handsome Son worked out a bit too successfully.  

 I used the ravioli from the freezer, all of them, and a big red sauce with farm tomatoes, homemade pesto and hot Italian sausage. Parmigian to shake over, and hot peppers.  Incidentally, the thawed ravioli tend to stick together, but they separate fine in the boiling water, so you can just put a clump of three or four in at once, and it works.

It entirely filled a great big earthenware serving bowl, the one you see on the left with the cooked ravioli waiting for the sausage and sauce, and I thought I was set up for the week in addition to a generous dinner for Son.  Famous last words.  He enjoyed it to the point where I have eked out two more small dinners for me.  And this is a slim guy.

We had the shortbread for dessert, and he said, after tackling several of them, did you make these? Gosh, they're as good as from the shop.  I choose to believe he means from a high end bakery, rather than the supermarket shelf...

Tiny Pies Redux, and Oblivious Squirrels

Ages ago I got on a wonton wrapper kick, and made all sorts of interesting things, from tiny pies to ravioli and dumplings and various other ideas.  Then I went on to make my own pasta, so the ravioli idea went away.

But I figured that since it's apple season, and I don't like eating raw apples, but don't mind them cooked, perhaps, since the farmshare is putting in massive apples each week, I'd better see what wonton wrappers will do.  

I'm not fond of making pastry. I make good pastry largely because I have naturally cool hands, always a help from Mother Nature.  But there are many things I'd rather be doing.

Sooooo, all round by China to say I did get a supply of wonton wrappers from my Asian store, and today made a little batch of Tiny Apple Turnovers.  Spells tat.  Oh.  Well, they actually taste pretty good. Seen here on an antique dish, figured it was time to try and make my food look nice, since I don't have a food stylist on staff.  I didn't count, but it's about a dozen and a half, if you need to know how many you'll end up with.

 
Filling: grated and chopped apple, one medium sized, oat flour mixed in to take up some of the juice, note the flour motif recurring throughout recipes these days, splash of lemon juice, drop of almond essence.  Wonton wrappers, edges brushed with water, you can use eggwash if you feel fancy, pressed firmly down, both sides, and  then stabbed with a big antique Russian fork.  Take that, and that!  You can stab them with anything else if you don't happen to have your big Russian antique fork handy right now.

And here they are, with a dusting of confectioner's sugar.  I expect in some kitchens there's a nice little gadget you use to dust stuff with sugar, but in mine you open the bag and shake.  These tiny turnovers are crisp, since the wonton wrappers are unleavened and thin.  I baked them so as to have a little something with my afternoon tea today, and several days going forward.

Meanwhile, out on the patio, demonstrating a great disregard for the work going on indoors, and an independence of needing tiny pies, an athletic squirrel is doing his calisthenics at the same time as getting a nice feast of wild cherries. 

He's welcome to them -- they're bitter and tiny and all pit.  But birds and squirrels and rabbits are crazy for them. I have to keep sweeping the windfalls, cherries, that is,  off the patio so they don't get trodden into the house.