It has been a long couple of weeks. I’m dying from the “heat” here.
And before you all start harping that it’s not hot, I’ve acclimated to the Pacific Northwest weather. It’s painful as hell when my webs between my toes dry out when it gets too hot and humid. I am not a good heat person.
That being said, I do love Las Vegas and Arizona. It’s a dry heat.
Don’t laugh. I’ve completely derailed this post in three paragraphs.
So it being the end of July, means it is also blueberry season here in the lovely Bellingham, Washington area. And if Chuck doesn’t eat all my blueberries, I occasionally get to do things with them.
Last week, I decided I needed to make a pie.
Now if you’ve known me for any length of time, you know that pie crust escapes me. I make it too thin. I make it too thick. I make it watery (yes, that’s possible. Don’t ask). I make it too stiff. It’s too chewy, too dry, too whatever. Pick an adjective you wouldn’t want to eat. That’s what my pie crust does.
But I’ve been reading a lot of Julia Child Biographies. (My Life in France is my favorite, but As Always, Julia and Backstage with Julia are growing on me. None of those are affiliate links, BTW.) And between her “just do it” attitude and the “just keep swimming” and “take chances” and all of the positive life and cooking karma pouring out of those pages, I had to do it.
So I grabbed a book I had been meaning to cook out of since I purchased it 6 years ago: Cooking for Mr. Latte by Food 52′s Amanda Hesser. I read that book all the time, wanting to give any or all of those recipes a shot. But, (like with all of my Tom Douglas books) I had been intimidated.
Intimidated to the point that I had never cooked a single thing from that book. Never planned to.
In the looming shadow of this epic secret plan I’ve been working on, I had to give it a shot. I had to attempt the elusive pie crust again. Maybe this time, despite the fact it was 90 degrees in my kitchen, it would work.
So I busted out Hesser’s book, wanting to give her gramma’s Double-Good Blueberry Pie a shot. And her old-school shortening crust a shot.
And it worked. The filling was another story. Didn’t quite FILL the pie….but I digress.
I served up a couple of pieces and sat down with Chuck and she was a bit skeptical.
“Dis not pie, momma. Dis not pie,” she told me.
“Alrighty, banana. What IS it then?”
“Magic. You made magic pie”
I died. So we bit into our first forkfuls.
And it was a legit pie. It was a bit tangy from the cream cheese and totally blueberry-y and the crust was flaky and amazing and melted in my mouth.
Chuck abandoned her fork entirely and used her hands to shovel the pie in her mouth. I ate mine more slowly and savored the fact that I made this. With my two hands and my meager culinary skills and my ability to follow a recipe.
I was proud of my pie. Chuck was purple with blueberries.
