The First Pie of Spring

This feels like the longest winter in history. It’s just never-ending.  I’ve been so busy since I last posted in November that most of this never-ending winter has seemed to pass by quickly, but it still feels as if it should be over by now. 

I spent part of the winter watching old episodes of Pushing Daisies each evening, a TV show that came on a few years ago about a piemaker named Ned who has the magical ability to bring dead people, animals, and plants back to life, with the catch being that he can’t touch them again or he will kill them forever. On the show, they always showed images of huge mouth-watering pies displayed in Ned’s pie shop, the Pie Hole, in the background. My favourite part of the show was when Ned’s brought-back-to-life girlfriend, Chuck (a.k.a. Charlotte) would bake pies with gruyère cheese baked into the crust and homeopathic liquid antidepressants dropped into the filling for her two mourning, cheese-loving aunts, who didn't know that she had returned from the dead. Chuck would make the pies and then have them secretly delivered to her aunts to cheer them up.

I don’t know that this winter has been bad enough to start baking antidepressants into my desserts (although putting cheese in the crust is something I definitely have to try), but in my attempt to will spring into existence, I decided to make the first pie of spring today.

It’s apple, peach and blueberry. I made half of my favourite Perfect Pie Crust recipe and I used the leftover pie dough to cut out flower and leaf shapes. I baked these on a separate baking sheet and then placed them on top of the pie once I took it out of the oven to cool.

This pie reminded me of some pies that I made in December: a Christmas chicken and broccoli pie and some starry lemon mini tarts.

For the Christmas chicken pie, I cut out small Christmas shapes (snowmen, reindeer, and stars) and baked them separately for a few minutes on a baking sheet, and then added them to the top of the pie once it came out of the oven, just like I did with the spring pie. The pie filling was made of chicken, broccoli, mushrooms, onions, garlic, milk and cheese, with flour to thicken, that was cooked ahead of time before being added to the crust.

I also made starry lemon mini tarts.

I made my own lemon curd for the tarts. These tarts were made to look like traditional British Christmas mince pies with the star on top, which I’ve never made and never tasted. There’s something about the word “mince” that turns me off. I’ve never seen mincement in the stores and I don’t know if I want to make it myself. I think I’d like to try these little tarts with a chocolate filling. Maybe Nutella with chopped, toasted hazelnuts mixed in.  Hazelnuts are pretty Christmassy.

Looking at these pictures of my Christmas pies reminds me that I still have a bunch of photos of Christmas food from last year that I haven’t had a chance to share. When I get time, I will post them. Hopefully before next Christmas.

And in case you are still digging out from this long, miserable winter and don't have access to a pie with cheese and antidepressants baked into it, here’s something that’s sure to help brighten up your day: a Mini Maestro from Kyrgyzstan who takes her conducting very seriously and very cutely.

"If I had rocks in my head, I wouldn’t be any smarter"

OK, enough already, Winter! You win! Apparently, no amount of fist shaking and complaining loudly and frequently about the state of the roads can deter you. The poor scarecrows in my back yard didn’t stand a chance against your snowy onslaught. Just look:



Taken on February 3^rd after a blustery morning.


 Taken on the afternoon of February 12th.

Even though the one on the left is up to his straw-filled armpits with snow, and the one on the right lost his armpits weeks ago, they still look pretty happy sitting out there wearing their little snow caps.

One good thing about this winter weather was getting an unexpected day off today due to an office power outage. I came back home around 10 AM this morning with the intention of making the most of my time by heading straight to my home office/craft room and digging into my research paper, but I ended up heading out to the kitchen to make a wicked pot of soup out of various containers of vegetables, some raw and some leftover roasted, that were kicking around in my fridge, instead. It turned into what I like to call "Unintentionally Italian" roasted vegetable soup with white kidney beans.

The best pots of soup are made from the dregs and back corners of my fridge—I just gather things up, throw them in the pot with some stock and hope for the best, and I always get something better than I expected. Lately it seems as if I’ve been making a pot of soup every week, mainly because I’ve had more fresh vegetables on hand and there’s no way to use them up otherwise, so I always make them into soup before they rot or take on a life of their own and start to cackle and hiss at me from the crisper drawer.

Anyway, tonight I was feeling nostalgic (and by “nostaligic” I mean too lazy to fastidiously nitpick/edit my literature review for my paper) and so I started looking for opening theme songs from the TV shows from my childhood on YouTube, like  Gummi Bears, She-Ra, Jem, etc. What’s strange is that I can barely remember what I had for lunch (oh, right--fridge-raid soup!), and yet I can still clearly remember all the words to the Muppet Babies opening theme. And it’s just as infectious now as it was then—I tapped my foot and bobbed my head the whole way through!




After my embarrassing singalong with the Muppet Babies, my old friend Synchronicity tapped me on the shoulder and I began to feel smugly justified in my procrastination as I came across one of my favourite shows from when I was very young, Tales of the Wizard of Oz, which in the following episode, like my pictures above, featured a bodiless scarecrow. (Yes, I can sing along to this theme song, too.)


I'm going to call the bodiless scarescrow in my back yard Socrates. I don't think I'll try to stuff his head with fish, though.