Baking (and raking) on Sunday, again!


Above, the baked crumb crust and the fruits for the pie. Below, the finished pie!

~~~~~~~~~The recipe I used~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Pear Cranberry Yogurt Pie
1 baked pie shell*
2 eggs
1/2 c. granulated sugar
3 T all Purpose Flour
12 oz Plain Yogurt
1 tsp of Vanilla Extract
Ripe Pears and Cranberries




Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Place sheet pan in oven. Place eggs and sugar into a bowl and whisk together. Add flour and mix with whisk until smooth. Mix in yogurt until smooth. Pour into pre-baked, cooled pie shell approximately 3/4 to the top. Add thinly sliced, peeled and ripe pears neatly and decoratively on the top. Add cranberries on top. Place in oven for 35-40 minutes or until it is fully baked. It will puff up and there will be no jiggle. Refrigerate over night and serve.
* Toasted Almond Crust
1 1/4 c. flour
1/2 c. butter, softened
1/4 c. almonds, toasted and finely chopped
3 T. sugar
1/4 t. salt
Mix well with hands until pliable. Press into bottom and sides of pie plate. Make the top edge as attractive as you can, and bake at 400 degrees 10-12 min. or until golden. Cool completely.

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This recipe was from Claire Murray's newsletter in September. It was impossible to find fresh cranberries here at that time. I found them yesterday. Of course, they add a pretty red touch to the pie, but I wonder if they will be TOO TART!...(groan about the pun...) We have yet to taste the pie which is still cooling. I did glaze it with a little apricot (apple jelly would work too) jam after taking it from the oven. [NOTE: (later) this was delicious! The cranberries were fine, and one could even use a little less sugar. It would still be good!]

It is a cloudy, cool day with light rain from time to time. I will be out raking leaves today (wearing those new boots) to work up an appetite for the pie.

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Mr. Pear is very mobile for having had knee surgery less than a week ago. He is doing great (unless he is supposed to be taking it easy....), he keeps showing off by walking around without the walker or crutches. Of course the pain medicine probably makes him feel invincible!

He walked out to our mailbox, using crutches, yesterday.

A quiet day to do some things I love....here is an art journal page I was able to work out for today.

I also worked in the garden, listened to a book on DVD while piecing quilt backings and then hand quilted on the Dresden plate quilt[seen in the photo with the tulips...2 posts back]. A friend is bringing pizza for supper. We will watch an English mystery series.

Today we drove through the nearby countryside and saw lots of dogwood in bloom! Springtime is beautiful!

A warm sunny day AND (which we forgot!) daylight savings time begins!
So after sleeping in later than we thought, we spent the day out in the yard.
I still have my kitchen garden dream....illustrated here in a moleskine watercolor sketch.[click on the pictures to enlarge].. In planning our garden bed, we followed the "Lasagna garden" idea as best we could.



Deciding to put some muscle behind the dream, I laid out a 5'X8' rectangle with rocks and bricks. I chose an area which gets morning sun and hopefully a lot more.
The first layer was newspaper, followed by water, peat moss, more water, leaves, water, compost, water, peat moss, water, soil, water, mulch. Sometimes, I sat and supervised, Steve took direction pretty well, LOL!
It is now covered with plastic until we are ready to plant. [of course, that will have to be researched and negotiated too!] Whatever we do end up harvesting, we know we have had a good day preparing and making ready!

Last Sunday we left our neighborhood which had no power and scenes like this one....

to go out for a Sunday drive in the mild February temperatures. Our first stop as we drove down scenic byway 71 was this old one lane iron bridge near the community of Woolsey.

There was much less ice damage the further south we drove, though the homes and businesses were still without power.

This is the small town of Winslow, old store fronts near the train depot.

The person who no longer wishes to be known as "Mr. Pear" spotted frozen ice falls along the train tracks so we began a short hike down the rails to reach the photo op for him.

There was a railroad tunnel dating from 1882 just around the bend and I photographed him with the tunnel in the background. The glare of sunlight makes it hard to distinguish the tunnel.

.
Upon returning to where our car was parked, we looked up to read a sign saying that the railroad bed and tracks were private property and trespassers could be fined or arrested. Definitely out of my comfort zone there! (The jail was in one of the old buildings behind the store fronts...LOL!)


We continued along the byway and were able to see many miles over the Boston Mountains. I love going out "in the woods" in winter when the leaves are off the trees and one can see so much more!
We returned home to find there was still no power and we had one last night of "indoor camping"! Memories!

[Scan of the last 3 tags.....still need to be quilted and embellished!]

An "art day" for me!
These are works in progress, small collages on tags.
I'm having fun on this cold, cloudy morning with
snow in the forecast for tomorrow.
I have to overlap these a bit on the scanner, there are four tags started here. [ Click on the photo for a closer view.] When finished, they will be posted to
my ARTY Collages and Dolls blog.