Wednesday, October 17, 2012

Thanks Again!


Hey Cousin!

Great time over at your house the other night! Sorry about Little Earl. Kids! They're so curious at that age. And clumsy? I don't need to tell you! LOL!!!

Anyway I'm just writing to thank you for the Marionberry-Blueberry pie recipe. Best. Pie. Ever! I couldn't find any marionberries, but I did get plenty of blackberries from over there behind the sewage treatment plant--SO juicy. And I thought I'd go ahead and substitute huckleberries for the blueberries, because I picked a bunch a few weeks ago. Not the sweet blue ones, the red ones. Nobody ever picks those for some reason, that's why I was able to get so many. They'll put a pucker on you, that's for sure. I like them in my pancakes, they're like little tartness bombs going off. You put a mess of red huckleberries in your pancakes, and man, it makes you appreciate the pancake that much more! The parts in between the huckleberries. Anyhoo.

So I really don't know what you mean by "two dry pints berries." What's a dry pint, anyway? I mashed up the blackberries real good and sopped them up between a bunch of paper towels, so I hope that was good enough. Didn't bother with the huckleberries, they're already like little BBs.  Did you really mean to say "juice of two lemons?" That's a lot of lemons. I guess it makes sense if you've got sweet berries, but I got to thinking, I thought, Marly June? Maybe your berries aren't really sweet so much as they're a little ornery. So I put in Kraft caramels instead. And that yummy crust? So I didn't actually have as much butter on hand as you called for. I thought we had some Crisco, but we must have gone through that the night Earl came home from his convention. Uh oh! Did I type that out loud? Ha ha!

Anyhoo. So the crust called for two eggs, and mine were only large, which as you know is the smallest size they come in, so I thought, Marly June? You might just as well put in three, and since I didn't have as much butter as I needed I put in a fourth just for bulk. I must say the dough came out kind of soupy, not that I'm blaming you or anything, LOL! So I had to put in a little more flour until it stiffened up. Unfortunately I ran out of flour before I'd gotten it where I thought it should be, so I threw in some garden lime, and then that puppy just stood right up and barked.

I'm such a silly goose, though, you know me, I didn't even notice that the recipe was enough to make "two thick ten-inch pies," and my pans are all nine inches. And just between you and me, not that your pie wasn't the Best. Pie. Ever!, but I'm not all that big on thick pies since the volcanic cobbler incident. The kitchen never really was right after that one. We just left the oven door open for a few nights and let the mice take care of the worst of it. So then I had this terrific idea: why not make one really big thin pie? Since I had all the filling and crust made up. So I "did the math." I love that expression! What I mean is I kind of guesstimated with my hands what two thick ten-inch pies put together would look like, except thinner, and then I hunted around for a pan. That's when I got my big inspiration. Garbage can lid! I know, right?

I had to roll the dough on the floor, because it wouldn't fit on my cutting board, but it transferred like a dream. First time I've ever regretted getting that shag carpet, but we could all use more fiber, Earl especially. LOL! Slid in the berry filling, and the tapioca for thickener--oh, I didn't have quite enough tapioca, and I was a little worried about that, the last thing I want is for the juice to gang up and lurch out like before, so I just laid in a couple dryer sheets in the middle to give it some structure, and we were good to go. Well! I'll bet you can see what comes next. Sure enough, the garbage can lid was just a little bigger than my oven, but only by a couple inches, it was so close. I don't mind telling you I was miffed, but I'm not going to be outsmarted by a giant thin pie. I closed the oven door as much as it would go and then tented it around the edges with tinfoil. Wallah!

Well, the tinfoil didn't work all that well and the oven never really did get up to temperature. I checked it every hour for a while but it was taking its own sweet time baking up, and man but the kitchen got hot! Ha ha! We decided to just mix up a bucket of margaritas and wait it out on the patio. You know, we could argue the rest of our lives whose turn it was to check the pie, but the important thing is we did wake up because of how chilly it got, and also the sirens.

Anyhoo. Little Earl is thrilled that we're camping in the back yard now. The things he finds and drags into that tent! LOL! And I just want to thank you so much for the recipe. I'm sure that pie is going to wear real well and last us a good number of years, even more if we can get it re-soled. Dinner at our place next time? Just say the word!

((Hugs))

Marly June

Thanks to John D. for the recipe. Really. Best. Pie. Ever.

68 comments:

  1. Nuttin' like a pie fest to take the mind off 'lections.

    And it did flip a memory switch for me...my mother , given a swan to roast (I know), wrestled the bird into her (very small, for swannage) oven, but almost had an embarrassing accident when the damn' bird kicked open the oven door.

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    1. Please write back and tell us how much of that is true. Pleeeease.

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    2. All of it. Well, almost - I think I'd need something stronger than pie to get through an election! But the swan? Yep. Goose, maybe, but swan???WTF?

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  2. I can't quit laughing at that resourceful Marly June! I'm guilty of substituting items in recipes, but so far haven't used a garbage can lid for a pie pan. What a fun read.

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    1. This began because I was really trying a great recipe and even though I'm a terrible cook I felt free to substitute, and I have no idea what I'm doing. Marly June is way closer to me than I'm comfortable with.

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  3. lol! I'm praying that beer can was empty....

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  4. Dear Marly Jane, Thanks for the baking tips! If you ever need a cornstarch substitute, drywall compound works pretty good. Do share some more recipes when you can.
    Jimmy Joe Bob

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    1. Aw, Jimmy Joe Bob! We're still talking about your possum nugget pot pie. The cream sauce was a mystery.

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  5. You were married to my twin brother once, weren't you? The dryer sheets wound up in the wedding cake, and the pit-roasted goat never did get done all the way through. Using the garbage can for a punchbowl was a darn clever idea, and the Everclear and Koolaid punch was unforgettable. Too bad it ate through the solder and leaked out before we got to the bottom. Did the grass ever grow back?

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    1. Naw, that's where Little Earl goes when he needs to scoot his butt.

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  6. Dryer sheets? The best idea ever!!!

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    1. I think "dryer sheets" as often as other people think "duck tape."

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  7. You had me at the Crisco.

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  8. Oh hell, Murr. I'm just dying here. The dialogue is a spot-on copy of my internal musings as I cook.
    Worse yet were the folks who would send me e~mails when I was a better blogger that would say "I made your caramels, but I wanted a healthier version so I used rice milk instead of cream, flax seed oil instead of butter, and reduced the sugar by half. It was a miserable failure and I think you should remove your terrible recipe from your site."

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  9. Best roast turkey we ever had was cooked in a garbage can. Really. It is suspended inside (a clean, new metal garbage can, with a lid that hasn't been used for your pie) and a 10 pound bag of charcoal is poured around the outside and lit, and when the charcoal is about burned out, the turkey is perfectly done and moist. Old hobo method.

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    1. I haven't got a doubt in the world that you could cook a steer as long as you had pine needles, a flint and a digging stick.

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    2. What do you call it, Sculptor1? Raku Roast Turkey?

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  10. Laughing my ass off. My sister and I used to be lethal when cooking together. "We don't have any (ingredient)." "No problem, let's use (God-help-us)..."

    We never did poison anybody (that we knew of). At least, nobody ever came back to complain.

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    1. A novel I remember nothing else about had a scene in which the son goes back his Inuit mom's house in northern Canada and has a terrific meal. He compliments her and asks what the secret ingredient is. She says "oregano." He asks where she found any oregano. She says "we didn't have any, so I substituted venison."

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    2. Hahaha! Gotta try that sometime. That'd tune up my spaghetti sauce.

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    3. And the antlers make it extra chewy.

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    4. If they had died, they would be unable to return to complain. wink wink

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  11. There is absolutely nothing wrong with Intuitive Cooking. No cookbook exists for it because that would be an oxymoron.

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    1. If you think there's nothing wrong with intuitive cooking, you haven't had my cooking.

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  12. This is absolutely hilarious! OHMYGOD! I can't stop laughing!!!!

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    1. Didn't you JUST ask for something to cheer you up? Wallah, madame.

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  13. This is not just snortworthy, it is pure LOL territory :)

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    1. As long as you make some kind of noise, I'm satisfied.

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  14. This reminds me of that old saying..."If we had any ham, I'd fix some ham & eggs for supper, if we had any eggs."

    My mother-in-law did this once with a recipe I had given her (which she had raved about when I cooked it, and BEGGED me to provide). Neither my husband or I recognized the result the way she made it. Turned out she had left out one ingredient because my father-in-law allegedly couldn't tolerate it; used a diced-up chuck roast for the meat instead of cubes of round steak because it was cheaper; and served it over rice instead of noodles for some reason I don't recall. I love that woman.

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    1. And then she served it to her guests and called it "Linda's famous X recipe." Right?

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    2. Not only did she do THAT, but she put it in her church's cookbook, in its original form, with HER name on it!

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  15. I'll give up my gym membership now and just read your blog instead. I laughed so much, my abs got hard.

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  16. I am gonna have to post on my blog my ravioli fiasco. Sometimes making changes to a recipe can be good, but often they backfire.
    I had one friend who misread a cookie recipe and though 1/2 teaspoon of salt was 1/2 cup.
    Another friend who cooked a turkey for the first time for a dinner with people invited started raving about how it was so nice that the turkey came pre-stuffed. She had thought the bag of gizzards inside was a bag of stuffing!

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    1. Murr most likely got a six-pack out of it, too.

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    2. Mm. Six-pack.

      First time I made cookies by myself, I searched in Mom's cabinet for "cloves." Found 'em. Put in a couple teaspoons. They weren't ground cloves. Those cookies packed a punch.

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  17. When Himself was a'courting me in our uni days, he thought he'd mightily impress me by cooking a turkey dinner, so he invited my house over to his house. The problem was that he was in hockey finals so he left one of his roommates in charge of putting the bird in the oven, etc. This chap only ate Kraft dinner, so he didn't know how to turn on the lower part of the range. Broil sounded good to him. The bird was extremely done half way through to the mid-point but from there on in it was quite raw. And yes, the giblet bag was left in. The potatoes hadn't been turned on. The only edible part of the menu was the ice cream. I just know it would have turned out beautifully if they had only used dryer sheets.

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    1. So, were you mightily impressed? I would have been.

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  18. I've never seen anyone look so happy to be advertising SPAM.

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    1. That is but one of a half-dozen Spam clothing items in this house, all Dave's. Dave's nickname at work was "Spam King." Spam is really quite tasty if you fry it to a cracker.

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  19. When I stop laughing, I'll see if I can find my recipe for roadkill pizza.

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  20. One fall in the Back-When Era, several of us grad students planned a Thanksgiving dinner. We were surprised when Diane, a brilliant theorist but a household idiot, volunteered to make the pumpkin pie. On Thanksgiving she brought it in proudly in its premade shell, but when she took the first bite, she yelled, "DON'T EAT IT!" Turns out she thought she was doing it the way her mother did:just dump the contents of the can into the shell and stick the pie in the oven. She missed a detail. Her mom used canned pumpkin pie mix, yes, ready to pour; Diane used plain canned pumpkin.

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    1. Oh, those pumpkin pies. Always call for a can of evaporated milk, or is it condensed milk? Either way, why IS there such a thing as evaporated or condensed milk? It's disgusting-looking.

      Man, I write about pie a lot.

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    2. Evaporated milk exists because it keeps in a can for a looooong time, takes up less space and doesn't need to be refrigerated. Theoretically, it can be reconstituted with water right back to something you and I would recognize as moo juice. It was invented by the British so their soldiers could carry milk for their tea on long missions. OK, I may have made that last part up, but if that's not the true origin of the stuff, I'd prefer not to be corrected, please. It's one of my strongly-held beliefs and I don't wish to be disenchanted.

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  21. I am seriously in love. And I would like to serve that recipe to a number of people. Some of the family, others politicians.

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    1. That there recipe is there for the taking. Report back after you've made it, will you?

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  22. Sadly, I have no cooking adventures, because I mostly don't cook. I warm things. Your stories give me hope that maybe I will be daring enough to cook one day.

    I used to work as a corrections officer in a county jail and from time to time we'd get a guy in there on a 90 day sentence (or more, if we were lucky) who was a DANG good cook. No cookbook needed.

    He'd work with road kill, too. One of the deputies would bring in a deer that had just been hit on the road, we'd string it up on the Bambi tree to bleed it out, then have the local butcher come by and take it down and cut it up nice and pretty and wrap it in recognizable chunks (steak, roast, hamburger) for our freezer unit.

    The jailed inmate/cook would start cooking dinner in the early afternoon and you could smell what was cooking all through the building. He'd just throw all manner of random stuff in the roasting pan, or crock pot or stew pot and turn out FABULOUS dinners. I would take the slops home to my pigs Petunia, Priscilla, Patricia and Hank.

    The rest of the jail population was terrible sad when the inmate/cook was done with his sentence.

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    1. Wait, what? MY stories give you hope you will cook one day? Holy shit, pc.

      I tenderized a deer on the hood of my car once, myself, I'm sorry to say. She got up and sprang off, but I can't imagine she got far.

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  23. Reminds me when our resident "baker" decided to make Christmas cookies only we had no sugar or honey....they became tree ornaments.

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    1. Dave tried to make cookies like he cooks--right out of his head. He'd never made cookies before. Threw in a bunch of butter and sugar and, uh, no baking powder or anything like that. We called them Sugar Pucks.

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  24. Have you ever considered doing a cooking show, Murrtha Stewart?

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  25. Berries from a contaminated site doesn't seem like you Murrtha.
    Your cooking show might be way better. You know how to have us in stitches.

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    1. That would be the one and only thing I have in common with St. Julia.

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  26. You great goof! This was just what I needed for One Of Those Days.

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  27. "Murrmurrs" has been included in the Sites To See for this week. I hope this helps to point many new visitors in your direction.

    http://asthecrackerheadcrumbles.blogspot.com/2012/10/sites-to-see_19.html

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  28. :: gags ::

    Sounds worse than the cake recipe in the first Portal game!

    I agree with Blog Fodder that it would make an awesome cooking show! Have you considered a YouTube channel?

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    1. Well, I've heard that the camera adds ten pounds. So,...

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  29. So is the rumour true that you can terrorize any kitchen? NO? Good. Then someone else may let you try baking in theirs. But not in ours. Thanks.

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    1. I'm very happy to be unwelcome in kitchens. I'm a dining room kind of gal. Put it in front of me.

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  30. Murrtha, I think that you having a You Tube channel is a great idear. Think of the all the hi-jinks and assorted malarky you could get into!

    I always laugh when I go to recipe sites, and read the reviews of the recipe I'm looking for. They usually go something like this:"I was so excited to try this recipe for sugar cookies. I didn't have any butter, so I used lard, and I didn't have any flour so I substituted ground turkey. I was very disappointed in how these "cookies" turned out. I rate this 1 star."

    Anyhoo...you made me laugh out loud, and as a poster up-thread said, made my abs hard, so I guess I can forgo the gym today. Thanks!

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