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Tag Archives: Country Living Magazine
oh my easter pies!
Savory Easter Pie
I was inspired by my friend Lisa DePaulo’s mom’s Easter Pizza recipe, but didn’t have everything on hand to make that recipe. So I took my recent Ricotta Pie recipe and adapted it…to two pies in normal, not deep dish pie plates.
I ended up with a a pair of pies…and here is how I did it:
Preheat oven to 350°
Take ricotta pie recipe and assemble the filling but ONLY add 2 tablespoons of sugar. Add the vanilla and add the lemon zest of one fresh lemon. Do not add the orange zest.
Take two piecrusts and line two regular pie plates. Put in refrigerator to keep dough chilled.
Split your ricotta mixture in half into two large bowls.
In one bowl which will be your sweet pie add the sweet ingredients (1/2 of the sugar or 1/2 a cup, lemon zest, candied citron/lemon/orange peel, cinnamon, white raisins if you want and even 1/3 cup UNSWEETENED coconut), and there you have the mixture for the sweet Easter or ricotta pie.
In the second bowl (for the savory Easter pie) beat in one more egg, add half a cup of Parmesan and Romano cheese mixture, and a about 4 to 5 ounces of grated cheddar. I prefer a sharp and white cheddar very dry. Add a little salt and pepper to taste, and a little dill and thyme and tarragon.
In a small sauté pan sauté with 1 1/2 tablespoons of butter melted add 2/3 cup of diced ham, one onion, and eight or nine baby bella mushrooms. Sauté down and drain of any liquid. Set aside to cool slightly. Some dill, oregano, thyme, tarragon to taste. I do not add any extra salt because of the salt in the ham.
Put the meat mixture into the bottom of one of your pie crusts in the pie plates and pour the savory ricotta cheese mixture over.
Pour your sweet ricotta pie mixture into your other prepared pie crust and plate and you can bake them together in the oven for about an hour – you’re going to have to start checking at about 55 minutes- this is my first time through doing it this way so you guys are learning with me! I took about 1 hour and 10 minutes baking both – the savory dinner pie in the end was ready before the dessert pie.
Both pies turned out ok and are honestly very tasty and disappearing fast, although I probably should have taken both pies out of the oven at the 1 hour mark.
Buona Pasqua!
Sweet Easter Pie
retro and vintage girl scout items
Country Living Magazine on page 13 of their March, 2015 issue about Girl Scout memorabilia. They said:
We’ve been spotting retro Girl Scout items camped out everywhere, from flea markets to our own CL Fairs. Now it’s your turn! Post your finds on Instagram, and we’ll share them throughout March. Don’t forget to tag photos #CLSCOUTSIGHTING
I happen to have my mother’s Girl Scout handbook from 1947. When she and my father downsized from a large house to an apartment after my dad got sick with prostate cancer there was a lot of stuff that was slated for a junk pile. It happens when you go from house to apartment. I saw this book in such a pile and took it home with me. I thought it was sweet. I have had it ever since.
Over the years I have contemplated getting rid of it because I was never a Girl Scout and what am I going to do with a 1940s edition of a Girl Scout handbook?
It almost bit the dust a few years ago when I moved from the Main Line to Chester County, but seeing my mother’s signature in her little girl handwriting with her address on inside flyleaf of the book make me just put it into yet another packing box and now it is back in a bookcase. My mother was 12 when she inscribed her handbook.
Anyway I just thought it was cool that they were talking about vintage and retro Girl Scout items. I guess they must be collectible now or something, or gaining in popularity. It doesn’t matter to me either way as this to me is just a cool little piece of family history.
apple maple pie
After watching the Food Network television show “Farmhouse Rules” the other day, I was inspired to bake a pie. So I decided to bake a homemade apple maple pie. I have baked this pie in the past, but this is the first time I have written down the recipe.
(Okay here is hoping that I have the proportions correct to give you for this recipe.)
9 inch vintage deep dish pie plate
Filling:
Four or five large apples peeled, cored, sliced
Cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, mace to taste
1 1/2 tablespoon of butter in little pieces
1/2 cup maple syrup
1/3 cup of flour
1/4 cup sugar
Couple tablespoons of apple cider
Crust:
1 1/2 cups flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons honey
2 tablespoon sugar
8 tablespoons butter
6 to 7 tablespoons water
Assemble crust using pastry blender and wrap dough in Saran wrap and refrigerate for at least half an hour.
While crust is chilling, assemble filling.
You will have enough dough for a rolled out bottom layer crust and strips for lattice top. I’m using a slightly smaller than normal but deep pie plate. Use a pastry brush to brush the lattice strips with a little milk and sprinkle with sugar.
Tip: I roll my piecrust out between sheets of Saran wrap or parchment paper.
Tip: after I have rolled my crust to the desired thickness and I have put it in my pie plate, I throw into the freezer for a few minutes to firm up before I fill with pie filling.
Heat oven to 425°. Bake pie on a cookie sheet to catch any spills. Bake 12 to 14 minutes at 425°, reduce oven to 350° and keep an eye on it and bake approximately 50 minutes more, or slightly less depending on your oven.
Serve with vanilla ice cream or thin slices of a good local cheddar cheese.
The vintage pie plate came from the Smithfield Barn.
Enjoy and happy baking!
strawberry rhubarb pie
My mother is coming for lunch tomorrow. Normally that wouldn’t be a big deal, but this is her first outing of this kind with a longer car ride since she had heart surgery earlier this spring. So I thought I would make a festive late spring lunch inspired by the herbs growing in the garden and the early produce from the farmers markets locally.
When I went to the East Goshen Farmers’ Market yesterday, Brogue Hydroponics had the most beautiful strawberries and young rhubarb. So I planned the dessert first: strawberry rhubarb pie. I have been making variations of this pie for years, and I decided today I would write things down to the best of my abilities so I could share the recipe with you.
Hopefully everything works for you the way it did for me. Anyway, here is the recipe:
preheat oven to 425°
2 cups of fresh sliced strawberries
2 bunches of as thin as possible rhubarb from your farmers market – you will end up with 2 cups or so by the time you trim and clean it.1 cup white sugar
1/4 cup brown sugar
Scant 1/4 cup of instant tapioca
Zest of one lemon
1 tablespoon of lemon juice
Dash of cinnamon
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 tablespoons of butter cubed small
1 tablespoon softened butter
Grated fresh ginger to tastePie crust: you need two pre-made rolled up refrigerated pie crusts as this is a double crust. Or you can make your own pie crust and roll out enough for two crusts.
I think the brand I bought yesterday was Pillsbury. I didn’t have time to roll out pie crusts so I bought them this time. These rolled up pie crusts can be found in the refrigerated section next to the dairy in your supermarket. (Look for where your supermarket stocks pre-made cookie dough and biscuit dough you will find the pie crusts.)
Line a deep dish 9 inch pie plate with one crust and use 1 tablespoon softened butter to coat bottom of crust- this will keep your piecrust from getting soggy. Put pie plate and crust into refrigerator to stay chilled.
Chop up the rhubarb into little quarter inch slices and slice up your strawberries and add the sugars, tapioca, ginger, cinnamon, vanilla, and lemon juice and lemon zest. Mix together gently but well and set aside for 15 minutes.
Once your oven is preheated, remove the chilling piecrust in the pie plate from the refrigerator and put on a baking tray that is lined with parchment paper. This is a pie that can bubble over so you definitely don’t want this sticky goo all over your oven.
Fill your chilled pie crust with the fruit mixture and next take one egg white and 2 tablespoons of water and whisk it together in a small bowl. Using a pastry brush, paint the edges of your bottom piecrust in preparation for adding the top crust.
Add the second piecrust or top crust to your pie. Then use a fork or your fingers and crimp the edges together. Using your pastry brush wipe the top of the pie with the egg white and water mixture. Don’t soak it, just enough to make a couple tablespoons of granulated sugar tossed over the top stick.
Next use a paring knife and cut that holes in the top of your pie. I cut them in a circle so they almost look like flower petals.
Now your pie is ready for the oven. I cover the edges of my crust with tinfoil gently on top of that so they don’t overly brown. You can also buy one of those piecrust rings out of either metal or silicone rubber stuff that goes in the oven. Keep meaning to get one of those and I just keep forgetting.
Bake the pie at 425° for 15 minutes. Then reduce the heat for 350° and bake another 45 minutes to an hour depending on your oven. The crust should be slightly toasty in color and the filling mixture bubbling out of the vents you cut ever so slightly.
You can serve the pie warm or cold. Some people like serving the pie with fresh whipped cream or vanilla ice cream. I like it by itself without anything.
Again, this is the first time I really written this recipe down so I hope everything works! Enjoy!
the death of traditions in chester county
One of the things I have always loved about Chester County are the traditions. Things like the horse shows and horses, the farms, the carriaging, the crafters and artists, barn sales, flea markets and church sales, ballooning, and the independent spirits.
But today I mourn the loss of those things. They haven’t all disappeared over night, but if we as residents don’t start standing up in our communities and telling municipal governments to pay attention to us and not just the developers, we will lose what helps make Chester County so special.
I am going to re-visit the case of Upper Uwchlan and the Smithfield Barn. I will note in case Upper Uwchlan’s manager is feeling vindictive after this post that I have NOT spoken to the Smith family about this situation in a while, it is merely that people are TALKING.
I have been told that the manager (who came from Coatesville and why do I point that out? Well Coatesville always ends up in the news for not so nice things, don’t they?), met with the Smith family finally after the media picked up on the story at the start of the new year? I had heard that and was hopeful, and well what did I hear recently? That the manager had not seemed to follow through on what they had discussed? What do kids still call someone like that? A welcher? Do I have that right? Or is this just a rumor and he really likes the Smithfiled Barn and acknowledges how much his township folks go there and to places like that Carmine’s , right? Maybe they will have a new rule against pizza and wings down the road too?
So what does this manager named Cary Vargos, get out of this? Is he doing this doing this for the developer coming back to his township which shall remain nameless? The developer who will share borders with the Smithfield Barn Farm? How are those bog turtles and percing stuff going?
Of course then there are the rumors bandying about concerning municipalities that want to tell people how, when, and what time they can hold the humble garage sale and isn’t that just crazy here in the land of the free?
So I have to ask who would be hurt by allowing Smithfield Barn to have a set number of barn sales a year? Is it possible that this township manager doesn’t know barn sales are rural America’s garage sale and a deep rooted tradition? Is Upper Uwchlan going to morph into one of those individual freedoms stomping municipalities that next puts a million rules on garage sales? Auctions?
I mean obviously Upper Uwchlan government has some sort of identity crisis because they allowed the crossroads village of Eagle to grow up to be Barbie’s Lego dream village didn’t they? This is their jurisdiction right? I mean it is good to know CVS can do other architecture, but still.
When you go through there you are also reminded of the development when you look at Upper Uwchlan’s shiny newish township building. It is not as grandiose as some I have seen, but it is a testament to the present and all that developments have built isn’t it?
I hate to pick on this township manager, but I just don’t get why he wants to be the squasher of local traditions do you?
The reality is Smithfield Barn is beloved by locals and those farther afield. Barn sales are a real part of country history and tradition. That makes them a positive ambassador for their municipality. Townships can’t buy the good publicity and PR generated by happy people and goodwill towards neighbors, can they?
But the country isn’t so country any longer is it? The country has been taken over by developers who don’t plant crops in the beautiful farm fields of Chester County, just plastic mushroom houses that give off the smell of hot plastic in the summer.
Take for example another sad thing: has anyone been by what was that huge empty former working farm on White Horse Road in Charlestown Township I guess it is?
I was a passenger in a car going past that last Saturday and it made me want to cry. It is slated to be a new development and it looked like a battlefield. Demolition equipment on site and they had just basically raped the landscape and all you saw were felled trees lined up like dead soldiers from a Civil War battlefield reenactment. It was shocking and sad.
The pace of development in Chester County is somewhat terrifying at times. Nothing ever seems to be a restrained size or scope. These projects are huge and homes squished so city close together that you know residents will live crammed in like lemmings. And the crime of it is, these people don’t seem to know any better.
Then there are the things that amuse me. Like for example when people in developments in Upper Uwchlan refer to themselves as living “on the Main Line” or being from the Main Line. Uhhh no, I actually grew up on the Main Line and these people are actually living in Downingtown. And it is o.k. to say you live in Downingtown. These are like the people who say they live in Chester Springs because that is how the developer marketed certain developments, only are they Chester Springs? Not so much.
Developments change the landscape and the attitudes. Do any of these people really know the satisfaction and joy of planting their own gardens? Or do they in fact live in Stepford where all geraniums must match and grass must be “just so”? Do these people know the joy of standing outside and watching the hawks circle and cry out to one and other? And they all say they love horses, but then they don’t want to live near barns, stables, and local horse show grounds do they? And don’t get me started on traditions like skeet shooting, trap shooting, and sporting clays shooting. And hunting and fox hunting is best kept to those countrified wallpapers, right?
I love what makes Chester County just what she is. I am sad that traditions seem as if they are disappearing one by one.
I really hope people wake up before it is too late. Once the woods and fields and farms are gone, they aren’t coming back. Same with barn sales, country auctions, and honor stands at the edge of your local farm.
As good weather seems to finally be here, I encourage all of you to let people know about fun things happening in Chester County. Traditional things.
One thing I will not be encouraging people to be part of or attend is Upper Uwchlan’s “block party” on June 14th. Why support their efforts when all they do is kowtow to developers and sanitize communities against country traditions like barn picking and barn sales? Sounds mean to some, but I think they are being mean spirited to tradition.
But please if you have something fun you want to tell people about, let this blog know. Things I love are farm events, art shows, flea markets, First Fridays, barn sales, even swap meets and garage sales. Other things like strawberry and similar festivals, farmers markets, small businesses celebrating something.
Enjoy the day. It is simply beautiful out. Find your magic in everyday life.
farmhouse chic
My near and dear ones like to tease me about my affinity for farm animals (cows, goats, and chickens in particular). I am told I will always be too much of a city girl to make a good farm girl (apparently I need to tolerate long power outages better), but a girl is allowed to dream, right?
So does that make me perhaps just an accidental country girl in the making?
Mind you, the teasing is in good fun, so I really don’t mind. What I do know is I love living in Chester County and especially like the rural aspects and the open spaces. I also love the fun of the hunt for cool pieces to decorate with, and Chester County is loaded with places and even warm weather flea markets. Jake’s Flea Market in Barto comes to mind. Except Barto is actually Berks County, but that is worth the drive I am told. I have not been yet.
Will I ever love long term power outages and trees pounding the house in storms? Probably not, but surviving this winter means I am hopefully better prepared next time and hopefully we won’t experience a next time like this winter for quite a while.
As many know I have developed an affinity for certain kinds of things that would be classified as either primitive or farmhouse chic. Vintage patchwork quilts, oil lamps, rustic candlesticks, and things like milking stools would fall into that category.
Milking stools, you ask?
Yes. They are fun and add whimsy to a room. I like old wooden footstools too. You can find them all over, and the price points should always be reasonable because they are so readily available.
A reasonable price point in my opinion maxes out at around $25. I see plain wood foot and milking stools at all sorts of price points, but if the cost goes over $25 , unless they are some truly amazing bit of woodworking I loose interest. I am a picker and bargain hunter at heart, sorry.
There is a big difference in my mind between a fine country antique and an item that has a utilitarian and real purpose that also can have a second life as a fun accent in your home.
I have two. One I found languishing under a table at Reseller’s Consignment in Frazer and one came from the Smithfield Barn in Downingtown. They both came in under $25 each. They are handmade and of solid hardwood and have three leg. Milking stools have three and four legs. I have been told by actual dairy farmers that the three legged stools balance the best on uneven surfaces.
One of my stools has three legs and the other four. I love the patina of the natural wood and oil them occasionally. I am not a fan of candy coating beautiful wood in milk paint. That is the taste of a lot of people and a good way to renew beat up wood pieces, but generally speaking not for my personal taste. I like those accents in the homes of others, it just doesn’t work for us in our home .
Anyway, they will never be a priceless heirloom, but I love them. People will actually sit on them and they make an amusing conversation piece. And some milking stools are simply beautiful examples of handmade craftsmanship.
my chocolate chip cookies
I have always loved chocolate chip cookies. I have spent the last 25 years tweaking this recipe, which is mine and not anyone else’s.
My friend Ann asked me to share my recipe. So I thought I would.
It has been a terrific pre-Christmas day I have been baking most of the day, and I also had a visit with my childhood friend and former neighbor Alexandra. We sat and drank coffee and caught up as I baked. She lives in upstate New York now, and comes down periodically to visit her family who live locally.
Truly it was a perfect afternoon. I just love days like this.
Here’s the recipe:
Deluxe Chocolate Chip Cookies
Pre-heat oven to 375° F
2 cups flour
1/2 cup miller’s bran (coarse wheat bran – fluffy and adds fiber)
1 level teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt (not sea salt )
1 cup white sugar
1 cup brown sugar
2 sticks or half pound sweet butter room temperature
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon almond extract
1 1/2 teaspoons of cinnamon
2 large eggs
1 12 oz bag semi sweet chocolate chips
1 6 oz bag milk or white or extra dark chocolate chips (your choice)
1 cup chopped or crushed pecans (I make my own out of pecan halves – the trick is not big pieces but not ground)
2 crushed Heath bars or Hersheys Skor bars (optional)
Directions :
Measure out your nuts, chocolate chips, and Heath bars (if you are using them) in a bowl by themselves and set aside.
Measure out all your OTHER dry ingredients EXCEPT the bran and mix together in a bowl and set aside.
Get out another bowl for the wet ingredients.
Using your mixer cream butter and sugar until fluffy. Add vanilla and almond extract at low-speed and mix well. Add eggs one at the time at low speed.
Add bran by itself to the creamed mixture
When everything looks creamed not curdled, slowly add the flour, baking soda, baking powder, cinnamon, and salt about a half a cup at a time, mixing it low-speed. You will end up possibly having to mix this with a wooden spoon it may get too heavy for the mixer.
Stir/fold in the nuts, candy, chocolate chips.
Refrigerate dough at least one hour covered so it doesn’t dry out.
Drop dough by rounded teaspoonfuls onto cookie sheets lined with parchment paper. Doughballs should be approximately 2 inches apart on the sheet. That means for each cookie sheet you will get 12 cookies.
Bake at 375° for 10 to 11 minutes. Check on your cookies so they don’t over brown on the bottom. If your oven is uneven you may have to rotate your cookie sheets halfway through baking.
When the cookies look slightly brown on the edges but golden and perfect in the center after 10 or 11 minutes, pull them out and allow them to cool for approximately five minutes before removing from the cookie sheet. Put the cookies on a wire rack to cool before putting in a tin.
You must cool cookies properly before placing in a tin because otherwise they will break before they are cool.
Enjoy!
the time has come……
….to start the Christmas baking.
The problem is, I am looking at all these recipes, and haven’t quite decided what it is I will be baking. I know I’m going traditional, and I’ve narrowed it down to the three I’m starting with: gingerbread men, amaretti cookies, and oatmeal raisin.
And yes, part of my deal is I use vintage tins These tins don’t leave the house mind you, but they are the best cookie storage going. The tin in the middle came from the Smithfield Barn!
I also have a bunch of vintage cookie cutters which I love.
At the best thing about baking Christmas cookies is how your house smells. There is nothing better than the smell of baking Christmas cookies!
And yes I have some dog – themed cookie cutters, because if I have enough time, some years I do make dog biscuits.
What are you baking this year?
christmas birds
Birds! My hall light was lonely and needed to become festive…..
