Green Day pie: Avocado lime cheesecake

• 1 package cream cheese
• 2 avocados
• juice and rind from 1 lime

For filling

Crust:

Honey cookie crust with mint 

17 March 2014: St. Patrick's Day pot pie

I meant to make this a cute pot pie in the new cocottes I just bought, but my husband would need all three for one meal. So here's the the large version of a pot pie.

Quick pickled cabbage topped with slices of corned beef. On top, caraway soda bread.

The soda bread is: 

• 2 cups flour
• 1/3 cup wheat germ
• 1/3 cup shortening
• 1/3 cup buttermilk or plain yogurt
• 1 egg
• 1 TBSPN baking powder/baking soda

My husband approved. 

Pie and Movies: "Waitress"

Let's look at the pies in this movie.

1. I Don't Want Earl's Baby Pie or Bad Baby Pie: Egg, Brie cheese with smoked ham
2. Kick in the Pants Pie: Cinnamon spice custard
3. I Hate My Husband Pie: Bittersweet chocolate drowned in caramel
4. Spaghetti pie
5. Marshmallow Mermaid Pie
6. Fallin' in Love Chocolate Mousse Pie
7. Baby Screaming its Head Off in the Middle of the Night and Ruining my Life Pie: New York cheesecake with brandy and pecans with nutmeg
8. Peachy Keen Tarts
9. Earl Murders Me Because I'm Having an Affair Pie: Smash blackberries and raspberries into a chocolate crust
10. I can't Have No Affair because It's Wrong and I don't Want Earl to Kill me Pie: Vanilla Custard with banana hold the banana.
11. Spanish Dancer Pie with potato crust
12. Naughty Pumpkin Pie
13. Strawberry Chocolate Oasis pie
14. Pregnant Miserable Self-Pitying Loser Pie: Lumpy oatmeal with fruitcake mashed in it. Flambeed.
15. Lonely Chicago Pie
16. Car Radio Pie
17. Jenna's First Kiss Pie
18. Old Joe's Horney Pie

I watched "Waitress" twice. "Waitress" is a 2007 American dramedy that was written and directed Adrienne Shelly. Shelly was tragically murdered about three months before it debuted at the Sundance Film Festival.

Although the movie is set in the South, the movie was actually filmed in Saugus, California. Saugus is named after the hometown of Henry Newhall (Saugus, Massachusetts) whose land the town was built on. In 1987, Saugus and Valencia, Newhall and Canyon Country were merged to make Santa Clarita.
Santa Clarita is in Los Angeles County.

"The Waitress" is about a waitress named Jenna, living in an unnamed small town in the American South. She's unhappily married to Earl (Jeremy Sisto) and works at Joe's Pie Diner. She's not only a waitress but also a "pie genius." At the opening of the movie, she finds that she's pregnant and that inspires her to create "Bad Baby Pie."

Jenna dreams of winning $25,000 in a pie baking contest in a nearby town. Earl refuses to let her go that faraway and doesn't think she needs to dream. She should be satisfied with the kind of life she has.

Her coworkers and only friends Becky (Cheryl Hines) and Dawn (Shelly) don't envy her life. Becky is single. Dawn is unhappily married. Becky eventually finds romance with the kind of guy who proposes on the first date (read stalker here). Becky has a fling with the cook. The owner, Joe (Andy Griffith), is sympathetic to Jenna's hopes and dreams and her desire to leave her husband.

Jenna takes up with the married new physician Jim Pomatter (Nathan Fillion), who has moved to the town because his wife is completing her residency at a local hospital and Jenna's doctor is retiring.  In the end, Jenna gives birth to Lulu, breaks up with both her husband the Pomatter and her husband. And, Joe dies leaving her a sizable amount of money.

In the epilogue, she's opened Lulu's Pies where she makes brightly colored pies while holding her baby and she's won the pie contest.

I like bright colors, but I'm not in favor of all those brightly colored pies which look like they are mostly sugar and food dye. 

I think  a mermaid would want to eat wakame and raw fish. The spaghetti pie is basically a casserole using the noodles as the crust and piling on the sauce and meatball on top and then putting it into the oven. That should make lovers of fine pasta cringe. March is noodle month, so there may be a better way to feature noodles.

But let's look at the basic pie-making problems of "Waitress."

First, the pie is all about the crust. You don't want it to be soggy and you don't want it to be too hard. That sets up two problems: fruit with too much juice and custards.

The best way to make a custard pie is to steam back the custard in a separate dish and then scoot it into a baked pie crust. This is not how it is represented in the movie.

For me the best way to use blackberries and raspberries in a pie would be bake the filling separately  and then put it in the pie. If you're making a double-crust pie, then I would partially cook the bottom crust and perhaps even coat the bottom with a little beaten egg. If the pie crust is still hot, the egg coating will be baked before you put the filling in. Also, I would make the filling on top of the stove first, particularly if using frozen. That way you can reduce the liquid. I would never, ever "mash" the filling in the pie.

Pi(e) Month: 3 March Peach pie

Peach pie isn't one of my favorites because I prefer nectarines.

The reason for peaches is Girls Day in Japan.

Girl's Day is also the name of a Souther Korean girl group that debuted in 2010.  The current members include Sojin, Yura, Minah and Hyeri. Former members are Jihae, Jisun and Jiin. Seems J isn't a good match for Girl's Day, at least in South Korea.

I, of course, was thinking more of Hinamatsuri or Girls Day.  The dolls all representing the old Heian court.

I'm not a great fan of dolls, not even in the form of action figures. Besides the customary drink of shirozak and foods such as the diamond-shaped rice cake hishimochi, peach blossoms are usually displayed.

So how to make a peach pie less American and more Japanese?

I made a rose-flavored peach pie.

Peach pies are one of the pies where using frozen fruit is actually my preferred option since I'd like to avoid the blanching. Blanching is necessary so you can slip that fuzzy skin off. 

Pie and movies: "American pie"

If I make an apple pie, particularly a rose apple pie, it will not feel like the inside of a woman's vagina. I'm sure of that.

I subscribe to the less sugar, less filler the better so my pies are not particularly wet and they are mostly filling.

So currently we have an apple tree. I cube the apples and put them straight into the pie with a bit of tapioca to thicken the juices and enough honey to sweeten.

You will not want to have sex with my pies. It will not feel like a woman's vagina unless she has soft cubes piled on top of each other in which case you might be having a castration or cubist nightmare.

My pies might smell like you'd wish a vagina would smell, but that's a different issue.

Two more gluten-free pastry recipes

The first one is very simple and dogs could eat it.

1/2 cup shortening
1 1/2 cups rice flour
4 TB cold water

Back 12-15 minutes at 400 F.


This Paleo diet one has almond FLOUR.

2 cups almong flour
2TB coconut oil
1 egg

Two lamb pies: One sweet and one savory

Pot pies in our new cocottes. In the front are two fig and apple lamb pies with toasted sesame seed in the crust.

In the back is a lamb-mushroom pot pie.

Pluto Day Purple Pie

This is a purple carrot pie for Pluto Day or for the Pluto, formerly known as a planet, Day. Pluto Planet Day is 13 March. 

2 March 2014 - Yogurt creme pie

I started preparing the yogurt in a cheesecloth to drain excess liquid.

I have some homemade guava jam that I will melt down to pour on top. Stay tuned.

Korean Independence Day - 1 March pie

I don't think I would have survived living in Japan without Korean food. Japanese food is nice, but it lacks spice.

The Korean Independence Movement was both a military and diplomatic movement that protested the annexation of Korea  in 1910 to the Imperial Japanese government. The March 1 Movement on 1919 (Samil Movement) was an early public display of protest by the Korean resistance.

Activists read the Korean Declaration of Independence by Choe Nam-seon at a restaurant in Seoul. The leaders were arrested. Crowds assembled in Pagoda Park to hear the declaration read. Things did not go well. The leaders fled. Korea didn't find any sympathy at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919. Most of the other participants were from countries (U.S., Great Britain, France and Italy) that also had colonies.

So let's celebrate the country that gave us kimchee!

Pie:
Mochi toasted in a waffle iron serves as the crust.
spinach blanched and seasoned with sesame oil
kimchee
An egg on top.

Next time, instead of using an oven, I'm going to poach the eggs. That should be faster and the mochi would retain its crispiness. See the second version below.

What Is a Pie?

As with all things, one must start be defining the terms one using. I remembered today that I hadn't defined what a pie was or is.

According to the Oxford (British and World English) dictionary, a pie is "A baked dish of fruit, or meat and vegetables, typically with a top and base of pastry.

The American Heritage dictionary says:

1. A baked food composed of a pastry shell filled with fruit, meat, cheese, or other ingredients, and usually covered with a pastry crust.
2. A layer cake having cream, custard, or jelly filling.

Merriam-Webster defines pie as:

1. A meat dish basked with biscuit or pastry crust--compare to potpie.
2. A dessert consisting of a filling (as of fruit or custard) in a pastry shell or topped with pastry or both.

What's Cooking in America gives a fascinating history of pies which began as baked containers and weren't particularly edible. There were indeed animated pies--with things like birds and even people coming out. 

Then we have to round up terms that seem to refer to pie-like things such as a cobbler. Merriam-Webster defines a cobbler as (4) "A deep-dish fruit dessert with a thick top crust. A tart is "a dish baked in a pastry shell as in (a) a small pie or pastry shell without a top containing jelly, custard, or fruit or (b) a small pie made of pastry folded over a filling. A potpie is "a mixture of meat and vegetables that is covered with a layer of pastry and cooked in a deep dish.

American Heritage defines a tart as 1(a) "A pastry shell with shallow sides, not top crust, and any of various fillings. 1(b) Chiefly British "A pie."  A cobbler is "A deep-dish fruit pie with a thick top crust." 

The editors of Encyclopedia Britannica write: 

dish made by lining a shallow container with pastry and filling the container with a sweet or savoury mixture. A top crust may be added; the pie is baked until the crust is crisp and the filling is cooked through. Pies have been popular in the United States since colonial times, so much so that apple pie has become symbolic of traditional American home cooking. The typical American pie is round, 8–10 inches (20–25 cm) in diameter, 2–3 inches (5–8 cm) thick, and usually contains a sweet filling of fruit, custard, or a pastry cream. Some American specialties are pecan pie, pumpkin custard pie (traditionally served on Thanksgiving Day), lemon pie with a soft meringue topping, and shoofly pie, a Pennsylvania Dutch (see Pennsylvania German) pie with a rich filling containing molasses.

So then is pizza a pie? Is Boston Creme Pie a pie or a cake? Shepherd's pie uses mashed potatoes instead of a pastry. So pastry doesn't have to be part of a pie.