In The Kitchen With Kat

A Swirling Vortex of Dirty Dishes, Multiple Comestible Constructions, and a Pie Filling Recipe!

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Isn't it like a cool blog-etiquette thing to do an occasional post once in a while that serves as a bit of getting to know you PR? Hmm...Maybe that is just a song from a musical and this look into Kat's culinary lair isn't necessary, but you know what? I feel like painting a multiple scene portrait from my life for you all to look at today. My linguistic palette is full of flowery adjectives and my willing, pie crust encrusted digits are rearing to type, so off we go!

The following narrative is a pretty normal day for yours truly. I start most weekdays with a blistering session of Pilates, and by blistering I mean my husband's ears develop welts, for the Youtube lady that instructs me in the art of toning and strengthening drives him mad. Her voice screeches like a female puffin during breeding season. I enjoy her never ending chatter, however, for it helps me not to focus on the fact that my glutes are threatening to mutiny on me as I torture them.

My son was a jammin while I put the finishing touches on the pie filling.

Homesteader tip: A compost pile is completely unnecessary when you have adolescents around: Note the disappearing apple peel.

I digress, after working out, showering, and sipping some of my most excellent hot cocoa for breakfast, I usually start my day with teaching both of my offspring. If only I could just do that I would feel like I was perhaps on vacation. Today being a typical day, I taught my fifth grader how to multiply mixed numbers whilst also making pie filling. It continued as I reviewed intensively and reflexively used compound pronouns with my daughter, as in between sentence and answer checks I whipped up some strawberry blueberry jam with some leftover berries.

If this jam survives the Lord of the Pies atmosphere of my fridge for more than two weeks, I'll be shocked and awed.

It is a quarter after one in the afternoon, and I just sat down to eat lunch. Up until this point I taught 6 subjects, baked a pie, made some jam, and did the dishes. I still have to run a bunch of kids to basketball practice, unload a ton of steer feed, bake a cake for a co-worker's birthday, roast a ham, make dinner, and a few other things before dinner. Let me reiterate, this is a normal day.

A nice element that I look forward to now is that I can share some of my Kathappenings with you all on my blog! This fact makes me happier than not seeing someone donning nude colored yoga pants! Today's homesteader-ish bit of usefulness that I am going to mostly focus on has to do with leftover fruit.

You see, most of the time when I freeze fruit like strawberries in the summer, I individually freeze the berries on a wax paper lined tray before I put them into freezer bags, so that I can grab a cup or two as needed instead of thawing a whole bag. This method works great if you are single or don't have a bunch of Polynesian Fruit Piranhas dwelling in your abode. Last week I made my mom a cheesecake for her birthday complete with some tasty strawberry sauce, but I had to thaw a gallon of non individually quick frozen strawberries in the process. As I only needed two cups for my sauce, I had a rather large amount of strawberries left over, just languishing in the fridge.

Add in the fact that there were two Granny Smith apples hanging out in the veg drawer of the fridge, and strangely enough a large bowl of blueberries sitting on the counter when I emerged from my Kat cave this morning, and well, I had some potential pie filling on my hands.

Here's a little Kat fact for ya'll: I HATE runny pie filling. Dry cake and runny pies are like nose mucus and vomit, all too common but totally unwanted in large quantities! So lately I have been experimenting with precooking pie filling before baking it in the pie. The results have been pretty favorable.

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Today's filling was a concoction of apples, strawberries, and blueberries. Apple cider was also involved.

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I have to admit it felt pretty good using up some leftover ingredients instead of letting them go bad. I still had about three cups of fruit remaining after making the pie filling, so into a pot with some jam went the berries and after some vigorous boiling I had a quart of jam. I didn't bother canning it, for it will not last longer than a week or two. Remember, they Polynesian Fruit Piranhas are always lurking.

So without further fanfare, here is the pie filling recipe that I whipped up today:

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Quick Fruit Pie Filling

4 cups of fruit (apples, berries, peaches, cherries)
3 Tablespoons corn starch
3/4 cup sugar (this needs to be added to taste)
2 Tablespoons lemon juice
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon allspice
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
8 Ounces apple juice or cider (I used a packet of hot apple cider mix)

Place fruit in a stock pot and sprinkle with lemon juice.

Mix next five ingredients together in a bowl and add to fruit. Next you want to heat your juice or cider up. Like to almost boiling. I placed the cider into the microwave for two minutes to achieve this heated beverage state. Pour heated juice over fruit mixture and cook over medium heat until thickened.

Set mixture aside to cool and once coolish, place into an unbaked pie crust. I bake my fruit pies on the bottom rack for 10 minutes @400 degrees Fahrenheit. I then move the pie to the middle rack of the oven and finish baking the creation for about 20-25 more minutes at 400 degrees Fahrenheit. It is important to place some foil on the edges of the crust for the first 25 minutes of baking or so. This helps to keep the edges from getting too over-browned. I just remove the foil pieces near the end of the baking time!

Pardon my lameness, this is piece number two, the first piece of pie vanished so quickly that I missed photographing it.

My husband devoured two pieces of pie, so he is either malnourished and/or starving or the pie is pretty good.

Relevant Post Addendum It is now 5:17p.m. and I have just sat down again to finish off this rambling treatise regarding kitchen adventures. Lest you think I have any complaints about my life, please don't, for I love every crazy minute of it. Although, here lately I have thought about throwing my husband in our 1%er trailer that is just becoming unearthed from the snow and escaping to somewhere warm and sunny. Can't do that though, for I have a birthday cake to frost in the morning for a coworker before heading to the library for a scintillating day of work. Hope you are all having the most spectacular evening!

You know what rhymes with ganache? Nosh!!! Is it bad that I want to stick my face in the bowl every single time I make ganache?

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And as always, all of the images in this post were taken on the author's pastry fatigued iPhone.

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