May miscellaneous

Gardening, pie-making, flower-arranging, bacon pancakes, and a visit from Abigail. We could not have asked more from May.

Lattice butterfly pie

This year we grew our OWN rhubarb for butterfly pie (which, at this point, just means that Tristen and I made it and winged the recipe). We used local organic cherries and pitted them using a bonafide pitter and a homemade one -- a beer bottle and a metal straw (worked pretty well!).

Just as we started rolling out the dough, Tristen came up with the idea to make the pie "like it always looks in books." He had to draw it for me.

And so we tried our hand at lattice. It turned out really well, but we forgot to get a picture of the cooked version. The taste was good, but not our best. I had used a little whole wheat flour for the crust and didn't add quite enough sugar to make up for that. I don't think our guests -- Nishan, Anishka, and Archana -- minded, though.

Mother's Day 2011: cedar

This year I made my usual request: a day of family gardening! We did some cardboard mulching, planted seeds (late this year on account of cold, rainy weather!), and replaced our dead Japanese Maple with a weeping cedar. Let's hope the tree takes this year!

(Actually, we're calling it a "chilled out" cedar, because we don't like the depressing thought of a weeping tree.)

Tristen and I also made one of our butterfly pies. For the life of me, I couldn't find the damned rolling pin. Had to use a mason jar and teensy playdough roller to prepare the crust.

This year's butterfly pie

Last year, Tristen and I enjoyed making pies together -- mostly blueberry. We called them butterfly pies because of the play dough cutters we use to decorate the top.

This year we stepped it up a notch by growing our own rhubarb and pitting our own fresh cherries from our CSA (thank you, Annie and Sue of Helsing Junction!). Tristen did a lot of the pitting himself -- and then, when we both finally got impatient, he removed stems and I pitted.

So the pie was cherry-rhubarb. No spices. Just sugar and vanilla extract.

My only regret is that I was so insecure about how it might turn out that I didn't call Bryan to come over for a piece. And then it turned out to be one of the best pieces of pie I've ever had. It wasn't even runny!

Butterfly pie

On our second Mom and Tristen day of the summer, we made "butterfly pie": rhubarb and blueberries. Same delicious recipe as last summer, when we cut butterfly shapes out of the top crust using our playdough cutters. But this year, Tristen wanted to also cut out a caterpillar and a horsie. Can we still just call it butterfly pie?

Thanks for the rhubarb, Shelly!