Not Built in a Day

This week I finally made pie #2: peach-blueberry pie with homemade vegetable oil crust. Since Justin doesn't like butter and I rely on him to eat a large percentage of any pie I make, I decided to try making a crust without butter. I also don't have the necessary equipment for cutting in the butter (ie a food processor) so an oil-based crust seemed simpler. Unfortunately, the crust didn't hold together well, and although it tastes fine with the pie, it's a bit tough. I think I'll go back to store-bought crusts for now! The filling was good, even though I used store-bought frozen blueberries; the peaches were ones I got fresh, then cut up and froze. They tasted much better in the pie than they did on their own! This week I also got a CSA (community-supported agriculture) box, and here's what was inside: I got two types of squash that I thought were zucchini, but one actually turned out to be round cucumbers! Even more surprisingly, they were tasty! I don...

So though I promised to try to post more often this summer than I usually do, I haven't had the time! What have I been doing? Well, aside from working and cleaning (note to self: must get a dishwasher for my next apartment), I've been baking. So far I've made banana bread, zucchini bread, and an apple pie. The zucchini bread came out a little drier than I expected, and with pretty obvious pieces of zucchini in it, but it was still tasty. I didn't have a grater so I just chopped the pieces - maybe next time I'll cut them up a little finer! But for a bread using only oil, no butter, it came out well. The apple pie was great! I used a store-bought crust and cobbled together a recipe based on several in my new "Killer Pies" cookbook. The only thing I didn't like was how much the apples cooked down, leaving a crust "dome" over the pie filled with nothing but air. But it was tasty. For my next attempt I think I'll try making ...