Peach Pie

Peaches have been in season for the last couple of weeks. Schnucks had Eckerts peaches for sale so I bought some. There were really good, so I bought more.

Katie asked me for the recipe for peach freezer jam, which I think is about tied with strawberry for the best freezer jam ever. I responded to Katie that the best way to make freezer jam is to buy the pectin and use the recipe that comes in the package. Thinking about peach freezer jam got my taste buds really going, so I made peach freezer jam that evening. It was really good.

Then I decided that jam was not enough, so the next night, I made a peach pie. Since the best way to eat peach pie is with vanilla ice cream on top, I made a new batch of homemade vanilla ice cream using mom’s new ice cream maker.

We have used the peach pie recipe in the Betty Crocker cookbook for years, but I did a search on the internet for peach pie to see if I could find something even better. I found the following recipe: http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Peach-Pie/Detail.aspx

After reading many of the reviews, I decided to compare it to the Betty Crocker recipe before deciding how I wanted to make the pie. The recipe from Allrecipes.com listed 10 peaches while Betty Crocker called for 5 cups of sliced peaches. My peaches were big and 5 peaches resulted in 5 cups. The recipe at Allrecipes.com called for 1/3 cup flour compared to Betty Crocker’s ¼ cup and Allrecipes.com called for twice as much butter and no cinnamon and no lemon juice. I used the flour and butter amounts from Allrecipe.com and used the lemon juice amount from Betty Crocker. I omitted the cinnamon.

The Betty Crocker recipe has you mix the lemon juice, sugar, cinnamon and flour into the peach slices and then put the butter on the peach mixture. The Allrecipes.com method mixes the sugar, flour and butter into a crumbly mixture. The peaches and crumb mixture are layered in the pie shell. I took a photo of the pie just before the top crust went on.
When I put the top crust on, I did not do a very good job of sealing the edge, so juice leaked out of the edges instead of the top when it cooked. I made my typical cinnamon and sugar sprinkled pie crust strips and put them into the oven when I baked the pie. I put them in a pan under the pie but on top of the cookie sheet on the second shelf that catches the juice. I forgot about the pie crust strips and remembered them when the pie was almost done. They were a bit overcooked, but much of the peach juice had dripped on the pie crust strips. They were quite good. I used the Betty Crocker cooking method of 425 degrees for 15 minutes with foil to prevent over browning and then reducing to 350 degrees. One of the comments on the peach pie recipe at Allrecipes.com said that one way to prevent the peach pie from being too runny was to leave it in the oven for a while after turning off the heat so the juices can continue to cook and set up without overcooking the crust. I did this. Also, this recipe has a little more flour than the Betty Crocker recipe which also makes it set up well. Once the pie was cooled, it was nice and firm.

The first piece was not firm, because it was still hot. Fresh homemade ice cream cooled it down nicely. It not only looks really good in the photo, it tasted really, really, really good.

I’m not sure if there will be any left when Joseph gets home Saturday night. I might just have to make another one.

Raccoons

I have had problems with raccoons eating the food I have grown in our yard since we moved to St. Louis. Before our house was even built in 1989, I was excited about planting corn in our yard, so I planted about 200 square feet of corn, but we were not living at the house yet and the raccoons ate all of the corn except for one ear I found that they missed. After we were living in the house, we had some level of success at keeping the raccoons out when our dog Nina was chained up next to the corn. I have tried this with later dogs without success. Rocky did not work because while he was chained up to the fruit trees next to the corn, he felt a need to dig under the roots of the fruit trees, doing too much damage to make it worth our efforts. I quit growing things that the raccoons like to eat.

Since then, squirrels have found that our fruit trees produce some pretty good fruit. They start with the apricots and then move on to the plums, pears, peaches, apples and nashis. Sometimes there was tree damage, so I guessed that the much heavier raccoons were helping eat the fruit. Squirrels only come out in the daytime and raccoons only come out at night. Last year, a freeze killed all of the fruit, so the squirrels ate all of my tomatoes instead. This year, the fruit trees produced in abundance, so the raccoons have been helping the squirrels eat it all.

On Sunday, August 3rd, the raccoons did not even wait for dark to start helping themselves to plums and peaches. This photo was taken at 7:30 pm when there was still quite a bit of light out. There were four of them together. Some of the time, it looked like one of them was watching the house to let the others know if anyone was coming. After they ate the fruit on the ground, one of them climbed up the tree to knock down fore fruit. This was one of those times that it was hard to think kindly thoughts towards the cute fuzzy creatures.

Eagle Lake

I did not take many pictures at Eagle Lake this year. I really wished I had taken more. I kept forgetting to take the camera, and when I did have the camera with me, I forgot to take pictures. We really enjoy camping at Eagle Lake with family. It is a beautiful place and it is fun to spend time with the family. There were fires about 20 miles away, so depending on the wind direction, it could be pretty clear or the air could be pretty smoky.

When everyone arrives, getting tents set up just right can be a challenge. When John and Claudia arrived, there were lots of helpers to try and get things just right. In the end, it was decided that moving the tent was easier than moving the trees.

Vacations are all about leasure activities. Like playing games.

Group dinners were fun. This is Thursday night dinner. There was a lot of eating and sitting and talking. What else are vacations for?

Our camera did not go out on the boat excursions so we only got shots from the shore. Here, It looks like Joseph is waiting for the “big” wave that did not happen, or possibly looking at the giant shark that is getting to leap out of the 8 inch deep water. He was actually touring the lake Venice gondola style. The water was a very pleasant temperature. It felt good.

On Friday, we had a grand dinner to celebrate the birth of our country. This photo was taken by Karen, our campground host. And has our entire group together. We had a great time and hope to do it again next year.