Dairy-free pastry

Berry pie with coconut oil crust:





Empanadas with sunflower oil and coconut oil:





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Empanadas

A new addition to my mental collection of good foods to freeze. These were filled with stewing beef, tomato sauce, leek, peas, and a pinch of cheddar, and turned out to be a perfect hand-held snack and not at all too doughy.





Empanada pastry:
2 cups all purpose flour
1/4 cup soft flour
Salt
1/2 cup butter
1 egg
1/3 cup cold water
1 T vinegar

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this week

i'm always looking for good recipes to use (i mean, take advantage) of the tons of fruit in our freezer and i think i found a new keeper. this is plum strudel and it should work well with all kinds of other fruit.

and here's the start of a little village i've been scheming up. more trees and soft houses to come. i'm not sure if it will be greatly used, but maybe i'll get enough satisfaction just from the process of executing an idea. and to show eily that it's possible. although, who am i kidding, he's so aware of that notion already. each day he comes up with a new thing to make - dog puppet, bird's nest and bath combined, play dinosaurs - and promptly goes about making it.

i attached an elastic to one of the roads so they can be rolled up and stashed away.

finally, a jackpot of a find. cheap large buttons from a lovely woman at a tailor shop. these babies are hard to find and normally, much too expensive.

brioche

when i lived in france, i would greedily eye the sunny-side-up apricot pastries each time i passed the bakery. finally i got to try them myself. with the brioche dough from "artisinal bread in five minutes a day." i admit, i don't exactly feel like i'm in france again, but perhaps at the european bakery down the street from our cottage which carries a marvelous fruit danish.

rotis

the other night, we tried making rotis - something i'd never done and Brett had tried only once. usually, when i make something ethnic, particularly something that involves dough, it either needs a lot of fine-tuning or i decide it's more worth it to order in the next time. but this time was different. they were great: spicy chickpeas and potatoes in a thin roti wrap. we had them with homemade plum chutney and hot mango chutney from ten thousand villages. which reminds me, next summer, i think i'll try freezer chutney so it won't be so vinegary. we made the roti dough using this recipe and the filling was from here.

kitchen milestones

unfortunately, one of them will translate into more work (just look up), but i'm nonetheless happy to conclude the yoghurt experiment (100% milk is delicious but a little too pricey; all milk powder is much to plain, and a portion of each is nearly perfect), to have mastered a homemade recipe for puff pastry (no pictures unfortunately, it was gobbled up too quickly; if you have any wits about you, try this dish), and to have confronted those mushy squash loitering in the cellar (now, i'm on the hunt for fabulous squash recipes).

the reward: blueberry and buttermilk cake, from this fabulous cookbook. I actually adapted it to a loaf and stuffed the blueberries (frozen, albeit not recommended) inside instead of saving them for topping. i haven't tried the original, but i'd make this one again.

Backyard

I imagine I'll miss this yard even though the next one will have its own potential. Eily's bike on the patio:
And individual rhubard pies from the giant rhubarbs taking over the garden:

these days are longer

summer carries us along in a way very different from the other seasons. we fill up the hours so easily and it's harder to remember which day we're at. i like that. i also really like the shift from summer to fall which makes me think what i like best are those transitions in between. i feel summer close.
here are some projects from the last few days:
a dress which saw more of the stitch ripper than i care to admit:

a replacement for my broken zippered wallet, modeled after a leather Malian one i had in undergrad which was stolen and which i mourned the loss of more than its contents:

and droolingly delicious tomato tarts with fresh mizuna that came up again all by itself in our neglected garden:

a break

Yesterday had a promising beginning but got frustrating with some cumbersome sewing projects and a burgeoning head cold. Although it could have had a lot more to do with all the clouds in the sky. Sure enough. Once the sun came out, I found myself in the garden enjoying it while knitting and watching Eily play and waiting for the pie to cool to take over to a neighbours for dinner.