pie

Today I pulled out the dried-up old sweetpeas & planted sunflower seedlings. The padrón pepper plant is finally giving me a few peppers at a time. Purple string beans are going strong & the cherry tomato is gangbusters. This afternoon I found a sneaky overgrown squash.

Then I picked blackberries & made a pie.

Door County

I went on a getaway with my pal the Triathlete to Door County, Wisconsin, where her mother-in-law has an old house. Behind the house is the sweetest meadow you ever did see.

Their neighbor mows these perfect walking paths through the meadow & a nearby grove of trees… I don’t know if he is some kind of landscaping design genius or what, but the paths are completely satisfying in every way: where they go, how they branch off from one another, how they are curved or straight in different places. Some of the coarser cut-off grasses make a truly excellent, quiet crunching sound under your shoes when you walk on them. I took the wildflower book out there one morning & identified at least three different asters.

When we weren’t hanging out in the meadow, the Triathlete was giving me a grand tour of awesome swimming spots. I swam in a warm little lake, & in wavy, windy Lake Michigan proper, & that tiny little shape is me swimming in Ellison Bay:

Plus I made a cherry pie, because Door County is famous for its pie-perfect sour cherries. We got the last of the season’s cherries. I’m pretty dang proud, because I’ve always relied on a food processor to make my piecrusts, but this one was all by hand & it actually turned out just fine. Didn’t know I had it in me! We bought local cherry honey to sweeten this pie. (Don’t mind all the cherry goo, we had only enough butter to make a top crust, no bottom.) It was delicious!

still good

The blackberry pie has been made, but I still need to make another one, this time not slacking off on the crust. In my impatience I used less-than-frozen butter & flour, & paid for it with a substandard crust. It's still good pie, but it is not The Blackberry Pie of my dreams.

The pelicans of Pt. Reyes, however, are perfect, & so is the blackberry picking on the way home from there.


In the mail today I got menus from Iowa & Indiana! Thank you, menu senders! Those were two states I didn't have anything from, until now.

blackberry pie

I have such a jones for blackberry pie right now... I just won't be satisfied until I can go out & get all scratched up picking mass quantities of blackberries, & then come home & make the pie. Oh, & eat it, of course.

I was thinking I would do this on my birthday, but maybe I can't wait! Maybe I'll have to do it tomorrow instead of getting any work done. Isn't blackberry pie a perfectly good reason to play hooky?

What food would seduce you away from work? Something to contemplate. (Well, I guess your relationship to your work is also a factor here. I've had jobs that stale m&ms could distract me from!)