We played outside!!

It was a beautiful Autumn weekend: some sun, some blustery wind, some squalls …

We made the most of the sunny times.

And in between…

I am having so much fun making this blanket! This is early Saturday … the end of the first skein of yarn. I have 7 skeins altogether and I think that will be about right … 6 might be enough and if so, I’ll have enough to make a snood or scarf with the last … we’ll see.

The sun is out, but still … naps are necessary :)

It was a big cooking weekend. I had a lot of tomatoes from my local organic farm: roasted them with broccoli, cauliflower and carrots, then pureed and pressure cooked with some ghee and onion (Marcelle Hazan style). The roasting and the extra vegetables and then the pressure cook = my version of a Marinara sauce for soup and pasta bakes.

I also roasted a whole chicken: shredded the meat and made broth from the bones, etc. Most of the chicken and broth I froze for future meals.

… AND a small batch of beef stew. Some of it went into beef pot pie for Sunday lunch and the rest into the freezer.

I like to freeze meal components like broth, meat, sauce, veg. I freeze single/double servings and it makes it easy to make what I’m hungry for, fast!

Hot apple pie!! I have some wonderful Honeycrisp apples and have been making pie. That is a 5.5 inch pie dish so it makes 4 mini-slices … perfect for house of 1 human. BUT, Emmett LOVES the crust which is a flaky, all butter crust made from Erin Jeanne McDowell . It is not only the ingredients, but her technique. Her videos for Food52: Bake it up a notch are great instruction. I thought I made a good pie crust, but now … I make a GREAT pie crust!

The video link is for Erin’s puff pastry instruction which includes “rough puff”. The rough puff is the extra flaky version of her pie crust recipe. I make the rough puff, divide it into 8 pieces and freeze them wrapped in cling wrap. 1 piece (1/8 recipe) makes a single crust for my 5.5 inch pie plates, 2 for a double crust or 2 for a single crust in a 9 inch pie plate, etc. The rough puff takes me 10-15 minutes to mix and get into the refrigerator. It is ready to use in an hour. I usually use a bit and freeze the rest in the 1/8 pieces. It takes maybe 2 hours for the frozen pieces to thaw enough to use.

I use the same for a topper for pot pies: YUM.

So … it is Monday morning as I write this post and we are getting a slow start. It is dark, raining: everything from drizzle to full on downpour with thunder.

Autumn in Montana.