You read the title, it’s time for Saskatoon Pie!
Yum, yum, yum! Spicy, fruity, sweet but tart, this pie is all of my favourite things. I could eat plain Saskatoons for days, but they are best in pie. I was pretty young when I first started baking, and I must say pies are still my favourite thing to bake. When I turned eleven my grandma sat me down and told me that she was planning to teach me a secret. She said that some grandma’s taught their grandkids how to cook, or how to sew, but she was going to share with me how to bake. Shortly thereafter I was gifted a muffin cookbook, an apron and some measuring cups, and the rest, as they say, is history.
One summer I decided it was high time I learned to make a pie.
I come from a family of pie connoisseurs, and as an avid baker, it seemed like a natural step. If I remember correctly Mom offered to help teach me, which I adamantly refused. If I was going to bake a pie, I was going to do it entirely myself. (In retrospect this was a very good idea, I tend to be a bit stubborn when it comes to all things kitchen related, and it very well could have been a disaster if this first endeavor was a team effort). Mom handed me a box of Tenderflake and told me to use the instructions on the box for the pie crust, which I still use to this day. I have the recipe memorized, but I reference it every time, just to be safe.
I don’t mean to toot my own horn, but that first pie was an absolute success and I haven’t looked back! My roommate always says that you either have pie hands or you don’t, and I guess I got pretty lucky in that department! I decided to make use of them yesterday. After a few hours and flour all over my kitchen, it’s never a good pie unless the kitchen floor resembles a grist mill, I was ready to feast!
Saskatoon pie is just so freaking good!
I can always go for a good slice of pie with a cup of coffee. Pop loves it with vanilla ice cream on it, and one of my friends swears it’s better without. Or, if you’re my beau, you come home with some peanut butter ice cream as a topping (not the best combination I will admit, and Pop never fails to tease him about it!). Peanut butter goes with everything, right? Not so much. Speaking of different toppings, I’ve also heard it is excellent topped with a think slice of cheddar cheese!
But seriously, I think it’s fantastic every which way, and I hope you do too! Below is your chance to give it a go. Let us know what you think, if you get a chance to try it!
Saskatoon Pie
Prep Time: 25 minutes for filling, 35 minutes for crust
Cook Time: 40 minutes
Ingredients:
- Pie crust – if you are making the crust I just use the recipe on the Tenderflake box, but you can also use store bought crust, I wont judge too harshly 😉 You will need a top and bottom crust.
- 4 cups frozen Saskatoons (Mom and Pop have the BEST trees for this)
- 1/4 cup butter
- 3/4 cup sugar
- 1/8 cup cornstarch
- 1/8 cup flour
- 1 tsp cinnamon
- 3 tablespoons lemon juice
Instructions:
- Heat oven to 375°, and place bottom pie crust in pie plate.
- In a medium pot simmer Saskatoons over medium heat. Once they have warmed and some liquid has accumulated in the pot, add the butter and sugar. Stir and bring to a gentle boil
- Lower the heat and add the cornstarch, flour and cinnamon. Stir until well combined, and then add lemon juice.
- Bring the filling to a boil to thicken and remove from heat.
- Place inside the pie shell, and add upper crust. Saskatoon pie works wonderfully with a lattice top. You can do basically any top style you like, I find this one the best as it doesn’t bubble out as much.
- Bake for 375° for 5 minutes.
- Lower the oven temperature to 350°, and bake for the remaining 35 minutes.
- Allow to cool, if you can resist it ’til then! Top however you’d like and enjoy! FYI, Peanut Butter ice cream? Not recommended.
It’s time! Costumes are on, props are in place, and we all have our ‘creep’ on. It’s time to head to town and see if we can’t spook, slink, scrape, screech, and boo everyone we encounter into quaking in their boots. It’s Halloween! Destination; Fort Edmonton’s Spooktacular. And let me tell you this. It.Is.Fun!
You’d think werewolves, mummies, Frankenstein and his betrothed would be quite frightening for other drivers. Especially with the windows down and all sorts of mayhem pouring out! I had expected our fellow drivers to be startled or gasp in surprise, maybe squeak out an “Oh My!” Nope, not so. As it turns out, this tends to generate uncontrollable laughter. Probably not a good idea while driving. But I don’t get it. I mean, we were pretty creepy! There really ought to have been brakes screeching, cars swerving, cursing, confusion, havoc…all of that. Nothing. I wonder, has the entire world become spook proof?
At one end of the spectrum things are completely family friendly. At the other end, even steely minded adults would find it on the edge of disturbing. You simply need to pick the path that best suits your group. This was the first year that our entire group was over 18, so of course we chose the scariest ‘avenue’ of entertainment available. And we were not disappointed.
Along the edges of this blog you will find pictures of all of our costumes from that evening. Even though Meaghan, Kenny, Brenna and Surya could not be with us, they had fantastic costumes and they sent us pictures of them. I wanted to share them with you here as well. We’ve put their names in the pictures, can you guess their characters? The only one you probably won’t get is Kenny, and that’s because I think she’s being herself.
There are no rules when it comes to Halloween costumes.
It’s Autumn. Summer chores are slowing, and will soon reach an end. All the hay has been hauled and stacked. You can literally watch the farm change from one day to the next. Each morning is new and different and exciting. The colours dance from every tree and every shrub. You can’t look down a fence line and see the same thing you saw yesterday. The leaves are a brighter red, the rose hips look richer, the grass and wild grains have become more golden. It’s always new, almost by the glance there’s something there that was not the day before.
This is autumn, and I can’t imagine a soul who wouldn’t fall in love with her.
On a side note, I also have some scary stuff planned soon. After all it is Halloween.
So anyway, this autumn I was able to find a very old wooden chipped and worn Ouija board at a pawnshop. It’s seen some crazy hard miles from it’s planchette, just judging from the missing letter paint. Much of the surface and finish has been scraped completely off. Well I bought that Ouija board and have it tucked safe and sound somewhere inside her house. When it’s dark and cold and windy and spooky and when the time is just right she’s going to ‘stumble’ onto that old antique. I’m hoping I have the good fortune of having my phone ready to record it when it happens. Something tells me that video will be worth loading onto the blog!