What did you do in the garden today?

Pie crust is simple, but requires technique. Get a dough cutter and keep everything cold while working (cold milk or water, frozen butter or lard core into small pieces, cold bowl, even chill the flour of you want). Butter and/or lard needs to stay in tiny lumps in the dough and not melt until it's in the oven cooking.

@Sally PB - above is true. Cold, cold, cold. You might like using a pastry cutter, to cut in the butter by hand - you can control it really well. But, many people use a food processor and metal blade to cut the butter/fat into the flour mix quickly. You then dump the crumbly mix into a bowl to add in the ice cold water. I sometimes cut it in by hand, sometimes use the food processor. But there is a learning curve to getting the moisture level just right as well. Always chill the dough before rolling it out. Often chill it again once in pan.

Although the recipes are typically just fat, flour, and water... I have one pie crust recipe that uses egg in the mix, and another that uses vodka (they give the science behind why the vodka is added, but I’d have to reread it).

Anyway, nothing better than eating your first successful pie crust, browned, flaky, yummy! Good luck for your next time!
 
This is cheating a bit, this actually happened yesterday! Of course my wife let me know we were getting low on carrots after we had a snow storm that dumped 2ft in our area of New York. So that meant using a snowblower as one of my tools to harvest some fresh carrots from the garden.


Made my way out to the garden with the snowblower clearing a path through the 2ft of snow.


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After removing the snow on the carrot bed I then pulled the straw aside and dug up some carrots.
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After cleaning, so nice to harvest fresh carrots from the garden in Feb. in New York state. Sure getting some from the store would have been easier but this scored way more cool points than store bought carrots.

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We had a hard freeze last night so the ground is hard as rock this morning. It was cold and windy and my poor molting chickens refuse to leave the coop. It should warm up later today though. Went around took some pictures but that’s about it. Might wash some seed pots later this afternoon.
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Kiwi seedling
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Snow pea plant that’s overwintered!
 
Good afternoon everyone. @karenerwin you’re a good mom :hugs I wasn’t happy with my potatoes last year but I’m giving them another try this year, I’m growing in bags. Gurneys won’t even ship to me until 2/5 which is our average last frost date.

I watered the shade garden early this morning and it’s currently 81 degrees. We’re supposed to have a couple of days in the upper 60’s but our rain chances have literally dried up. The weekend should be in the mid 70’s though. I’ll be out early tomorrow to water the veggies and I’m going to move the started plants outside. If the temps hold I’m going to plant new stuff outside rather than start them under the grow lights. One really awesome thing about Runner ducks is they don’t fly, so I can set the starts on the picnic table and just move in and out of the house in the bin while they harden off. Love that! Some people say that Runners are nervous and unfriendly, but that’s not my experience so far. My three are quite friendly, almost to the point of rudeness :gig Anyway, sorry for the tangent, I’m just enjoying the heck out of having ducks. I was looking at the garlic earlier and I think there was 100% germination so I’ll be ordering a larger amount of seed for this year and dedicating a larger area to it in fall.

I can relate about the potatoes. The first time I tried them (in bags), I put a bunch of compost on the bottom which ended up being infested with some kind of white bug/hopper that decimated my potatoes. The 2nd time I tried (again, in bags) was this past summer. I did decently well with those, but only got enough potatoes to make one family-sized bowl of mashed potatoes. Going to try again this year....maybe in tires this time.

Right now I am dealing with a massive influx of gnats. Not sure if they came from some overly ripe produce that was left out or if they are from my indoor seedlings. Hubby wanted to go around the house spraying Raid. I'm not a fan of that idea....so I concocted a homemade remedy from Peppermint Castile soap and Neem oil in spray bottle. It works great. Kills on contact and I feel much less concerned about all of us being poisoned. Got rid of nearly ALL the gnats. Until yesterday....figured out that a gnat must have found some open food source in my pantry. Now I have hundreds of gnats again...in the pantry. grrrr..... Going to pull everything out this afternoon and throw out anything that was open.
 
Pie crust is simple, but requires technique. Get a dough cutter and keep everything cold while working (cold milk or water, frozen butter or lard core into small pieces, cold bowl, even chill the flour of you want). Butter and/or lard needs to stay in tiny lumps in the dough and not melt until it's in the oven cooking.
Yup, Cold is Key. I know people who have marble boards and rolling pins that they store in the freezer. I never had a food processor when I tried to make pie crust, but I do now, so maybe I'll try again. It's knack, a touch, a knowing how it feels/looks. Like I said, I know all about how to do it. But I've never been able to. Kind of like a eunuch in a whore house...
 
I can relate about the potatoes. The first time I tried them (in bags), I put a bunch of compost on the bottom which ended up being infested with some kind of white bug/hopper that decimated my potatoes. The 2nd time I tried (again, in bags) was this past summer. I did decently well with those, but only got enough potatoes to make one family-sized bowl of mashed potatoes. Going to try again this year....maybe in tires this time.

Right now I am dealing with a massive influx of gnats. Not sure if they came from some overly ripe produce that was left out or if they are from my indoor seedlings. Hubby wanted to go around the house spraying Raid. I'm not a fan of that idea....so I concocted a homemade remedy from Peppermint Castile soap and Neem oil in spray bottle. It works great. Kills on contact and I feel much less concerned about all of us being poisoned. Got rid of nearly ALL the gnats. Until yesterday....figured out that a gnat must have found some open food source in my pantry. Now I have hundreds of gnats again...in the pantry. grrrr..... Going to pull everything out this afternoon and throw out anything that was open.
set out a jar with a lid poked with small holes
put in some apple cider vinegar and a couple drops of dish soap. Stir and set out for the gnats.
In they go and drown.
 
Yup, Cold is Key. I know people who have marble boards and rolling pins that they store in the freezer. I never had a food processor when I tried to make pie crust, but I do now, so maybe I'll try again. It's knack, a touch, a knowing how it feels/looks. Like I said, I know all about how to do it. But I've never been able to. Kind of like a eunuch in a whore house...
I can’t make it either but hubs does a great job of it.
 

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