Getting Ready For Winter

   Sunday afternoon Rowan went over to a friend's house, and Riley had a friend over, Elly went for a visit and Nana and Popa's house, Grace, well Grace slept away most of the afternoon (she thinks she's a teenager).  That left me some free time.  I have been in itching to make pies since we picked 20 pounds of Empire and McIntosh apples, but just could not find the time.  This was my chance!

    The days are getting shorter, and noticeably cooler, which means that winter is just around the corner ( I hate winter, imagine that last statement with a childish stamp of my foot for effect).  It's funny in most ways I resemble my mother's family.  When I was little I would look in the mirror of ages trying to distinguish something of my father.  The eye colour looking back at me was his foot hold.  What I have discovered is that although I do not so much physically look like him, I have a lot of his traits (some not so awesome ones too).  My father comes from a long line of pioneers.  People who worked this hard land, and survived.  To them if they did not lay down stores for winter, they did not survive!  For me, I can just go to the grocery store in the winter, and yet there is that involuntary genetic throw back that demands that I make winter preparations.

    I am not sure how making and freezing pie will see us through our harsh winter, but hey, it is laying down stores of a sort.  All afternoon I worked.  I made my dough, cut my apples, mixed my toppings.  I  also made two big apple brown bettys for dessert.  The house smelled amazing!  In the end I had four beautiful pies, two traditional and two dutch (apple brown betty topping on the top instead of pastry).  The trick came when it was time to put them into freezer bags and then into the freezer.  Apparently "large"freezer bags are big enough to cover them, but not big enough to tie them.  The store did not have "extra large" bags, so I had to get creative.  I used scotch tape to fasten them shut.  I'm pretty sure that they will get freezer burn, but then again that is using the notion that they will be down there long enough to "get freezer burn".  Around here baked goods generally do not last very long.

   Those four pies should really see us through the harsh winter that lies ahead... well maybe not.  Turns out I would not have been a very smart pioneer.  I would be smugly surrounded by pies while my fellow pioneers would have been salting meat, and doing preserves.  They might survive the winter, but we would have dessert for every meal, meals that were made up of ... dessert, until it all went bad that is.  So maybe the pioneer gene only went so far as storing for the winter, not being smart about it.

Here's another contest.  It sure would be mighty nice of you to take a second to vote for me.
(do you like how I asked that in pioneer talk?)