Meditating Monday

No Substitutions Please

I received my Country Living magazine recently and my dad told me he was going to use a recipe out of the magazine to make cranberry pie for Thanksgiving so I decided to do the same.  However, mine did not turn out and I think the reason is that I substituted half and half for heavy cream.

As you can see, this was a beautiful pie in the magazine but mine, not so pretty. Here is the recipe from Country Living. Read on.

Guess what, this happens when you are cooking.  I have come to realize recently that baking is a science and needs to be precise but cooking does not.  You do not really have to measure during cooking and things still turn out delicious.  So keep this in mind.
BAKING, be precise
COOKING, add what you want


This pie calls for a pie crust filled with cranberries.

Next you need to whip an egg white until you have peaks.  Just use a whisk or an electric beater.

Then you sift together sugar and flour then pour in egg white mixture.  It will form a paste like substance.  Then slowly stir in cream until combined.  Here is the part where you DO NOT want to use half and half, use heavy cream.

Then you are going to sprinkle remaining sugar on top of cranberries and the pour the cream mixture into the pie crust and over the cranberries.








The below picture is my messed up pie.  You can see that the cream mixture really separated from the cranberries.  When the pie was eaten you could
definitely see the separation.  Well that is ok, at least I tired a new recipe.

Any mess ups you would like to share?

What's In Season for December

The growing season in many parts of the country has stopped but not in other areas so I wanted to talk about what is currently in season.  In doing this, I found a great link that shows different states and what is being grown right now.

US Seasonal Growing Map 

You will notice that a lot of the northern states have stopped growing but the southern ones have not.  This just makes sense because of temperatures.  I live in Oklahoma so the map shows beets, brussels sprouts, pecans, and potatoes.  Not many choices.  I am going to have to try beets and brussels sprouts though because I have never eaten either.

We have become so accustomed to buying whatever we want in the stores but we truly do not think about the amount of energy that it takes to transport these items.  We are now a society where we like lots of choices and I am truly grateful that we have all these choices but remember that this might be why prices are high on some items.

I challenge you the next time you go to the grocery store to start checking out where your product is from.  It should say on the tag or the package.  You will be amazed at how far some items travel.  Think about grapes from Chile.  It is around 5100 miles and this is a long way for anything to travel but especially fruit.

What fruit or veggies are you eating right now?  Do you have a tendency to eat something more in the winter than summer?  Watermelon is the first thing that comes to my mind for summer.  I think of apples this time of year. Tell me what you think?