It’s the time of year that I start to think about hand pies. When I was a kid, Nonny would occasionally make an apple pie (no other kind that I can remember, just apple). Depending on how many scraps she had left over, she would make either cinnamon pinwheels or every now and then “mini pies” (what we called them). I didn’t realize until I was well into my adulthood that the rest of the world calls these hand pies. And they are my favorites!
In my early years of hand pies, I just cut out the hand pies using a knife – triangles, rectangles and even circles. Then several years ago I purchased a set of molds that make a rectangle shape, a “pie” shape and an apple shape. These aren’t actually any easier than just cutting the dough by hand, but they are a lot more fun.
In August I saw an ad online for a cat shape/dog shape set of molds from Sur La Table. They are incredibly cute but way too expensive for an addition to my kitchen equipment that can only be called whimsical. Now that we’re getting close to apple picking (or apple picking up, depending on my knees), I’m thinking about hand pies. So yesterday morning I looked up the cat/dog molds online to see if anyone sold them less expensively than Sur La Table. Nope.. didn’t find them. HOWEVER, thanks to my search, my online world has suddenly been flooded with ads for hand pie molds. There are a lot of different companies out there selling lots of designs.
I’m currently seriously eyeing a holiday set and have looked up some more filling recipes. The three top new contenders are Lemon Cream Cheese & Raspberry Jam, Walnut Cinnamon Sugar and Nutella Hazelnut. In an age of trying to rid myself of stuff, I’m thinking I need my head examined thinking I need more hand pie molds. We’ll see how long I last….
Kelly commented one day she didn’t know why the handle on the drawer holding the kitchen garbage can always had streaks of something on it. I knew immediately it was probably from the egg I crack every morning, but I didn’t offer that up at the time. She might read it here…
I was making daughters egg cup the other morning. The first egg cracked perfectly, opened perfectly, and I plopped the yoke right into the cup. Went to crack the second egg and the shell pretty much disintegrated, the contents splashed onto the counter and slid right off into the garbage. (Over that handle of course). At which point, as I flailed, I knocked the egg cup with the first egg onto the floor. The dogs were right there for clean up. With luck, Kelly won’t know about that either. Course it was kinda funny so I’ll probably tell her. … at some point…
A few weeks ago, I saw a postal truck dead on the side of the road. The next day I saw it being towed. A few days after that I saw another one being towed. Jeepers. Then there was the semi carrying mail that caught fire on Hwy 52 outside Rochester. I do have to say, mail service to our house seems to be getting better. We’re getting mail before noon, whereas it had been 7PM for a few years. And often now, they’ll bring the mail and a package right to the house. Those of you who’ve been to the farm know that’s not a light task; it’s a long drive out of the way to bring a parcel down to us.
And then just the other day I saw one of the new postal vehicles.
Uh… it’s…. something!
It’s called the ‘Next Generation Delivery Vehicle’. NGDV.
I did some internet searching on them. Here are various headlines and descriptions:
-U.S. POSTAL SERVICE’S UGLY DUCK MAIL TRUCK
-U.S. POSTAL SERVICE’S EV TRUCKS ARE STILL FUNNY-LOOKING, NOW HARDER TO KILL OFF
-The Postal Service’s new delivery vehicles aren’t going to win a beauty contest. They’re tall and ungainly. The windshields are vast. Their hoods resemble a duck bill. Their bumpers are enormous.
–The Oshkosh Next Generation Delivery Vehicles might look like background traffic in a Pixar film
-You can tell that [the designers] didn’t have appearance in mind
-SO MUCH FOR LOOKING COOL WHILE YOU DELIVER THE MAIL*
-It looks like a robot Beluga whale—built by the East German government.*
-Our Grumman mail trucks [The old trucks] look like they were supplied by the government of East Germany and they sound like the tortured exhalations of a hungover water buffalo—hhhhggggggggmmmmmggghhhh. Honey, the mail’s here.*
-Odd appearance aside, the first handful of Next Generation Delivery Vehicles … are getting rave reviews from letter carriers
–The side cargo door allows for direct delivery onto the curb
The drivers really like them. They have AC (Can you believe the old ones didn’t?), airbags, back up camera’s, a 360° camera, collision warning, and most importantly, the tall box allows drivers to walk through without ducking. The current vehicles, made by Grumman, came into service in 1987 and was scheduled for 25 years. They outlived that predicted life. But they are failing. And they seem to catch fire fairly often. Prior to that vehicle was the Jeep DJ-5. The USPS used them during the 1970’s and ‘80’s. I bought a used one from my friend Thom, and he had bought it used from someone else. It was dark green. I drove it for a few years in the mid 1980’s. It was standard left side drive, and I used it when I was a field reporter for the Department of Agriculture. With the sliding door, it was great for holding a measuring wheel out the door and driving around a field. It was just 2-wheel drive, so that wasn’t an option for every field, but it was still kinda cool looking (well, ‘Different’ anyway). Even with the bungee strap holding the back door shut (because if you went over a bump, the back door would pop open) and the steering was so loose you didn’t dare drive over about 55 MPH, but it was fun to drive. Thom had mounted a stereo between the seats, and bolted speakers to the back wall. The metal dash was pretty rudimentary.
Not my jeep, just a representative photo. I wonder why I never took a picture of mine?
Not too much happening around the farm. I did get the 630 carburetor back on and had it running! It’s quiet enough I could actually hear myself think! It’s not done, I have a few more things to replace. Saving up for the next ‘Old Tractor Part’s Order’.
I got a township call from a sheriff deputy about some junk that had been dumped. Turned out to be two large commercial pizza ovens. Those things are heavy! I called a couple neighbors to help load them. It was all we could do to just tip it up and tip it onto the trailer.
Pizza ovens on the trailer
The next day was a sectional couch and mattress to pick up. Just more ditch clean up. Part of the job for a township supervisor. The couch and mattress I haul to county recycling. We know them on a first name basis there. We’re regulars. The pizza ovens I added to my scrap metal trailer.
I finally hauled in the old tires I had cut off those wagons. Took them to a local auto shop and paid ___ for disposal.
Got half an inch of rain Thursday night. More predicted.
Here’s a picture of a chicken because the green shades look so pretty.
From a distance, they look black. But they have more colors than you’d think, and they are really pretty.
My summer Padawan has been out working on his car a few times. I helped him for an hour one night and rolling around underneath looking up, down, left, and right acerbated some vertigo I was beginning to get. The next day I sat very still. He’s learning a lot—I hope. He’s certainly at a disadvantage because he’s being self-taught, which is good, but it can be frustrating and it all takes longer. And he’s not quite in the right mindset for that. He’s eighteen so he knows everything already. And he gets frustrated easily with the car. I tried to tell him it’s all part of the job and if he’s gonna get frustrated, he’s in the wrong job. Monday he starts as an employee at a REAL job. A 7AM to 3PM job. We’ll see how that goes. Cross your fingers for him. I give him about a 35% chance of sticking with it. He just has no idea. And it’s going to take a few tries, and I suspect he’s gonna be one of those kids who must hit bottom to figure it out.
You’d think that with all the tomato dishes we’ve had in the last few weeks that I would not be craving yet another tomato recipe. The last couple of days I’ve been thinking about pizza – specifically Boludo’s, which we haven’t had in a while. But the combination of my knee (had therapy yesterday morning and was quite sore) and all the tomatoes on the counter and all the pesto in the fridge overtook my desire to order in.
Pizza dough with olive oil, pesto and thinly sliced Romas (and I did NOT cut myself on the mandolin!!!) with some assorted shredded cheeses I found in the cheese drawer. Topped with some salt and pepper and then some more shredded parmesan that I had leftover from lunch a few days ago. Turned out rather well, if I do say so myself.
Sure has been a good year for walnuts based on how many are falling onto our deck and deck table. We have to be careful walking out there or they will bonk us on the head. We have one Horse Chestnut tree back there, too. I planted it from a seed I picked up at our church when I was a kid. Mom says I dug it up every couple days to see if it was growing and it’s a wonder it ever grew. It has a lot of chestnuts on it this year. I like how smooth they are and the rich dark brown of the nuts. (I glued a bunch onto a chair to look like barnacles when we did ‘The Little Mermaid’ at the college).
The other day I picked up daughter and we went home. Two hours later I was going to take her back into town, so I didn’t want to get myself into too much trouble. Don’t get your clothes dirty, I told myself. I backed the hay rack into the shed in case it rained (which it didn’t) but If I had left it out, the 8 bales on it for the next PossAbilities hayride would have gotten rained on for sure.
And then I thought to myself, don’t go dig a hole for the new concrete because if it rains, you’ll have a hole full of water. And then I went and dug a hole. I didn’t mean to, I meant to just clean up the edges using the tractor loader but I kind of got carried away. I took the excavated dirt back behind the machine shed as I’m building up that area for the lean-to, which is next summer’s project. There was that tree branch hanging down in my way. Course it was coming from 20’ up in a box elder tree and the loader bucket only reaches up 18’. So, I pushed the whole tree over. That’s the thing about box elder trees, they don’t have much of a root to them, and when the ground is wet like this, it’s pretty easy to push one over. A smart person will pay attention to the top of the tree so it doesn’t fall back onto the tractor. I’m grateful I have a cab that is designed to protect the occupant, but I’ve broken a lot of headlights and mirrors pretending I’m in a bulldozer rather than a farm tractor. I pushed that tree over, which leaned onto another tree, so pushed that one over too. None of this was the reason I went outside, but I was in the tractor and didn’t get my clothes dirty.
The third group from PossAbilites had a much warmer day for a hayride. I took a longer route, up on the hills. One kid didn’t want to get out of the van, and that’s alright. A staff member stayed back with them.
Last Saturday we hosted a “Combo Welcome & Movie/Pizza on the Farm Night” for Kelly’s work people, the staff and trainee’s in the Pathology division. It rained during the day and it took some effort to get the bonfire started, and we decided to have the movie in the machine shed because it was darn chilly outside. It was a good group, they ate a lot of pizza and popcorn, and they made a good dent in the 8 gallon rootbeer keg. The movie was our favorite, ‘Mr Magorium’s Wonder Emporium’.
You know, back when daughter graduated from high school we got a rootbeer keg. That was the first time I ever tapped a keg. My brother isn’t sure how we’re related if I had never tapped a keg before. So now I’ve tapped 2 kegs! Both rootbeer. My brother says I’ll be ready for actual beer next.
At the college I’ve been working on shirt sleeves. Swapped sleeves from some shirts to other shirts, and shortened them enough they still qualify as sleeves to keep admin happy, but not long enough to bug me. And this summer my nephew-in-law Justin gave me a Hawaiian shirt, with the sleeves cut off, because he had described me as “flowery”. In a good way! It didn’t have a pocket, but he dug one of the sleeves out of the garbage, and I added a pocket. All told, I swapped 4 sets of shirt sleeves. I’m not very good at sewing. I can manage, but it isn’t pretty. Good thing the seams are inside.
Sewing is sort of like construction. Just with other tools. When I was a kid, mom would let me fill the bobbin. I always loved threading the machine, and the bobbin on the little spindle that would “pop” over when full fascinated me for whatever mysterious reason. I didn’t bother changing thread on these sleeves. I picked a purple thread that matched some of the sleeves, and a teal colored bobbin thread and I just used them for everything because I like the colors. I tried using pins but I struggled more than one would expect with pins. It made me think of the strawberry pin cushion mom had. I wondered if I should get a pin cushion for the costume room, as opposed to the box of pins in there now. A magnetic one? Do I think it really matters?? I thought about thimbles too, and playing with them. And I had happy memories of mom. You never know do you; you let your kid do something, and 50 years later they’re swapping shirt sleeves.
Every mechanic knows you don’t tighten up all the bolts until everything is assembled and yet here I was struggling with getting the bolts lined up on the manifold for the 630. And there’s three gaskets in the middle of all of this and they shift and move while trying to get it all in place. There are six bolts that attach the intake and exhaust manifold to the tractor, and four bolt that hold the intake to the exhaust. I tightened the four bolts first, which is why I couldn’t get the other six all in place. I messed with it for an hour trying this that and some other things. Finally realized I had tightened those bolts. I loosened them, got all six bolts in place, THEN tightened everything up. Just like a professional.
Yeah, I should have put gloves on. Usually I do, this time I got ahead of my self. Between the black gasket maker goop, and the silver ‘Never-seez’ I put on the bolts, it took a while to clean my hands when I was done. all that fussing and I never got grumpy or mad about it. And that’s interesting. I have such a pleasant time working in the shop. Course working on the 630, part of that is, as I told Kelly, when I was milking cows usually I was fixing something because it was broke and I needed it and I didn’t have time to be messing around. I just needed the darn thing fixed ASAP to get on with whatever. But this is sort of a ‘just because’ repair so there’s no pressure– other than my mechanic for the carburetor asking me if I have the tractor running yet, so now I feel like he’s judging me. Other than that, no pressure. And I like that.
SEWING BY HAND AND THIMBLES AND PIN CUSHIONS. WHAT ABOUT THEM? WHAT PIN CUSHION SHOULD I GET?
I know that I always say that YA and I don’t go to the fair for the food but it would be a lie if we didn’t enjoy the food part of each day. Here’s a lowdown on the 2025 fair foods for us:
Hot Siracha Funnel Cake Bites. This is not a new food but it is still the first thing that I get on the first day of the fair. It doesn’t hurt that the owners of the stall know me and have the bite dough ready for me; normally they don’t make the bite dough so early because most folks want sweet in the morning. Savory and just a bit hot with the siracha sauce.
Beignets. This was a new stall this year and they knocked it out of the park. The beignets were hot, fluffy, just the right amount of powdered sugar. They also had a lot of tea and coffee selections, although the beverages were on the pricey side.
Sweet Squeakers. As always, The Blue Barn knows what we like. This year’s new offering was cheese curds batter fried with lemon whipped cream and raspberry sauce. A perfect way to start Day Two. The pierogies and the French toast bites are still on the menu and we sampled them on Day Three and Four. Still yummy.
Filled Churro and Chimney Cake. I’m putting these together because they were actually similar and disappointing in the same way. Both were churro/doughnut dough caked and filled with stuff: the churro with Nutella and the chimney cake with ice cream and Nutella (although not much Nutella). Both suffered by being stuffed which decreased the crunch factor. Nutella and ice cream however were excellent.
Dessert Dog. This is the second year that the West End Creamery was disappointing. This new food was advertised as ice cream sandwiched between pieces of coffee cake, drizzled with strawberry/rhubarb sauce and on a stick. First off, the stick was a waste – you could NOT eat this off a stick – fork was required. The coffee cake was more like cookie dough but not that good. And the price was outrageous. Probably no West End Creamery for me next year.
Green Apple Sucker Ice Cream. YA had this and informed me immediately that I wouldn’t like it because it tasted exactly like those green apple caramel suckers. Which she adores and I do not. Five stars from YA.
Jumbo Tater Tots. We finally had these on our final day – YA had been dragging her feet for some reason. We got the cheese bomb version and they were exactly as expected – huge cheese filled tater tots. We had sour cream and chives on the side and they were delicious.
All the rest of our favorites were still great: roasted corn, Hawaiian shave ice, pickle pizza, cheese curds, potato cheddar crepe, blueberry pie and multiple applications of cookies. Can’t forget to mention my favorite mocktails from Summer Lakes. They have several varieties and I switch up but my favorite one is the Wedgehammer – orange juice, lemonade, lime juice, ginger and a slice of orange.
When I read through this, it sounds like all we do is eat, but remember all this is spread out over 5-6 days and for the most part we share everything. There were several new foods we didn’t get to – if they’re still around next year maybe we’ll get to them.
Anything you’ve been craving this week (food or otherwise)?
My bales look sorry this summer. Saggy and disintegrating looking. Ben explained to me how this can happen – kinda made sense.
But saggy and disintegrating doesn’t seem to be a problem for my veggies. We’re having a bumper crop of everything. Basil, chives, rosemary, cilantro, poblano peppers, hot macho peppers, mint and 4 kinds of tomatoes. Romas, some heirloom, sweet 100 cherry and in a summer surprise, I’ve actually gotten a couple of Santa tomatoes from the plant that I grew from a seed. I’m sure there’s more out there but I haven’t harvested for a couple of days.
Santa Tomatoes
I used up all the cilantro already. Four jars of pesto so far, an ice cube tray of chopped mint with lime juice, another ice cube tray of chopped basil with olive oil. Eight containers of tomato sauce. Gifts of tomatoes to neighbors and friends.
And lots and lots of tomato recipes. (This was all going on while I had a MASSIVE zucchini to deal with as well.) I’ve made my favorite pasta with cherry tomatoes a couple of times. Made tomato butter that was terrific on the zucchini corn bread. This weekend I’m making panzanella, tomato basil soup and some tomato rice. Probably time to consign some of the tomatoes to the freezer as well. Whole tomatoes right into freezer bags for use this winter.
Gosh – I feel like Renee and Chris with all this produce and cooking!
We had our first church handbell rehearsal last Thursday, and welcomed some new players. During some after-rehearsal snacks, the conversation started on gardening. Two of the new players, a married female couple, said the rains this summer really helped with their zucchini crop, but they had too many now. We advised them to take the excess to the food pantry. Another veteran bell player told the story of moving to a small Idaho town where her husband was a Luthern pastor. They were quite solemnly warned to keep their car doors locked at all times in the summer and fall because people would stealthily deposit unwanted excess zucchini if the doors were unlocked.
We have never been the recipients of excess zucchini until last Saturday, when I found a nice big one on the front steps. I highly suspect the new bell ringers of pranking us with the zucchini. Since it is a bigger one we plan to shred it and make zucchini pancakes. Just wait until our butternuts are ripe! The new bell ringers may be in for a surprise on their front steps.
When was the last time you were pranked or you pranked someone? What would you like to leave surreptitiously on someone’s yard or front steps?
Husband and I order lots of foods on-line that are imported. We get quite a bit from a Spanish importer, such as tomato sauces, olive oil, dried beans, serrano ham, and Spanish cheeses and pancetta. We also order pasta and parmesan cheese from an Italian importer, and gallon cans of Turkish olive oil from the Syrian grocery store in Fargo. We get beans from Rancho Gordo. I like to have a well stocked larder. We are really spoiled.
I find myself in a quandary now, due to the threat and uncertainty of tariffs, the fact that we are moving soon, and the fact that this is the the time of year to stock up on dried beans and other items as it is harvest time. There is a special bean from Spain called Tolosa beans, for example, that is essential to a soup we love to make, and is hard to find in the States after autumn. We are also trying to use up as much food we have currently so we don’t have to move it.
After the threats of tariffs emerged in the new year I ordered two gallons of Turkish olive oil and two half-gallons of Spanish olive oil before the price skyrocketed. We will have a lot of olive oil to move. Yesterday I ordered eight pounds of Rancho Gordo beans as we were short on some beans we cook often. They won’t take up too much room on the moving truck. I don’t plan to order any more food on-line at this point, but I am feeling increasingly militant about not letting politics interfere with my cooking or my finances.
How might tariffs impact your budget? What imported foods do you purchase? What foods do you make sure you have on hand?
One of the challenges of sharing a kitchen with Husband is his extreme fussiness regarding the foods he cooks and prepares. He has many preconceived expectations as to what goes with what, and is unhappy if the combinations aren’t exactly the way he wants them. When he seasons a dish, he spends quite a bit of time tasting and adding this and that til it is just right in his mind. I can’t tell the difference.
The same goes for his fussiness in pairings of different foods. I can usually put up with his demands for just the right main course with just the right sides. It is a little more difficult now that we are trying to empty our freezers before we move. We have agreed, for example, that we aren’t going to buy any more sausage, brats, or ground meat until the stuff we have is gone. There are a lot of sausages to be used up.
The other day I was pretty exasperated with him for stopping at the butcher shop and buying some ring bologna and summer sausage. I reminded him of all the brats and other sausage that we had that would work just as well as bologna. He insisted that he had to have the bologna because that is always what he has with the particular side dish he was going to have that evening. I told him that we would never get through the food we already had if he keeps this up, and that he might have to change some of his expectations for meals if we are to reduce the food in the freezers. He sighed and stated in a somewhat martyred tone that he would just have to start practicing acceptance regarding our meals. Husband says he owns his culinary idealism.
I am fortunate to be married to someone who loves to cook and loves good food. I just hope he doesn’t get too distressed as he has to change his ideas, at least temporarily, regarding our meals.
What do you have to practice acceptance of? Do you have inviolable expectations for some meals and food pairings?
Last week was fraught with baking. On July 26 the peach man arrived. He is a guy from Mott, ND, about 50 miles to the southwest of us who spends his summers driving out to Washington and picking dark red and Ranier cherries, and Cling and Freestone peaches, and driving them back to towns in southeast Montana and southwest North Dakota. He sells them in the mall parking lot in our town. The Freestone peaches are the best. We bought half a crate of them. It was very important for my parents to get a crate of peaches in the late summer and gobble them as fast as we could. I continue the tradition.
The peaches went into paper grocery bags and ripened in three days, all at the same time. It was another mantra in my family that it was a sin to let food spoil, so I set to making peach crumble, peach upside-down cake, and a pasta salad with peach, corn and tomatoes. and we ate the rest on Grape Nuts and ice cream. Husband will eat the remaining four peaches on cottage cheese.
We only buy peaches from the guy from Mott. He will come around in a few weeks with cherries from the Flathead Lake area of Montana. We will get them, too. It is unfortunate that Mott has been known in the area for decades as “Mott, the spot that God forgot”. I have no idea why. I think a more apt description would be “Mott, the spot where fruit is hot”.
What were the important traditions you grew up with?What was the town you grew up in noted for?
Trail Baboon 