Tastes Like Food

Last night we had some friends over and I was going to make sweet potato oven fries… until the oven caught on fire. Yes, right on time for our guests to arrive, the house filed with smoke (no pictures of that). I had forgotten that I spilled some butter in the oven last week when I made scones. So plan B: we used my new deep fryer and the potatoes turned out pretty yummy. not as healthy, I would imagine, but tasty.

Plan A was to bake these mini berry pies as we ate dinner, while the oven was still hot from the sweet potatoes. Scrap that. I waited until today to clean the oven and bake them. I used frozen peaches and blueberries in 2, then apples in the other 2. I sprinkled some sugar and flower over the fruit. The apples got a shot of cinnamon.

Lately, I’ve been reading about superfoods like blueberries and apples. But I’ve also been reading about trans fats in hydrogenated oils like Crisco. (the oil is hydrogenated to make it more stable at room temperature. This process creates trans fats — bad news for your health.)

So with that in mind, here is the pie crust recipe. It’s from my mother.

1.5 cup flower

9 T butter flavor crisco

3/4 t salt

6-7 T ice water

Cut the crisco into the flower + salt combination. Add the water and let sit for a few minutes. Then my mother starts working it, but I like to put this in a plastic bag and into the fridge for a while while the flower hydrates. The fridge keeps the fat cold, allowing layers of flower and crisco to form when you roll the dough out — helping make the crust nice and flaky.

So superfoods and trans fats… a match made in heaven? Tastes like it to me!