Prayer of Gratitude

"Then King David went in and sat before the LORD and said, "Who am I, O Lord GOD, and what is my house, that you have brought me thus far? And yet this was a small thing in your eyes, O Lord GOD. . . . Because of your promise, and according to your own heart, you have brought about all this greatness, to make your servant know it. Therefore you are great, O LORD God. For there is none like you, and there is no God besides you, according to all that we have heard with our ears. And who is like your people . . . whom God went to redeem to be his people, making himself a name and doing great and awesome things . . . And now, O Lord GOD, you are God, and your words are true, and you have promised this good thing to your servant. Now therefore may it please you to bless the house of your servant, so that it may continue forever before you. For you, O Lord GOD, have spoken, and with your blessing shall the house of your servant be blessed forever." (from 2 Samuel 7)

I have been dwelling on this passage a lot recently, and I thought it was quite appropriate to share in honor of Thanksgiving. I am overwhelmed when I consciously think about how much I have been given by God: how firm a foundation, how loving a family, how supportive a community, how many opportunities.

Of course, there is one thing I am thankful for that King David couldn't quite spell out:

"Long ago, at many times, and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world. He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power. After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high . . . We see him who for a little while was made lower than the angels, namely Jesus, crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone." (from Hebrews 1 & 2)

Thank you, Jesus - my lord, my God, my redeemer!

End of October Favorites

Recent faves:

• The shawl my lovely sister embroidered for me that has come in oh-so-handy during the cold snap this weekend
• My David Simpson Campaign mail-out. 9" x 12"!! Bam! Go big or go home! :) (and a not-so-recent fave: the Texas and Liberty pin I got at his fundraiser banquet!)
• Baylor Homecoming! A bonfire, a parade, wearing green and gold all weekend - What's not to love!? (Icing on the cake: winning the football game!)

Recent not-my-faves:

• A cardboard package with perforations that is still impossible to open without ripping it to shreads
• A bathtub that smells like mildew (Thankfully, this prompted me to take the time to thoroughly clean my tub!)
• A health insurance rate increase "due to a recent birthday." Worst birthday present ever! Thanks a lot, BCBS!

Hey, how nicely balanced of me! Three and three! Let's leave it at that.

Hello, World.

I have officially climbed back onto the face of the earth. We'll see how long I stay here. I seem to wait so long to write these things that I have so much to say, I can't get started. And then when I do, I write a book and no one wants to wade through it! Alas, I continue:

About two months ago, I thought about writing a blog about the warning I got while driving on the interstate. I was driving a lonely stretch of nothing between the desert of west Texas and the Piney Woods of east Texas, and I was pulled over for doing 73.4 miles per hour in a 70 zone. I wasn't even sure he was pulling me over because my speedometer said 71mph. (I have since discovered that my speedometer is off by 2mph - checked it with my Garmin.) Anyway, he was totally nice, and I was totally nervous, as always. He asked where I was going, asked if there was an emergency and then reminded me that the speed limit was 70. I saw 7 cop cars within 30 minutes of that incident, and I saw 2 other people being pulled over. Evidently they were making a concerted effort to crack down on all those speeders in the desert! Personally, I was glad he had pulled me over. And I hope I still would have been glad had I gotten a ticket. It is reassuring to know that laws mean something. Don't you ever feel like so many of our laws are pointless because they are never enforced?? I am happy to report that I have been driving the speed limit (two under, according to my speedometer) ever since then. This may not be a big deal for you, but it is a total mindset shift for me.

About a month ago, I thought about blogging about my visit to my great-grandmother's grave on her 109th birthday. I know that she is not there and that she is in heaven and not some spirit inhabiting the cemetery in which her body is buried, but I still think there is something very special about visiting the graves of people you love. And not only special, but important. It's important to recognize the people who have had an impact on your life and to take time to honor them. Grandmommy was a godly, loving, determined woman. She raised my grandmother to love Jesus, who raised my mother to love Jesus who helped raise me to love Jesus - what a heritage! So Grandmother and I took advantage of the free day we had to drive over to her grave and put some flowers there. And I took supplies to clean hers and Granddaddy's headstones while we were there. It was lovely. And I love that I got to do it with Grandmother.

About two weeks ago I thought about blogging about my trip to Austin (are we sensing a trend here?). Went there to meet up with some friends who were visiting from New York. Love, love, love the Texas Capitol Building! Love the star in the middle of the dome, love the crazy echo you can hear when you stand in the middle of the rotunda, love the State Troopers wearing their cowboy hats while doing security checks. (Speaking of security checks, I also love that you can still take your concealed gun into the building if you have a license for it. Thank you for treating us like sane, responsible adults, State of Texas.)

Not sure if anything blog-book worthy has happened since then. Oh, my great-aunt, Grandmother's sister, came to visit for a few days. It was wonderful to hear them talking together. And while she was here, we went to a fundraiser dinner for David Simpson, the guy running for representation of our district on the state level. I like him so much! He is a family man and business guy who felt God calling him to go into politics to make a difference. Check out his website so you can fall in love with him, too! :)

Oh, one more thing! I watched the movies "Babies" a couple of days ago.

Delightfully wonderful! It's a documentary about four babies from four different countries, and it follows them from birth to when they take their first steps. Ahhhh! I loved it! Watching babies learn is so interesting! And seeing the different parenting styles was also really interesting. I think they must have asked the parents to let them film the babies for 30-minute uninterrupted spans of time or something because there is a whole lot of baby and not a lot of parents (not any narration or commentary, either). But that makes it really neat because you get to know the personalities of these babies. It is really well done - you will come out of it with a favorite of the four, I promise! :) (I don't mean there's one that will be everyone's favorite; I'm just saying, the babies are so different, and characterized so well, that you will just naturally identify with one of them.)

Okay, that is all for now. If you stuck through to the end, well done! I will try not to write a book next time.

Recent Musings

1. Wheat Pennies are pretty cool. I got a Wheat Penny back in change at Walmart the other day and got a little unnecessarily excited :) If an image of said coin doesn't spring immediately to mind, no worries! I just happen to have a picture of the one I got most recently, which I have included for your benefit :) Granted, it's supposed to have more detail - the detail on mine's been rubbed off. Just look for an image on Google. I'm not a serious coin-collector, but I have to admit, I think wheat pennies are pretty cool-looking, so I've started taking them out of circulation when they pass my way :) This most recent one was more exciting than the others I have because it's the oldest one I've found so far: 1917. They started minting the wheat penny in 1909 and then changed the wheat design to the Lincoln Memorial image in 1959. The 1950's don't seem that long ago, but 1917! That's the year we entered World War I! That's before Prohibition and The Roaring Twenties. Before the Great Depression! That penny has been around for a lot of stuff! Okay, enough from the history geek.
2. Laptop keyboards are incomprehensibly difficult to type on. This observation comes on the heels of the purchase of my new computer a couple of days ago. A laptop, to be exact. My old computer crashed during a scan last week and then continued to crash about every thirty minutes after that. That could be a slight exaggeration (I am my father's daughter :) ), but whatever it was, it was extremely inconvenient. So I am now happily tapping away on a small, shallow laptop keyboard and loving every minute. Correcting a lot of typos in the process, but loving every minute!
3. I am strangely amused by the fact that during the summer, hot water comes out of the cold-water tap (coming from the warm pipes in the ground outside) and cold water comes out of the hot-water tap (coming from the cool pipes between the faucet and the water heater)? Maybe this comes from hanging out with fourth-graders all week. I've been doing VBS and we have been entertaining them with cheesy illustrations like making raisins float in Sprite. They thought it was cool. (A related thought: Despite the fact that our curriculum is really good, there have been times when I have stopped reading in amazement and thought, "Really???" Like when they said that the bubbles that make the raisins float "are like convicions," making you "rise to the top" of a situation. Really??? Sounds like the stuff that got added into my English papers when I tried to write them after 2am!)
4. Does anyone else feel like there's always either nothing happening or everything happening? My computer gives up the ghost right as I start working VBS which runs into the family reunion which falls over Fathers' Day...

Farmers' Market

I went to the Historic Longview Farmers' Market this morning! They just started holding it this year, and I've been wanting to go ever since it opened in May. Actually, before then, even. Chef David from The Cook's Nook helped organize it and get it going, so he has been talking it up for a while. (There were a couple of months in which we got a lot of fun calls from farmers with great East Texas accents at the store :) ).

Wait, it's "historic" but it just opened this year?, you ask? I know, it confused me, too, at first. Notice the position of the adjective "historic." It's describing Longview. Because it's in the old downtown ("historic") area of Longview. Aha!

Anyway. I was finally in town on a Saturday, so I took the opportunity to get some fresh produce.

Loved it! I bought some sort of Italian green beans (which I'm not sure how to cook at the moment), tomatoes, onions, blackberries, and a huge, fragrant bunch of basil. I loved the farmer who was selling the basil. When I asked for a bunch, he pulled one out of the bucket and held it up to his face, took a deep breath into the leaves, and said, "I love it!" :) It did smell so good.

In case you're interested in finding a farmers' market near you, check out this great website I found, localharvet.org! Obviously, it isn't an exhaustive list, but it's pretty thorough.

Lagniappe

Yesterday while I was looking for clothes-pins in Grandmother's closet, I came across some love letters from World War II. Um, I know. It's like when you read those news stories about people finding a letter from President Lincoln just lying around. You think, Who does that actually happen to?! (Or even, To whom does that actually happen?! :) ) Well, evidently it can happen in a Crowson house.

When I told Grandmother about my discovery, she was so excited and had no idea there had been such a thing in her house. I read them out loud, and when we got through them all, she said, "Well, that's lagniappe!" ("Lagniappe" means an unexpected benefit, or a bonus. She did spend a significant time of her life in Louisiana :) )

So the letters! They are from my great-great-uncle Dow to his wife Lourie (called Ree). He was in the Army and was eventually sent to the Pacific. He left for service in October of 1943 and was shipped out in September of 1944. I found letters from Ree to Dow from January and February of 1944, while he was still in Virginia and letters from Dow to Ree from September 1944 (from on-board ship) into October '44.

They wrote to each other every day. Her letters are funny because she "bawls him out" (her words) for missing a day whenever she doesn't get a letter a particular day. (Evidently, he chose to visit his sister one day (this is while he is still in Virginia) and didn't leave himself enough time to write her. The nerve! :) ) And because she took over his job at the boot-making factory when he left, she talks a lot about the particulars of what she is doing at work and how the machines are always breaking down. His letters are full of talk about how hot it is and how he wishes he could tell her more about what he is doing and where he is. He does mention coconuts and "natives" and leaving New Guinea (once they have been re-stationed), though.

I have to say, however, that my favorite part of the letters is the closings. She signed her letters with some variation of:

Love, your wife.
Ree
(Ree & Dow)

And he always signed his:

From the one who loves you.
Your husband.
Love, Dow.
(Dow & Ree)
I love you.

Seriously. Every time! So cute!

Oil Change

I got the oil changed in my car today, and I must say, it was a wonderful experience. I usually hate having to take care of car-maintenance issues because I feel so clueless. Is it normal to have one area of knowledge so totally off your radar? It probably shouldn't be, at any rate. Nonetheless, I know almost nothing about cars. The one exception to this is changing a tire. Thanks to Daddy, I have been able to change a tire by myself since I got my license. And unfortunately, I have done it enough times since then that I'm pretty confident in my tire-changing abilities. However, if anything else starts to go wrong, I get this sinking feeling in my stomach and immediately start to think of who I can call who might possibly take pity on me and help me out. And when it comes to taking my car into a shop, I'm a nervous wreck. I just know that the mechanic will take one look at me and know how totally ignorant I am. I hate the feeling that either A) You're being taken advantage of and sold unnecessary services or B) The guy just has no patience for you.

This is why I appreciate so much the place where I get my oil changed (called Time-It Lube, if you're curious). They have their female-customer-protocol down to an art. The guy who comes out to the car always opens the car door and the waiting-room door for me. Um, yes, please! The mechanic always goes over everything with me before I pay the bill. Example: "We checked your oil filter and it's good for another few oil changes, we checked the fluid levels in thus-and-so, and cleaned off the battery whatchamacallits. Your whatsit cap is on good and tight, and such-and-such and so-and-so." (It all makes so much sense to me :) ) Then after I have paid, they start the car, usher me in, and close the door for me. I come away feeling so feminine! On top of all this, they have a "Ladies' Day" on Wednesdays and give 15% off to any lady that comes in. I'll take that.

I've never paid attention to how they interact with guys that bring their cars in. I wonder how different it is. Probably just the opening doors part. I guess they can afford to give a ladies discount because so few ladies bring cars in. I sure wouldn't want to if I had a husband who would do it for me! But these guys are definitely a close second!

Welcome, Spring!

Say hello to our newest addition: The first bud on the Bluebonnets in my back yard. Love it!

I can't get over how the change from winter to spring is so substantial. It seems to affect everything! Not just the temperature outside, but people's activities and even their moods. At least mine anyway. When the sun started shining and we had our near-Easter cold snap, the one that usually signals the last of the cold weather, it was like a weight was lifted, and everything seemed to be okay. I can't explain it, and I don't have time because I'm off to work in a few, but I was just so excited to see one more evidence of spring this morning, I wanted to share :)

Ginger Pudding

I made a Ginger Pudding this evening from a recipe found in a little cook booklet from 1910 called "Home Helps: A Pure Food Cook Book." It was published by the makers of Cottolene, a brand of shortening produced from 1868 to the mid 20th century, so it has advertisements throughout (or rather, testimonials), as well as a majority of recipes that require some sort of shortening. Grandmother bought the booklet at an antique fair because while she was looking at it there, she opened it to the page with Ginger Pudding and thought it sounded good :) Incidentally, this recipe doesn't require shortening.

So here we go:

Ginger Pudding (by Mrs. Armstrong)

Mix together thoroughly one and one-half cups of flour, one teaspoon each of ginger and soda, one cup molasses, two-thirds cup of boiling water and one beaten egg. Steam one hour in a tube pan, and serve with either hard of liquid pudding sauce.

I mixed the dry ingredients together before I added the rest. Just seemed like good form. And I set my oven at 350 degrees Fahrenheit and put a jelly-roll pan of boiling water underneath my tube pan for the "steam" part. Not sure if that was what they were going for, but it worked out. I also used mini tube pans instead of one big one, and my pudding only needed to cook for 10 minutes!











I found a recipe later on in the pudding section that I think corresponds with the "pudding sauce" mentioned, though maybe Mrs. Armstrong didn't have a particular sauce in mind. At any rate, this is what I used:

Creamy Sauce and Hard Sauce (by Mrs. Lincoln)

Cream one-fourth cup of butter, add slowly one-half to one cup powdered sugar, beat in gradually two tablespoons rich fruit syrup, or wine, or any fresh fruit juice, and two to four tablespoons thick cream (whipped or not, as you have time). Serve hot by standing bowl over boiling water just before serving, and stirring only till melted and creamy. Or, serve cold; or, if for hard sauce, omit cream and pack it into dish for serving and chill till firm.

I added orange juice to mine and not as much powdered sugar as she suggests. It seems to be more of a spread than a sauce, but I suppose if you served it hot, the butter would melt, making it more of a liquid.

It was so good! The pudding and the sauce! I'm still wierded out that this cake-like thing is called a pudding, but it's not really a cake, either. It's a little more dense, and sponge-y, I guess. My only critique is that I think it needs more ginger. But it was so fun to make a recipe for the first time, from an iffy source, and have it turn out so well!

All Hail the Mighty State!

Happy Texas Independence Day!!

On this day in 1836, the Convention adopted the Texas Declaration of Independence and asserted their status as The Republic Of Texas. Yeehaw for Texas! I wanted to make Texas-shaped cookies to celebrate the holiday, but I have, most unfortunately, begun a low-carb kick-start plan this week. Boo for low carbs. More on that in a second. However, I found a fun close-second option instead of cookies: Texas-shaped cheese! :) Laugh if you must, but cheese conveniently has no carbs, and what was I to do with a Texas cookie cutter that needed some love, today of all days!? So here's the result:


Now, about this low-carb kick-start thing. If you haven't ever stopped to think about it, let me first inform you that all comfort food is super-high in carbohydrates. Milk, bread, pasta, flour, anything with creamy goodness or warm fluffiness - all out of the picture right now (I think the reason people lose weight on low-carb diets is because there is nothing good left to eat, so you just don't eat as much! :)). The kick-start part of the plan means you take low carbs to an extreme and keep your intake at a minimum with the understanding that later on, you will add more carbs back into your diet. So I am trying to stay under 20 grams of carbs a day. To put this in perspective, a slice of bread has about 15 - 18 carbs in it. Yeah. So, as I am eating lettuce wraps (in lieu of sandwiches) and celery sticks without peanut butter and roast beef without gravy or potatoes or carrots, I am consoling myself with the fact that this is a one-week experiment. I read online in different places that the first week is the hardest, so maybe I will loosen the restrictions a tad and stick with it the second week. We'll see.

In other, probably more useful news, Grandmother started reading Desiring God, by John Piper and shared a phrase with me that she liked enough to underline it in a library book! (in pencil, of course :)). He said, "I learned how to dig for gold rather than rake for leaves when I take up the Scriptures." It took a little thinking over for me to fully appreciate it. But don't you love it!?

Also in the preface (which is where the previous sentence came from) is a beautiful quotation from a Matthew Henry book.

" 'The joy of the Lord will arm us against the assaults of our spiritual enemies and put our mouths out of taste for those pleasures with which the tempter baits his hooks.' This is the great business of life--to "put our mouths out of taste for those pleasures with which the tempter baits his hooks."

Love it. I'm next in line to read it when she finishes :)

A week's worth of musings

Haven't written in a while, and this when I've had so many thoughts running through my head. I shall share a sampling:

• Procrastination is inexcusable. And I am the queen of it. But really, can you think of a legitimate excuse for procrastination? It's basically just laziness. It's deciding not to do something you should do/need to do/want to do simply because you can't muster up enough gumption to do it now. My pronouncement does not apply to scheduling things for a later date. There are very often good reasons to plan to do something in the future that you possibly could do now. The key is the plan. And, of course, the following of the plan. Saying, "I'll do it tomorrow/next week/later" is not a plan. My recognition of all this was brought on by the death of my great uncle last week. My first thought was, "I was going to visit him sometime soon..." I had been planning on visiting him "soon" since our family reunion last June! When we were all gathered for the funeral, I heard my Grandmother and one of her other brothers talking about how they both had been meaning to call him to catch up. We all do it. Some more than others. Maybe it's just a part of the way one's brain works. But I want so badly to avoid it!

• In-and-out trips to the grocery store are very satisfying! I love it when I have a short, manageable list (preferably, short enough that you don't actually need it written down) and can walk straight to what I need, put it in my basket, check out, and move on to the next errand. I made a trip to the bank and the grocery store in under 30 minutes today. It was a beautiful thing.

• I am a sucker for good advertising. A recent example: My grandmother has a cookbook from 1950 (Betty Crocker's Picture Cookbook, to be exact) that she got as a wedding present and that I have used on occasion (mostly for the recipes for biscuits or cornbread, once for a cake recipe submitted by Irene Dunne herself!). Most of the time, though, I use something newer. Well, last week in the mail we got a little booklet advertising the re-publication of the original 1950 Betty Crocker Picture Cookbook. After looking through it, I was completely convinced it was the cookbook I needed to use for every meal from now on! I mean, it said it was "the cookbook that started America cooking!" "It's been cherished by three generations of American home cooks!" "It's packed with useful tips and heartwarming 1950-style 'wit and wisdom' you just won't find in today's cookbooks!" How could I live without it? I should probably even buy a new one just in case the old one wears out. I mean, it has tears and loose pages already. That's when I realized what was happening. No excuse. They had me eating out of their (collective) hand! It was then that I remembered the entire section dedicated to molded salads (what?), the suggestion to go to your local hardware store and order aluminum foil, and the way all of the given methods of making coffee involved using the stove top. I suppose it's not the only cookbook I'll ever need. Fun to use? Yes! A useful source of recipes? Yes! A miracle from heaven for the kitchen? Probably not. Ah, advertising.

• Last but not least, my new favorite thing: Christmas Jelly! It tastes like a British Christmas. It's labeled as "Spiced Mixed Fruit Christmas Preserve," and it's got plums, red currants, and sultanas in it, among other things. So good. It's like mince pie for your toast.
  

Thoughts on an old movie

I watched "Dragonwyck" (1946), with Gene Tierney and Vincent Price for the first time yesterday. I am surprised sometimes watching old movies when they address the existence of God so directly, as it seems to be avoided at all costs in Hollywood now-days. Especially as it is handled in this movie, with the protagonist taking the intolerant viewpoint that there is right and wrong and a God who is the ultimate judge. The main character Miranda (played by Gene Tierney) - a likable, steady, relatable middle-class girl - was ever referring to how everything happened by God's will and how people were made to know right from wrong. Her husband Nicolas (played by Vincent Price, the typecast villain) - wealthy, pompous, and dark - was a law unto himself and declared that he wouldn't live by a list of rules.

In the scene that caught my attention, Miranda is feeling guilty for marrying Nicholas so soon after his first wife died, and she is trying to talk about it with him, but he doesn't share her scruples. Here's part of the dialogue:

Miranda: Well, I believe that God has put a sense of right and wrong within all of us. And that when we are doing wrong, no matter if no one else knows, we do.

Nicolas: And you've remembered that ever since your Sunday school days, haven't you? That's a good girl.
Now, let us enjoy our lunch.

Miranda: Nicolas, you do believe in God...?

Nicolas: I believe in myself and I am answerable to myself. I will not live according to printed mottos like the directions on a medicine bottle.

(Watch it on YouTube. Starts at about 3:40.)

Later on, there is a conversation between the two where he talks about how he wants to live, to really live, and not merely follow the routine of normal life (this explanation with which he justifies his drug usage, but that aside). Here's what he says:

"...By ordinary standards, you're quite intelligent. But I will not live by ordinary standards. I will not run with the pack. I will not be chained into a routine of living which is the same for others. I will not look to the ground and move on the ground with the rest."

(Again, on YouTube. Beginning at about 2:13.)

And I thought how often we fall into the routine of "Christian life," missing out on truly living. It is much easier to be religious, to have a set list of duties to perform and services to attend, than to live a full, challenging, day-to-day-changing, not-in-our-control life. And all this made me think of an article my mom shared with me (The Demographics of Irrelevance) about the dire need for churches to preach and teach a comprehensive Christian worldview, how there are fewer men in church because it doesn't offer a full, challenging, inspiring view of life as a Christian.

Here's an excerpt from the article:

Why would a young man stay in the church? Is there a “male” message in our churches today? Is there a message that gives a young man a worthy cause to work for and to fight for? Why would he stay, to listen all his life to the same sermon over and over again, in many different versions of it? Come back every Sunday to learn—for the n-th time, over and over again—that God loves us? Shed tears over the same emotional stuff every week?
...

This hasn’t always been the case. Two or three centuries ago . . . the American church had a message of victory, a message that this country was a City on a Hill, and by its example God would change the world for Christ. Whether they were rafters and cowboys in the wilderness, or store clerks and builders in the cities of the East, Christian boys heard the same message from their preachers: “We are a nation created by God to be Christian and to exhibit God’s glory. We have a Manifest Destiny to create a godly society that will be admired and imitated by the nations of the world. Christ has established His Kingdom on this earth centuries ago, and everything you do—your job, your family, your entertainment even—is expanding the Kingdom of Christ on this earth.” Pastors preached the civil liberties of the Law of God and then donned the uniform to lead the boys in battle for those liberties. . . . The churches did not wait for their boys to go out and find worthy causes. The churches led the boys in those worthy causes in their crusade to redeem the world for Christ.

I love that phrase, "to redeem the world for Christ." That is indeed a worthy challenge and something that cannot be accomplished merely by attending church every Sunday.

Granted, there is no gospel presented in "Dragonwyck," no mention that it is not the rules that make up true belief in God, but the relationship with and response to our Creator God. But I appreciated Miranda's firm stance, at any rate. And, if you like old movies, I would highly recommend this one! Very dramatic and suspenseful! :) And, of course, there's Gene Tierney!

Questioning the "Easy as Pie" phrase

I began my pie crust trials yesterday. Having discovered recently that January 23rd is National Pie Day, I decided I would like to perfect a homemade pie crust by then. I didn't realize this would be such a large undertaking. There are pretty close to a gazillion pie crust recipes out there (give or take :) ). So not only do I have to get good at making them, but I have to decide which recipe I want to use, too! And then, Grandmother was telling me this morning that some pie crusts work better with custard fillings (when you have to pre-cook the crust) and some work better for fruit-type fillings (when the filling and the crust cook together). Gracious! I am overwhelmed!

Anyway, I started off by comparing a Barbara Richardson (East Texas cooking legend) recipe, Easy Pie Crust, and one out of a new recipe book I have (Reader's Digest's "Taste of Home") called, Classic Pie Pastry. Not until I had already begun did I realize that these two would not make a good comparison. Barbara Richardson's is one you just press into the pie plate, while the other is one you roll out. I mean, if one is skilled at making pie crusts, sure! It would be useful to compare which one you like better. But, having never rolled out a crust in my life, I pretty much wasted my time with this one. With the exception that I learned I need to master rolling out pie pastry before I master any particular recipe and certainly before I have the gall to judge one over the other! (Oh, and with the added exception that now I have two really good coconut cream pies in my refrigerator, tough crust or not :) ) Basically, what happened was that I overworked the dough I was supposed to be rolling out, so it turned out really tough. The press-and-go one had better texture (because it hadn't been manhandled!) but it was pretty ugly, as crusts go. See for yourself:

(^ Pressed into the pan)


(^Rolled out flat and placed in pan)

Conclusion: I need to choose a basic, simple, plain-o pie crust recipe and practice my rolling skills.