Summer Fruit Salad

Sorry for the delay on this recipe....

found at thedishondelish

1 cup cubed watermelon
2 nectarines, pitted and cut into chunks
1 cup hulled and quartered strawberries
Zest of 1/2 lime
1 lime, juiced
3 Tablespoons honey
Pinch of salt

{I more than doubled this recipe for the BBQ on the 24th.}
In a small bowl, combine zest, lime juice, honey and salt. Whisk until combined. In a medium bowl, combine the watermelon, nectarines and strawberries. Drizzle syrup over the fruit. Stir well. Serve chilled for best taste. {In a hurry, I think I ended up grabbing some form of white nectarines...they were still uber delicious but they added a funny color I think}.

Apple Gruyere Pie

I just renewed my Netflix account two days ago and started watching the short lived but critically acclaimed television series Pushing Daisies. It is very fun and quirky and I wish it had found an audience so it would have been on longer than two seasons.

The show is about a pie-maker who can bring the dead back to life with a touch–and kill them again with a second touch. Needless to say, the hapless pie-maker brings a dead woman back to life and falls in love with her, realizing that he can never touch her. In addition to all the macabre antics surrounding reanimated corpses and the like, the show features two spinster aunts who are afflicted both with social anxiety disorder and a great love of expensive cheese. Make sense? No…? Well, like I said, it’s quirky.

Well, anyway, Chuck, the pie-maker’s undead girlfriend sends her cheese-loving aunts an apple pie with Gruyere baked into the crust. In an attempt to cheer them up and alleviate their social anxiety disorder, she laces the pie with homeopathic anti-depressants. I was inspired by Chuck’s pie and decided that I must make this pie, although sadly, without the homeopathic anti-depressants.

Searching the internet I soon discovered that I wasn’t the only inspired to try and make this pie so I read several of the recipes and combined different parts of each one and came up with this recipe. The pie turned out absolutely delicious so I decided to share it on the Humble Pie.

(The next thing in my Netflix Queue is Babette's Feast, which helped inspire this blog; Maybe it will inspire me to post more often.)

Apple Gruyere Pie

Crust Ingredients:

1 - 1/2 cubes (3/4 cup) unsalted butter, cut into 1/2-inch pieces

1/4 cup vegetable shortening cut into 1/2-inch pieces

5 to 7 tablespoons cold water

12 ounces all-purpose flour, approximately 2 3/4 cups, plus extra for dusting

1 teaspoon table salt

1 tablespoon granulated sugar

3 ounces Gruyere cheese finely grated

Directions for the crust:

Place the butter, shortening and water into the refrigerator for 1 hour.

In the bowl of a food processor, combine the flour, salt, Gruyere and sugar by pulsing 3 to 4 times. Add the butter and pulse 5 to 6 times until the texture looks mealy. Add the shortening and pulse another 3 to 4 times until incorporated.

Remove the lid of the food processor and sprinkle in 5 tablespoons of water. Replace the lid and pulse 5 times. Add more water as needed, and pulse again until the mixture holds together when squeezed. Divide dough in half. Shape each half into a disk, wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 1 hour and up to overnight.

Filling Ingredients:

5 Tart Peeled Apples (I used Granny Smith apples)

1 cup Sugar

2 tablespoons Flour

1 teaspoon Cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon Salt

1 tablespoon Cider Vinegar

1 tablespoon Lemon Juice

Directions for filling:

Peel and slice your apples. Soak them in water with a tablespoon of lemon juice. This will prevent the first apples cut from turning a funky color.

In a large mixing bowl mix the remaining ingredients. Drain the water off of the apples and mix them with the spices.

Roll out the bottom piecrust put in glass pie plate. Cut the excess dough off so the crust is on the edge of the pie pan but not over. Puncture the crust with a fork.

(Making my own crust scares me and I normally just use the Pillsbury refrigerated pie crust but since I had to add the Gruyere cheese I had to bake my own. This tutorial was very helpful, if you feel you need step by step instructions for pie crusts watch this tutorial.)

Add the pie filling to the pie plate, dot with pieces of butter, and then roll out the top crust. Make 4 slits in top piecrust to let the steam out of the pie. Lay the piecrust over the top of the pie then cut the excess dough from the top crust so that there is a one-inch overhang off the pie plate. Roll top crust over the bottom crust and then in and then press to make a decorative edge. Grate a little more Gruyere on top of the pie crust.

Directions for baking the pie:

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.

Place pies on a cookie sheet to catch any drips, put in oven, and bake for 60 to 80 minutes, or until you can see the filling bubbling up between the slits in the crust. I put foil around the edge of the crust so it wouldn’t get too brown and took off the foil for the last 15 minutes of baking. Cool on a wire rack at least 20 minutes before serving.

banana pudding

I've become obsessed with learning more about southern dishes. The food here really is just that delicious...not healthy mind you...but delicious. Banana pudding is everywhere here and I love it. I'm on the hunt for a great banana pudding made-from-scratch recipe...but I have found a good compromise for when you don't want to do all that work but you also want something more then just pudding from the box.

Southern Banana Pudding

1 large box instant vanilla pudding mix
2 cups milk
8 ounces sour cream
1 tsp of cinnamon (optional)
8 ounces Cool Whip, thawed
1 box vanilla wafers
3 bananas, super-ripe but not brown, peeled and sliced

In a medium bowl, prepare the pudding as instructed on its box. Beat in the sour cream, making sure to blend well. (Beat in some cinnamon while you're at it, if you'd like. Fold in the Cool Whip just until no white streaks are present.

In the bottom of a trifle bowl or other serving dish, put down a layer of vanilla wafers. Top with about a fourth of the pudding mixture and a layer containing half of the sliced bananas. Top this with another fourth of the pudding. The next additions will be a layer of cookies, a layer of pudding, the rest of the bananas, and the rest of the pudding. For decorative purposes, adorn the pudding with more wafers in an aesthetically-pleasing manner:

Chill for at least 8 hours. Then enjoy!

I got this recipe from a southern cooking blog called A Southern Grace. Check it out.

the perfect roasted marshmallow

Seems Cameron, Mark and Joseph have perfected the technique. Something about patience, even turning and indirect heat over the coals. All very complicated but the results were stunning as the pics prove. We had a great time hanging out with the Larry Arnett tribe Sunday night. The S'mores were ooey gooey delish. Yeah for Kathy for winning them at the family auction:)

Oh, and I think it matters if your marshmallows are jet-puffed. What say you, Cam? Do you recommend puffy?

http://www.ehow.com/how_2111855_roast-perfectly-golden-marshmallow.html