Saturday marked a special day for me – the first CSA pick-up from Hen House. I’ll admit, it was a little like “Christmas Morning” – I was excited and anxious to see what kind of goodies would be in the bags at pickup. And I wasn’t disappointed.
This week I received 2 lb. of ground chuck, a pint of strawberries, tofu, a honey bear, a dozen eggs, a gallon of milk, and a head of lettuce. Since we aren’t a tofu family, I traded our tofu for an additional two honey bears – because we are a honey family. I wish I could say that we saved the meat for later – but it didn’t even make it past the afternoon. We grilled some burgers, used the lettuce and some bakery buns from Hen House and had a little feast. (Man, I love a good burger.)
The lettuce and strawberries I received came from Twin County Family Farms outside of Rich Hill, MO. I was lucky enough to go out to Twin County Farms a month ago to see their farm and meet the growers. It is run by 64 Mennonite Families that supply 90 different products to Hen House over the course of a year. While I’m not versed in Mennonite culture – I was surprised and awed because they DON’T have electricity in their homes, don’t use tractors, and the only running water is located in the produce washing barn. Imagine, all of their produce – including my lettuce and strawberries – are planted and picked by hand. Talk about love and care. The other amazing thing – their Belgian horses, but I’ll save that for another update.
When I was out at the farms, the strawberries were just starting to ripen. We were able to sample a couple of them and I was plotting what I would make with them once I got them in our CSA. And on Saturday, I got my chance. Those red, ripe – still dirty with farm soil strawberries were begging to be made into a strawberry pie.
Confession: I have NEVER made a strawberry pie. But I did a little research on allrecipes.com and landed on this strawberry pie with this pie crust recipe.
After I made the crust, I let it cool and then melted half a block of cream cheese, mixed in a tablespoon of sugar, and painted the crust. While this isn’t in the recipe, as an eater of strawberry pie, I know that it can get soggy fast if the crust isn’t protected somehow. Some people like to melt chocolate chips – I prefer cream cheese. (I mean is cream cheese bad on anything?) Then I cut the strawberries and put 3/4 in the pie.
The rest of the strawberries I mashed (or Cuisinart Food Processored) with 3/4 cup of sugar. I put the mixture into a medium saucepan on the stove with a cornstarch mixture and waited for it to boil. Don’t make fun of my pans – I know they look like they’ve been through a tornado. 🙂
After it came to a boil, I stirred it for another 2-3 minutes. I took it off the stove and let it cool for another 2-3 minutes. Then I poured it on top of the pie. This was my one OOPS moment. I should saved some of the cut strawberries for later and placed them on top of the “glaze” – it would have made for a better presentation. As it stood – my pie wasn’t “pretty” at all. (Compare it to this one from allrecipes.com – that’s how a Strawberry Pie should look! Not like this…)
It set-up in the fridge for a couple of hours. We served it with fresh whipping cream (1 1/2 cups whipping cream with 1/2 cup sugar) and it was divine.
But the coolest part of all was that this strawberry at the farm turned into my pie.
Curious about my other adventures in local produce and gardening? Check out past Good Eats posts.
How is your garden going? Have you made anything yummy with your local produce? Leave a comment and let us know.
