Tuesday, July 28, 2009






Well my dear ones--it has been sometime since I last shared a favorite old family recipe. You may not have a dear like my Concepcion to come and do the actual cooking for you--but I am sure that this will be a fast favorite for you and your loved ones if you just give it a try.

I am so enjoying my new kitchen and this break from the Texas heat with these delightful showers this week and decided to dust off a favorite that Concepcion whips up for Andrew, Lewis, and me. I have other favorite family recipes that Concepcion keeps treating us with on my blog: http://a-view-from-my-bedside.blogspot.com/

You remain in my heart, my prayers, and my recent happy memories,

Daniel
Grandmother Vinzant's Apple Pie
5 Granny Smith apples
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice and the zest of the lemon
1/3 cup organic Vanilla sugar + 1 teaspoon
1/3 cup brown sugar
1 tablespoon good cinnamon
2 tablespoons butter

1 teaspoon cornstarch
2 tablespoons water

2-- 9 inch pie shells
1/2 cup chopped pecans
1 cup good Sour Cream

1 Egg beaten


Peel, core, and slice apples. Toss in lemon juice and zest of the lemon. Add 1/3 cup sugar, brown sugar, and cinnamon. Melt butter in a saucepan over medium heat, add apple mixture and simmer for 5 minutes, covered. Stir occasionally.

Strain and reserve the liquid and apples.
Whisk cornstarch with water and return the apple liquid to your pan.
Whisk in. While whisking, bring the mixture back to a simmer and cook for an additional 3 minutes.
Pour over the apples and cool in the refrigerator for one hour.

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Combine the apple mixture with the pecans and pour into one of the pie crusts.
Top with sour cream.
Lightly flour the second pie crust and cut into 1 inch strips. Arrange over the pie in a lattice design.
Brush the lattice top, with the egg.
Sprinkle with sugar. Place the pie pan on a cookie sheet. Reduce oven temperature to 350 degrees.
Bake pie for 40 minutes.

If the crust begins to get too dark, remove from the oven, cover with aluminum foil and return for the remaining baking time.

Make a nice pot of hot tea to sip from a porcelain cup--please do not attempt to sip a good loose leaf green tea from a coffee cup--gauche. If possible serve yourself the tea from a nice ceramic or porcelain tea pot while you are at it. Turn up your Bose music system and listen to music that stirs your soul--while this righteous pie smell fills your house with the smell of generations past and the hopes of generations to come. Add a schemer of Devonshire cream and some Laura Secord Raspberry jam to your favorite homemade scone (recipe to follow at a cooler date) and dive into the latest good book you have always laying about--currently I am reading: A Year in the World: Journeys of A Passionate Traveler, by Frances Mayes in the living room; St Augustine's The Confessions in the bedroom; a new Nicholas Sparks in the bath; an undisclosed thriller at the pool-side table; the Letters of Brother Laurence on the
i Phone; and The Second Edition of the Ignatius Bible at the kitchen table.

Kick off those shoes--if you putter in your beautiful kitchen with them on--better to prepare food barefoot I always say--more connected to the grounding and the soul of the food. And before you know it my Granny's wonderful pie will be yours for a first taste, and after the first piece, I promise you it will become your families favorite too.

And all you hearty guys like me out there---when the house is dead quite and everyone else asleep, this pie will call you cold from the Ice Box-- and a sneaked piece along with a ice cold barley soda--now that is a little reminder that Heaven is a real and waiting place--Land of Goshen.