quick tip: pie crust & biscuit shortcuts

If you're tempted to skip desserts or meals with pie crusts or biscuits because of the work involved in hand-making these items, try this tip. Instead of cutting in the butter, melt it and mix it in instead.

Pie crusts and biscuits made this way won't be as flaky as if you cut in the butter the traditional way, but they are definitely acceptable for a usual weeknight dinner or dessert. And of course, making them from scratch is much healthier than buying the chemical-laden convenience options in the grocery store.

And a tip on pie crusts wouldn't be complete without a reminder to double, triple or even quadruple your pie crust recipe whenever you make it. Even if you don't have time to roll out the pastry, you can always store it in a ball in the freezer to pull out at your convenience.

The recipe I use calls for only butter (no trans-fats) & is very simple. It is:

2 cup flour
2/3 cup butter (this equals 1 stick plus ~3 Tbls. of another)
1/4 tsp. salt
4-5 Tbls. water

I like to make the pastry a little on the wet side so that it can soak in more flour when I roll it out without becoming too tough.

If you have a large-capacity food processor, you can use cold butter and let your machine cut it in for you. Just cut the butter into chunks an inch or so in size, put them in your processor with the flour & salt, and pulse until your mixture looks like tiny crumbs. Add the water slowly, tablespoon by tablespoon, until it forms a dough ball. You then roll out as usual. This method is so easy, you can make crust or biscuit dough in under 5 minutes, almost as long as it takes to get one of those biscuit roll packages to "pop!"

quick tip: pumpkins

Now that fall is blending into winter, it's definitely time to cook up any of those pumpkins we still have sitting around. We had two gigantic pumpkins this year. Due to their size, I procrastinated on cooking one of them for so long that it molded on the inside before I got to it. I realized, huge pumpkins are extremely intimidating! The logistics of getting it from doorstep to freezer aren't obvious for most of us.

So here is a tip for getting those plus-size pumpkins cooked up quickly:

• Set the pumpkin up outside (porch, sidewalk, front lawn) on the lid of a large plastic tote.

• Using the largest, sharpest knife available, cut the pumpkin into pieces approximately a foot long on each side. My husband used a machete for the job. A meat cleaver might work well.

• Don't worry about scraping out the seeds -- they are much easier to remove after the pumpkin is cooked.

• In your oven, set a baking dish with an inch or so of water at the very bottom. This will catch any pumpkin juices that fall plus give moisture to your oven.

• Put the pumpkin pieces straight onto the oven racks, skin side down of course, and bake for a couple hours at 325 until very soft. When you start to strongly smell them, they are probably done. Turn off the oven until they cool. (We left ours in overnight after turning off the oven & they were fine.)

• Now you can easily scrape off the seeds & separate the skin from the flesh. Load into plastic bags, label & freeze. Voila! Pumpkin pies, muffins & soup all winter long.

quick tip: garlic

As you might know, this blog is designed to provide recipes that require 10 minutes or less of hands-on time, but do not use any processed convenience foods. We have significant reactions to food chemicals in our family, so while I often want to make quick meals, I can't sacrifice food quality to do so.

Sometimes this means I spend more money to buy "organic" convenience items. For example, every now & then, I'll pickup a box of organic chicken broth to have on hand or an organic cream of whatever soup to use in casseroles and such. Usually, though, it means I prep some things ahead of time just to have on hand for quick dinners. Garlic is one of those items.

I've never found a garlic powder that doesn't cause a reaction, so we use only fresh garlic around here. But fresh garlic can often be a pain. There are times you want to flavor something raw, and raw garlic has too much heat. Or, there are times you want to fry on high heat, which results in little burnt garlic nuggets throughout the food. My solution?

I pre-roast my garlic.

It's so simple & useful that I wanted to share this tip.

Take your whole garlic clove, skin-on. Don't bother separating each little clove, just stick the whole thing in the oven or toaster oven. Bake it on anything between 200 and 425. Leave it in there until the garlic is soft. Store in the refrigerator until ready to use.

I often stick the roasted cloves in my garlic press to flavor different dishes at the last minute. This way, if they are raw, the garlic adds flavor without heat. And I don't have to deal with little burnt garlic nuggets anymore.

Next time you bake something, try it! Just throw in a whole garlic clove right alongside your dish & see what you end up using it for.