"Can she bake a berry pie, Billy boy, Billy boy?"

Before tonight, if someone were to ask of me that classic question from the good ol' song, I realized that I wouldn't even know the answer . . . primarily because I've never tried.

My younger sister had been dubbed all summer the unwritten Duchess of Dinner . . . the Master of Meals . . . the Queen of all things Culinary . . .

. . . and then she left me.

So tonight, I, not wanting the bounty of this weekend's berry-hunt to be left un-enjoyed for any longer, decided to step up to the proverbial plate and prove to myself that I, JaimiDoodle, can bake a berry pie. You can see, judging by the condition of the cookbook (see below), that this recipe could probably be considered among one of the most tried-and-true out there---but, unfortunately, no culinary endeavor is safe from being completely slaughtered by JaimiDoodle, a college graduate who could explain to you the effects of osmotic pressure on the capillary eletrophoretic enantioseparation of chiral chemical compounds, but can't pull off a decent batch of rice for the life of her.

That being said, it was to be expected that the episode not go without hiccups (I may or may not have had to practice my suturing skills with the crust, which I may or may not have rolled out much too small to cover the pie plate . . .) but when all was said and done, a good time* was had by all.

*NOTE: "good time" = not having to include a fire department crew or emergency toxicology squad. Victory!

Before . . .

. . . After

Who'd've thought, ey?

A Most Excellent Adventure

This afternoon found me in a tree.

Grandpa, Dad, and I had done some herd-moving just before lunch, and along the way, noticed that there were a couple trees with fruit ripe for the pickin'. So right after our meal of left-over meatballs and potatoes (remnants of the wonderful dinner Mom made last night), we set off to relieve the tree in the corner of the pasture of its heavy load. We only had one apple-picker between the three of us, so we "divided and conquered," as you might say:

Grandpa gathered up the windfalls that (1) were not overly bruised from the fall, and --- exceedingly more importantly --- (2) had avoided any cow-pies upon their landing.

Father was deemed the master of the apple-picker. If any of you have never used one, it's a long, wooden pole with a wire basket on the end, with prongs that can hook around the apple, allowing it to fall into said basket. It's actually quite an ingenious contraption, but the thing can only reach so far . . .

So my self-appointed job was to shimmy up between the twisted limbs of our lovely apple tree, favoring a pesky sore left ankle (remnant of a close play at 3rd in a kickball tournament a couple weeks ago---in which I was obviously safe, but alas, obviously not obviously enough . . .) and do my best to harvest those apples not accounted-for by the two above mentioned methods. Hence, this afternoon found me --- most blissfully, I might add --- in a tree.

Side note: Does anyone know what this is? There's an abundance of it growing on a few of our bushes behind the house, and I can't say that I've ever noticed it before:

Anyway . . . we purged that apple tree (and filled our buckets) so quickly that none of us were ready to be done by the time we unloaded at the house, so we set out for round two: blackberries. Dad had noticed that a few bushes along the fence-line of the back pasture were ripe a few days ago, so we weren't even sure if there would be any left by now---and there weren't. At least, not in that spot, but on the way home, I scoured the rest of the fence-line from the tailgate of the truck, and I spied, with my little eye, something that was black (or, more like purple-ish, but let's not be technical).

Now, I don't wanna brag, but we basically found the El Dorado of blackberries. After a good 2 hours of battling the briers, we emerged with plenty-enough berries to made a good-many pies, and purple-stained paws---remnants of, as Dad called it, a "most excellent adventure."

I'll bet you that you can't, in 3 guesses, tell me which is my berry-pickin' hand. (Now, seeing that the odds are well in your favor, the prize can't be very high . . . maybe a handshake?)