The Gooseberry Experiment: Frankenfruit or Alien Eyeballs?

I'm changing my mind from my previous gooseberry post:  Gooseberries taste like tart blueberries... no.  How about the insides of tart blueberries wrapped in a apple skin? Ah, not quite.  I mean the skin of a gooseberry isn't as thick as apple skin . . . Cranberries mated with blueberries mated with apples? Good grief! That isn't a description -- that's Frankenfruit.

Help? Anyone?

I told someone gooseberries look like alien eyeballs. (There's a vein-y, bloodshot aspect.)  This someone said that alien eyeball pie would be a good pie for boys.  I have now made alien eyeball pie.  Something to consider...

MEANWHILE, I had some leftover gooseberries and because I was thinking they tasted a little like blueberries, I made blueberry muffins with them -- or half gooseberry, half blueberry muffins.  GREAT.  (Once again, I cut the sugar in half -- though if I were to make them with JUST gooseberries, I might keep the sugar.  Gooseberries aren't teeth-sucking tart like lemons or kumquats, but if I were going to do the whole Bo Derek '10' thing on them, I'd give them a 6.)

Phil continues to tell me that gooseberries take A LONG time to de-stem.  (Yup, my absolute, best husband has been de-stemming gooseberries for me, because I am working on a draft of a book that I would like to finish soon.)

Okay, here's the King Arthur Flour Recipe for blueberry muffins.  (I used half the sugar and half gooseberries.)  And here's the photos:  

  

Enough of this fun!  Back to writing.  

P.S.  Book coming along well!

Because I promised: Gooseberry Pie

Here's the Gooseberry Pie, Phil and I made for Peter at Seedling. For some reason, I never thought you could make a pie out of something that looks like a grape, but YES you can! (Where do I get these ideas?) We cut the sugar in half. I like tart. And sugar seems to mask flavor. To me, too much sugar and everything tastes generically sweet.

But this is a great pie! It tastes like cranberry-apple (tart apple). I recommend it. It DOES take awhile to get the stems off the gooseberries. As Phil pointed out (he did the insides) -- the stems are on BOTH sides of the globes. It's double de-stemming!

The recipe for the Gooseberry Pie is HERE. (We used half the sugar.)

By the way, I'm a bit of a messy pie maker. For me, it's all about taste. And I'm playing with a new crust -- you make one big crust and fold the edges over the top onto the pie fillings.

Read about it at the King Arthur Flour HERE. The one I used was from their whole grain baking book, which uses ground up old fashioned oats, but you'll get the idea.

 

Friday: Jessup Whitehead on Coffee Preparation (and I will NEED coffee)

I am heading out tomorrow for the Charlotte Huck Festival (yay!) and it will be an early, EARLY morning.  So I will need THIS -- coffee, coffee, COFFEE!

I'll probably be knitting and listening to podcasts at the airport.  For some reason, I can't read when I'm very tired and at the airport, though I know I'll be getting out the Kindle and trying it out a few times. Anyway, one of the pleasures of travel for me is knitting and listening to podcasts. I can't do the laundry, so why not enjoy myself? 

Anyway, in the spirit of tomorrow's travels, here's a quote from Jessup Whitehad (what a name!) on coffee. Mr. Whitehead wrote a series of books for hotels with recipes and stories and all sorts of other fun things. I love finding great stuff while researching a book, and a blog is a perfect place to share it.  Here goes. Here's Whiteheads' recommendation for preparing this "berry" for maximum refreshment:

Coffee causes wakefulness when eaten raw, or drawn by long steeping in cold water, its effects are rather deadened than increased when it is made into the pleasant breakfast beverage with cream and sugar. It's energy is most expansive in the out door camp where, boiled in a camp kettle it is drunk by the pint or quart without milk and the drowsy hunters or travelers spring up and start singing.  

-- Jessup Whitehead, Cooking for Profit: A New American Cook Book (Chicago: Jessup Whitead & Co., 1893)

[Photo: Chicago O'Hare airport... ah yes.]