30 JULY 2022
The stitches came out on Friday, and I was . . . Thank you to BobMyFormerBoss for this apropos get-well card . . . so I reached out for ideas for what to do with the four quarts of strawberries Neal had brought home (they're still on BOGO, so he thought to take advantage). Patricia answered: "Do you and Neal like strawberry pie or trifle? Strawberry bread?" Trifle looked interesting, but I had neither angel food nor pound cake in the house, and NO WAY was anyone going out for a quick run to the store; we saw what happened last time! Two recipes for strawberry pie caught my interest; I kind of combined them to make two strawberry pies. Why two? Well, the recipe calls for a deep dish frozen pie crust; all I had was the Keebler shortbread pie crusts, which I thought would be too shallow; I coated them with beaten egg whites, then baked them for five minutes at 375 to seal them. Because the recipe called for quarts, the strawberries came in pounds, and the conversion site gave grams, I thought it a good time to learn how to use my kitchen scale, without ruining any chemistry that needed precise measurement. (Note "THING" on the left, adding strawberries.) One quart of strawberries is 640g, so I very easily divided that into two 320g portions. AND, I learned a new term - tare - which is a very handy verb. Definition: a deduction from the gross weight of a substance and its container made in allowance for the weight of the container. Pronounced like dare. I put the container on the scale, hit the TARE button, which puts the scale back down to ZERO, then add an ingredient to the correct weight. If I then want to add other ingredients, I hit the TARE button, which puts the scale back down to ZERO, then add the next ingredient. And so on. I'd seen this done whilst viewing the Korean bakers, but didn't know how they were doing this; I thought they were subtracting and adding this all in their heads! (Take a look at Amazing mass production! Korean Cake Factory Manufacturing. Making the carnations out of dyed white chocolate is my fave; if I ever find a piece of marble, I plan to try this.) This $10 scale does much more, but I doubt I'll ever need the other functions. Heck, it has BlueTooth to connect to an app on a phone that tracks nutrition and amount of food. No thanks, not if I'm using it to make cakes and pies! That 320g goes into the saucepan with sugar to boil. The other 320g . . . . . . is divided between the two pie pans. The [still] frozen blackberries will be used for decoration. Pie shells fairly well filled, ready to go into fridge for three hours . . . There is plenty of room for whipped cream on top, if serving entire pie at once.
THE SUPERVISOR Since she became deaf, convincing her to stay OUT OF THE KITCHEN! while I'm baking has become more and more difficult. You can see she is standing on the threshold of the door, just WAITING to sneak into the kitchen. (I had the door removed when we remodelled the house; even if there WAS a door and I dared to close it. she would cry her heart out. Or come in the other side of the kitchen, which is open.)

BUT WAIT! THERE'S MORE HERE!