Peachy

For some reason, this always happens to me.  I take a good idea and take it to another level.  Not necessary a higher level, just a new level.  Maybe it's my predisposition to bite off more than I can chew.

Hello, how do you think I got 5 children????

So when a person who takes things to a different level/bites off more than she can chew, as I may be, sees this:

What's a girl to do?  A normal person bakes a pie or two, but not me.  Oh no, I'm not normal.  I bake ten!

I won't go into too much detail about how I acquired all these peaches.  Let's just say they were from a neighbor who was trying to share.  If he had showed up at my doorstep about 5 hours into the pie adventure, I think I would have punched him squarely in the jaw.  Now that I'm done with these flippin' pies, I think I can be civil with him again.

Thankfully having a lot of children also means there are always people who want to help in the kitchen AND thankfully to two who wanted to help were actually *helpful*.

Kyle "Peach Dunker" Weller

Lance "Peel 'Em 'Til it Hurts" Weller

I have no pictures of me from this ordeal mainly because I hadn't showered, done my hair or put on makeup.  Plus I would have broken my kids' arm if they had tried!

So we dunked the peaches in boiling water to loosen the skin, peeled and sliced them.  Resulting in two very large bowls of white and yellow peaches.

That's a lot of peaches!  Beautiful!

My first batch of pies had an oatmeal cookie crust and an oatmeal topping.  I did this batch first because it sounded the most delicious.  The recipe is from one of our favorite preschool teachers, Ms. Pam. Thanks Pam!

So scrumptious looking! 

There were five of those beauties.  Four very lucky friends of mine (my words not theirs) were the recipients of the pies.  I hope they enjoyed them.  So far, the results have been favorable!  We saved one for our family and I have to say it is delicious.

The second batch was five regular peach pies.  I'll admit they are store-bought crusts so please don't be too impressed.  I have tried and tried to get my crust right, but I have a huge problem rolling it out right.  I can watch cooking shows until I'm blue in the face, but still can't make a pie crusts.  The good news is that store-bought crusts are pretty good and are very easy to use.  (Plus, my mother in-law uses them too.  But don't tell anyone!)

 Filling the pies.

 

The end result.

Of course I don't have all of those pie plates, but I do have neighbors who love to have their pie plates filled.  I especially love the pie in the plate above.  The green stoneware just looks so great!  (Traci, I'll take the plate off you anytime!)  I gave away three of those pies to my dear neighbors, kept one for my family, and froze the last one.  YUM-O!

So, if you're counting that's 10 pies!  Unfortunately I had about 8 cups of peaches to do something with. So away to the Internet I went looking for some inspiration.  I decided on a yummy peach cobbler recipe.  I dove into the recipe to make two.

Unfortunately the heat in the kitchen must have gotten to me, or else the fumes from those yummy pies.  I put in twice as much sugar as the recipe calls.  OOOPS!

Now, Steve used to say you can't put too much sugar into anything.  I think I changed his mind because the cobblers turned into a caramelized mess of peachy gloop.  It wasn't pretty to my oven either.  UGH!

Fortunately, clean up for all the baking wasn't as bad.

The aftermath.

So if you were fortunate enough to see me yesterday you probably got a peach pie.  Even that rotten neighbor of mine who shared all those peaches got a pie.  If you stop by in the next day or so, you might get to try the pies we kept for ourselves.  There is still that one pie sitting in the freezer waiting for a special visitor.

Maybe that visitor could be you!