a year of pie

Guys, let’s talk about coke.

Not that coke… jeez I’ve never even had a cigarette.

I’m talking the other addicting form of Coke. Coca-Cola!

Ignoring the fact that I post a pie recipe every Friday, Price and I have been trying to reshape our diets. We have been shifting more and more to the Paleo diet. As a treat, we have a slice of pie at some point during the week, but the rest typically goes to our dog walker or Autumn’s daycare teachers. It’s been going well with some easy swaps- quinoa for rice, zoodles for pasta, and sweet potatoes with everything when all else fails. Cheese is the hardest to give up but at least the adjustments we have been making have been helping curb the cheese and sweets cravings.

Like soda. We stopped buying soda. We get seltzer and add some lemon or lime. Or if I am horrible, I go for my drug of choice… Country Time Lemonade Mix. (At least I only put in about a Tablespoon in my 24 oz waterbottle since I don’t actually like lemonade). Which brings me to the point of this story… I grabbed a Diet Coke at work during a Lunch & Learn.

I only drank half of it and felt so gross.

I couldn’t believe how blah I felt after just half of a soda. I used to feel like I could drink a Big Gulp full and it was refreshing. But now it’s just gross. This actually just makes me happy. Happy that we have been making smart choices to better our diets.Thankfully, as a result we have purged junk from our bodies and have been curbing cravings too.

While I’m glad that we have been curbing our sugary cravings, I’m still glad to crave some fresh pie straight from the oven. And this is a pie worth craving!

The combination of pears and apples goes together to well. This pie has less cinnamon than your typical apple pie and more ginger so there is a nice complexity to the spices used. I don’t normally do an egg wash on pies but I went for it this time, and added a heafty sprinkling of sugar, which gave it a nice look and added crunch to the top.

Yum!!!

Pear and Apple Pie

Makes a 9″ pie

Ingredients

Crust

• 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon sugar
• 1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, cut into small pieces, chilled
• 1/4 to 1/2 cup ice water

Filling

• 4 large Bartlett pears
• 4 large baking apples, such as Cortlands
• 1 lemon
• 1/2 Cup flour
• 3/4 Cups sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon ginger
• 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 3 Tablespoons butter

• 1 egg
• 2 Tablespoons water
• 3-4 Tablespoons sugar for sprinkling

Process

1. To make the crust, in the bowl of a food processor, combine flour, salt, and sugar. Addbutter, and process until the mixture resembles coarse meal, 8 to 10 seconds.
2. With machine running, add ice water in a slow, steady stream through feed tube. Pulse until dough holds together without being wet or sticky; be careful not to process more than 30 seconds. To test, squeeze a small amount together: If it is crumbly, add more ice water, 1 tablespoon at a time.
3. Divide dough into two equal balls. Flatten each ball into a disc and wrap in plastic. Transfer to the refrigerator and chill at least 1 hour.
4. While the dough is chilling, preheat the oven to 425 degrees. Ready your pie plate by placing it on a rimmed cookie sheet.
5. Peel the pears and apples. Cut the fruit into 1/4″ thick slices. As you add the fruit to a large mixing bowl, add the juice of the lemon to prevent oxidation.
6. Add the flour, sugar, salt, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, and vanilla extract to the pears and apples. Mix gently.
7. Roll out one of the disks to be large enough to compeltely cover the pie plate. Place the dough into the pie plate. Add the filling to the pie crust. Then add the 4 pats of butter on top. Roll out the other other disk and then cover the filling and crimp the edges.
8. Mix together the egg and the water. Brush the top of the pie with the egg wash and then sprinkle with sugar.
9. Bake for 55-65 minutes. Serve hot or let cool on a wire cooling rack. Store in an air tight container for up to 3 days.

Crust Sourced from Martha Stewart, Pie by I am a Honey Bee