Lugnasa                                                               Garlic Planting Moon

The harvest and preservation season continues apace.  This morning I made a leek/tomato soup using 18 of our own leeks, two of our tomatoes and six of the ones we purchased yesterday at Green Barn, also locally grown.  This afternoon I’ll make another four chicken-leek pot pies for freezing and tomorrow a batch of chicken noodle soup and at least one, if not two, sugar cream pies.

Sugar cream pies are a Hoosier tradition and one of my favorites.  On a webpage devoted to the history of the sugar cream pie in Indiana it referred to the recipe as a desperation one, a recipe used when all the other stores had been used up.  Could be.  The recipes, though they vary a bit, all call for butter, cream and sugar.  Some of them that’s the whole recipe.  Finger stir–so as not to whip the cream–pop in the oven.

Desperation never tasted so good.

So we’re in August here in Andover, thinking of December and January.  The house smells great.  Kate’s making corn relish,

Lugnasa                                                             Hiroshima Moon

Not only did it not make it to 80 today, the temps didn’t make 70 either.  Ah.

Spent the morning making four chicken, leek and vegetable pies.  Used our leeks and carrots, our thyme and tarragon and dried garlic.  Something very satisfying about cooking with vegetables grown at home.

This is a lengthy process since it involves sauteing vegetables, cooking a whole chicken with celery, carrots, garlic and green onions.  12 cups of water plus corn.  That takes about an hour, cleaning the leeks takes a while, then boiling them in salted water.  Dug a few new potatoes yesterday and added them to the leeks, just for something different.

After the chicken cooks, it comes out of the pot for cooling while the leeks and the potatoes go into the liquid for a gentle warming.  Shredded chicken gets placed in pie shells with crusts, then vegetables ladled over the chicken, mounded in the center.

Butter and flour for a (roue-unintentional humor here.  I meant) roux to thicken the broth a cup and a half at a time.  The thickened broth goes in the pies, four of them.  A frozen pie dough gets flattened with the rolling pin, then draped over the pies.  Vents are cut.

The oven, preheated to 425, receives all four pies.  15 minutes, then down to 350, cook for another 20 minutes.  Done.

Wrapped in aluminum foil three of these pies go in the freezer for mid-winter meals.  The fourth will get reheated for supper tonight.

We have enough leeks to do this several times over.  Next time a bigger chicken, free range, more leeks and some additional vegetables.  Not sure what quite yet.  That awaits the next time.

Each cooking session differs from the last in some way or another.