The Best Texas Peach Pie

is the one you are about to eat right now. This one has Texas Peaches, from Mexia, in June, I am behind in my blogging because now it's july They are not very big, but there are none better. Of course, I can't speak to the issue of Alabama and Georgia Peaches because by the time they get to Texas, they aren't good anymore.

I could see that I could use more fruit, so I added the few blueberries I had. Blueberries and blackberries are both good with peaches. I use a recipe for the crust, usually from Ken Haedrich Pie: 300 triedand True ..... blah blah blah I also like his Soup Makes the Meal cookbook.

Here it is with it's top on. Why no overall recipe? Well I like the pie on the cover of Fran McCullough's Best American Recipes of 2002-2003. It uses an all butter crust, and several berries, including strawberries. The recipe also calls for rolling the dough and assembling the pie, and then refrigerating it for an hour. It really makes the crust turn out nice. The photo of the pie on the cover of the book is below. This book series is very interesting as well, and I own several of them. But, anyway, they thicken the pie filling with tapioca and corn starch if I recall correctly. I don't use that tapioca anymore; it's gritty. Now I just use corn starch. Use a heaping tablespoon mixed in with your one half to three quater cups sugar and pinch of salt. That is a good starting point for a fruit pie, but I really don't use recipes much for the fillings except for the berry pie in the book below because

1.You never have exactly the amount of fruit they call for.

2.Recipes always call for too much sugar

3. Your fruit is never the same as the fruit they used in the recipe.

4. Rarely are my pies not good even though I don't try very hard, just hard enough to make a pie that I want to eat.

and if you are really tired don't peel the peaches, and Spenda is not as good as sugar, but better than no pie at all, if you have a diabetic in your family

This one was really good. It's hard to let it sit there to take a picture of it. It looks really homemade, almost rustic. You can usually get one like this only at someone's home, and a few special restaurants.

Lime Orange Chess Pie

The other day, my son wanted to make a pie and I suggested a chess pie, because I knew we wouldn’t have to go to the store. We made a few substitutions. We tried lime juice, and orange zest. It worked out very well. The orange zest smells really wonderful. We have made it again since, and the picture shown is of one I made yesterday, and it's gone now. We used 1 ½ cup sugar, ¼ cup soy milk, ¼ cup cream, ½ stick salted butter, 2 tablespoons corn meal, 2 whole eggs, 3 egg whites, 4 tablespoons lime juice, zest of one orange, ½ teaspoon vanilla, in a partially pre-baked crust, bake at 350 45 to 50 minutes. The recipe owes much to Ken Haedrich’s Lemon Chess Pie on page 367 of Pie 200 Tried and True Recipes for Delicious Homemade Pie. And by the way, the molas potholder was a gift from a friend who went home to Panama for a visit.

I have recently started looking again at this vintage cookbook,above, Farm Journal Complete Pie Cookbook. It has some strange recipes that are off-beat such as oatmeal pie, raisin orange, apple grapefruit, strawberry cantaloupe pie, and so forth. They overdo the raisins. But you get an opportunity to read about unusual ingredients. I would like to try the fried pies. This cookbook is going for $30 on amazon.com but I wouldn't sell. It's too funky.