Saving Susan | About You and Me!

Try These Delicious Old Fashion Pies For Great Desserts – Grape, Grated Apple, and Banana Cream

Posted on April 23, 2012 by savi0043

Try These Delicious Old Fashion Pies For Great Desserts – Grape, Grated Apple, and Banana Cream

By [http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Linda_Carol_Wilson]Linda Carol Wilson

I love all the fancy newer pie recipes but to me there is nothing like a good old-fashion pie. I have pulled some favorites from my collection of the old pies my family and I love and I am sharing them with you. Aunt Jane’s Grape Pie was a family recipe for generations. Elsie’s Grated Apple Pie was the one my late Aunt made when I was a child approximately 60 years ago, and the Banana Cream was used in my family as long as I can remember. If you have fond memories of pies like these or would like to find out what a good old-fashion pie tastes like, I suggest you try these recipes the next time you want pie. And let the memories take over or start new ones in your family.

AUNT JANE’S GRAPE PIE
How often do you hear of a grape pie today? Yet I remember them from childhood. Another treat that has slipped by the wayside! This recipe is as written down all those many years ago.

Pastry for a 2-crust pie
4 cups stemmed Concord grapes
3/4 cup granulated sugar
1 1/2 tbsp. lemon juice
1 tbsp. grated orange rind
1 tbsp. quick-cooking tapioca

For the filling, slip grapes out of skins; save skins. Cook pulp until seeds loosen; press through a coarse sieve. Mix sieved pulp, skins, sugar, lemon juice, orange rind, and tapioca. Let stand for 5 minutes. Pour into unbaked pie crust. Top with the top crust in a lattice design. Bake in preheated 425 degree oven for about 40 minutes until the crust is golden brown.

ELSIE’S GRATED-APPLE PIE
I have no idea why it matters if you make this pie early in the day or late in the day. However, this part of the instructions was written to get attention so I have added it here. Perhaps it was to use the oven before the heat of the day? After all they didn’t have air-conditioning back then.

1 cup sifted all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp. baking powder
1/8 tsp. salt
1/4 cup butter or margarine
2 tbsp. granulated sugar
1 egg
1/2 tsp. vanilla extract
4 pared large tart apples
2 tbsp. grated lemon rind
2 tbsp. lemon juice
1 cup granulated sugar
1 egg

Early in day: Start heating oven to 350 degrees. Into bowl, sift together flour, baking powder, and salt; with pastry blender or 2 knives, cut in butter until very fine. With fork, beat together 2 tbsp. sugar, 1 egg, and vanilla; stir into butter mixture. With fingers, press cookie-crust mixture to bottom and side of a 9″ pie plate, and form small rim. Using fine grater, grate apples. Add lemon rind and juice, 1 cup sugar, and 1 egg; mix well. Turn into lined pie plate. Bake 50 to 60 min. Cool on wire rack. Top with 1 or more cheese cutouts (use cookie cutter and packaged process Cheddar cheese slices).

OLD FASHION LAYERED BANANA CREAM PIE
1 cup sugar, divided
3 tbsp cornstarch
1/4 tsp salt
3 eggs, separated
1 cup evaporated milk
1 cup water
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 baked 9-inch pie shell
1 1/2 cups sliced ripe bananas

Mix 2/3 cup of the sugar, cornstarch, salt, and egg yolks together in a heavy saucepan. Combine the milk and water then slowly stir into the sugar mixture. Cover over low heat, stirring constantly, until thickened – about 10 minutes. Remove from the heat and stir in the vanilla extract. Cool and allow to cool.

Stir cooled filling and pour half into the baked pie shell. Layer the bananas over the filling then top with the remaining filling mixture.

In a deep bowl, beat the egg whites until soft peaks form. Continue beating while gradually adding the remaining 1/3 cup of the sugar, until stiff peaks form and sugar is dissolved. Spread meringue over the top of the pie being sure to seal the edges to the crust. Bake at 425 degrees until meringue is a light golden brown. Cool completely before cutting.

Store leftovers (if you have any!) in the refrigerator.

Enjoy!

For more of Linda’s old-fashion recipe collection visit her blog at [http://grandmasvintagerecipes.blogspot.com]http://grandmasvintagerecipes.blogspot.com.

For more of her recipes and diabetic information visit [http://diabeticenjoyingfood.blogspot.com]http://diabeticenjoyingfood.blogspot.com.

Article Source: [http://EzineArticles.com/?Try-These-Delicious-Old-Fashion-Pies-For-Great-Desserts—Grape,-Grated-Apple,-and-Banana-Cream&id=7015327] Try These Delicious Old Fashion Pies For Great Desserts – Grape, Grated Apple, and Banana Cream

Posted in Favorite Recipes, Uncategorized | Tagged apples, pie | Leave a comment

Meteor Showers Return – The Lyrids

Posted on April 21, 2012 by savi0043

It’s been a long time between meteor showers, but now the lyrids have now ended the drought of meteors in our night sky. Get out under the night sky and check them out!

Meteor Showers Return – The Lyrids
By [http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Ian_Maclean]Ian Maclean

The Autumn (or fall) Lyrid Shower Has Historical Resonances

It’s been a long three months for skywatchers in the Southern Hemisphere, with the height of summer cutting down on viewing time. As Autumn (fall) approaches, we’re getting closer to one of the oldest observed meteor showers on the planet – the Lyrid shower.

Because this shower (like all meteor showers, a remnant of a comet – ostensibly comet Thatcher, in this case) comes in from just over the ecliptic, it’s visible on the far Northern horizon to us, with a peak that happens sometime between April 19th and the 22nd, with some meteors coming through as early as the 12th and some coming as late as May 3rd.

This shower may not be tied to a single cometary remnant, or the cometary remnant may have an odd orbit; roughly every 60 years, the Lyrids put on a very large show, going from 6 to 10 meteors per hour up to a hundred or more per hour. The most spectacular meteor shower event in modern astronomy history appears to have been a Lyrid shower from April 1803, which, in the Northern Hemisphere had so many meteors over the Eastern seaboard of the United States that it as thought (in some parts) that the word was coming to an end. Lots of drawings of the night sky and illustrations of the event exist, including enough meteors in the sky to cause multiple shadows of people standing on the ground.

Because of the pericyclic times of the Lyrid shower, and its periodic outbursts, mathematical calculations of its orbital elements are tricky. The “roughly every 60 year” rule for the Lyrids has been used to backtrack it to probable events recorded as far back as 638 BC, making it the oldest recorded astronomical event on record.

One of the interesting confluences of the Lyrids is that they may be the remnants of more than one comet; comet Thatcher has a 417 year orbital period, and the Lyrids stream has peaks of roughly every 60 years…and super peaks that we don’t have a long enough baseline on to determine their frequency. This points to the Lyrids being spawned by a possible cometary collision or calving, where the cometary nucleus split into two parts – explosively – with one having a more eccentric orbit than the other, and a periodic confluence of the two elements creating large bursts.

While we’re pretty certain that this won’t be a “once very 60 years” burst (the last one was in 1982, and we’re not due for another one until roughly 2042), the Lyrids are a fairly reliable meteor shower for observations; though with the time of the year, you’ll want to be up around 2 to 4 AM to see them from where you live.

Ian Maclean – Author, Presenter and Science Show host Homepages: http://www.nightskysecrets.com and http://www.askthescienceguru.com Discover the hidden secrets of the night sky for yourself.

On my nightskysecrets homepage you will be able to download a free copy of my Audio “Night Sky Secrets – Revealed” plus pick up a f r e e subscription to nightskysecrets, where you will be kept up to date with all the latest events you can see in the night sky and gain subscriber access to my blog page, often with maps, charts, photos and movies to compliment my articles and much more.

At askthescienceguru you can download and subscribe to the RSS feed or just listen to the latest podcasts from my weekly radio show “The Science Hour”

Article Source: [http://EzineArticles.com/?Meteor-Showers-Return—The-Lyrids&id=2219216] Meteor Showers Return – The Lyrids