I’ve NEVER succeeded at making a traditional pie crust whereby you cut and fold the dough over then crimp with your fingers. Okay. I’ve made such a pie crust, but I’ve always been disappointed with the results.

I arrived at a solution several years ago. I simply trim the crust flush with the edge of the pan. I then roll out the scrap dough and cut it into small rounds using a cooking cutter. Using a little water, I adhere the circles to the crust, slightly overlapping. The result is picture perfect.

This is an apple pie with a crumb top, using frozen apples from our tree in Mount Vernon. Last year, we had a bumper crop and every week I’d slice up the apples in a food processor, mix with sugar and cinnamon then toss in freezer bags. I mix the defrosted apples with tapioca flour (available in Asian stores) then pat into a crust.

This crust was made with a cube of butter that was cut into flour, brown sugar, and salt then mixed with some grated orange peel and cold water. I kneed the dough while it’s in the bowl the roll out on a flour-covered block of marble with a wooden rolling pin.

The crumb topping is a half a cube of butter cut into flour, oatmeal, brown sugar, cinnamon, and chopped nuts.

I’ve been passionate about tamales if since I was a small child and the woman who worked in my father’s garment factory would bring us corn husk-wrapped tamales at Christmas.

Unless you live in an area with a large Hispanic population, it’s hard to find fresh tamales so I learned how to make my own. My technique and process is a combination of what I’ve read in cookbooks and my tendency to cut corners.

Plan on devoting 4-5 hours to make the tamales. A large portion of this time is cooking and not preparation.

Get a hunk or two of pork and along with equal amount of chicken such as breasts or thighs. Plop the meat in a pot with a dozen or so assorted dried chili peppers. Add water to cover the meat. Cook for at least an hour until the meat is well cooked and flavorful. At this point, you can refrigerate the meat and do the rest of preparations the following day. Don’t discard any of the water or boiled chilies.

Either shred the meat or quickly pulse in a food processor (guess which one I do). Ladle in some of the water so the meat is moist. Mince or pulse the chilies from the water and also add to the meat.

Slice a can of olives in half (the olives not the can). Set aside.

Beat two cubes of margarine (lard is traditional) in a large bowl until fluffy. Add several cups of masa (fine corn meal for tortillas and tamales). Continue beating, alternating with ladles of the water from the meat. You’ll need a sizable amount of dough, which should be the consistency of soft pie dough and hold together when squished into a ball. The water from the meat should be sufficient to flavor the masa. If not, add some chili powder and other seasonings like cumin and coriander.

Bring a large pot of water to a boil. Add a couple layers of dried corn husks and weigh down with an open steamer basket or plate. Boil the husks for at least ten minutes until soft. Every time you remove husks to be rolled, add another dozen or so dried husks and replace the steamer basket.

Drain a handful of husks then lay them down so the wide end is facing you. Plop a handful of masa in the middle, towards the bottom of each husk then add some meat and  half an olive. Here’s a picture off the Internet as to how it looks:

Fold the edges of the tamales over the filling then fold the short end up to form a little package. The filling will peak out of one end.

Repeat many, many times until you have a huge bowl of ready-to-cook tamales or until you run out of ingredients or patience. Here’s what MY tamales looked like before cooking.

Place your steamer basket on the bottom of your largest pot. Add water until it comes up the bottom of the steam basket. Lay a couple of cooked husks over the top of the steamer basket.

Enlist the  help of another person to help place the tamales on the steam basket. They need to stand on end with the filling pointing up. If you don’t tie them… like me… they tend to open up as you stand them on end. Keep adding tamales until they fit snuggly in the pot. The picture below was taken off the Internet and because the tamales are tied, they don’t need to be squished too tightly into the pot.

Cover the pot, turn on the burner, and steam the tamales for at least an hour or until you see that the masa has cooked.

Remove from the pot and enjoy! Or if you made a massive number of tamales like I did (second photo), you’ll need to remove the tamales from the pot, add more water and stand up more tamales to cook. Then repeat for a third time!

I ended up freezing four bags of tamales to enjoy later in the year.

For the past few weeks, Rich and I have enjoyed one of my favorite, Pacific Northwest desserts… fresh picked blackberries with vanilla ice cream.

For those not familiar with the the flora of Oregon and Washington, blackberry bushes (or more appropriately, vines) will grow wild anywhere there’s a spot of sunshine and soil fertile enough to support a handful of seeds — often deposited in bird or animal poop.

Thorny, persistent and seemingly indestructible, blackberries are often the bane of gardeners and will grow six or more feet in height and swallow swaths of land if not kept under control. Many years ago, my dear friend in Oregon, ended up with a yard full of blackberry bushes. We tackled them one afternoon, cutting and slowly removing them. After 10-15 feet of bushes had been cleared, we came across her son’s sandbox, which she hadn’t seen for years.

My first picking this year was in Anacortes. I wandered down the hill from our lot and quickly filled a bowl, picking the berries that grew along the street.

Last week, I picked another bunch in Mount Vernon. Once again, I only had to walk a few paces before I came to a bush, full with plump berries.

Because blackberries are so plentiful in Oregon and Washington, most people don’t bother to pick them, preferring strawberries, blueberries and raspberries, which are readily available at local farms (or in their own backyards). Rich and I have five blueberry bushes in pots and a raspberry bush in the ground.

Being Rich and I have been deprived of blackberries for five years, we’re eager to pick ’em, plop them in sugar then spoon them over rich vanilla ice cream. Heavenly!