Heartdepths

30 Thursday Apr 2020

Posted by jessica@peace-of-pie in Apple Pie, Berry Pie, Pear Pie, travel

Tags

apple, berry, Chile, home, South America, travel

Three Aprils ago, a pie was born in Santiago, Chile. Some pears and some apples lent themselves to the creation, along with, I believe, some blueberries and strawberries, and perhaps another odd fruit that I’m forgetting.

This feels like another lifetime now, in several ways. During our visit to Chile, we probably pinched ourselves daily, saying “WE’RE IN CHILE!” And yet there wasn’t anything terribly surprising about it, not for us; affluent, educated, healthy, non-parents. We marveled at our ability to go to sleep on an airplane and wake up halfway around the world as often as we did it; we marveled that it was…well…easy. Whether or not it should have been. It was just so easy. And now?

It would be easy for me to get caught up in wondering what is next. If we’ll ever leave the U.S.A. again in this lifetime. If so, when. My toddler has been to Spain. She’s been to Canada. Mexico, twice. Traveling feels like part of our nature, and there are places in nearly every continent of the world that are deep deep down in my heart. It is a blessing, a blessing that sometimes makes my heart ache and that I’ve never wanted to trade for anything.

Last night, I was listening to a friend go live on a social media platform. She talked about a perspective she has been trying to take, in light of all the uncertainty we’re entering Summer 2020 with. She shared that, instead of focusing on her sadness at very likely missing out on quality time with family and friends at a beloved second home of a campground, she is trying instead to focus on being grateful that she has something to deeply miss.

In other words, when we have those strong feelings of missing something or someone, it’s a sign or indication that those things are planted very solidly in our heartdepths. And that, in and of itself, is something to be profoundly grateful for.

Tonight, then, I poured a small glass of port and sat down here at my laptop to share with you a few photos of this trip to Chile that we’ve been reminiscing about QUITE a lot recently. Just thinking about it brings me such joy. We coordinated our travel with our friend Matt (who now lives in Canada), were visiting our friends Shaye and Andrew and Brydyn (who are all from New Zealand), and made a new friend, Rosie (who, along with her husband, just made it to her new temporary home in Bolivia before the borders closed due to COVID-19).

These are just some really home-y photos. I have photos from Pablo Neruda’s house, from Santiago’s incredible restaurants and wine shops, from mountaintop monuments, the beach, the Andes mountains, a nearby pottery village. But that’s not where we are right now, physically and mentally. Do you know what I mean? The memories of those adventures feed my soul, no doubt. But what I’m pulling out from my heartdepths right now are not tourist destinations. I’m pulling out feelings of togetherness. I’m pulling out memories of beautiful home cooked meals and a round of Pisco sours and a cat sleeping on a dining room chair and KIDS that keep us all in a state of delight.

As we’ve been singing a lot with Pippa: I’ve got the joy, joy, joy, joy, down in my heart.

Down in my heart to stay.

The Sweeny Family Gives Thanks

28 Sunday Jan 2018

Posted by jessica@peace-of-pie in Nut Pie, travel

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

cream, holiday, honey, lemon, travel, walnuts

Here is the original Norm and Marie Sweeny family, some years ago, bundled up for the snow and clearly in their element.

In 2017, the Sweeny family celebrated many milestones including Grandmother’s 90th birthday, Aunt Susan’s 60th birthday, Mom and Dad’s 30th anniversary, Alex and Levi’s 30th birthdays, and Matt’s 21st birthday. We were happy to be able to gather in Illinois to share a Thanksgiving weekend of celebrations together!

The family has grown over the years, as you can see…the photo below is even missing 4.5 grandchildren/great-grandchildren who couldn’t make the trip out from California.

Although many delicious desserts and savory items were made and consumed as part of the festivities, for the purposes of the blog I will naturally focus on the pie I baked for Thanksgiving: Maria’s Double Crust Walnut Pie. This pie is unique on several accounts, but, like many good things, begins with a bunch of butter.

Maria must be a special lady, because she has a special pie crust recipe in Pie to be used with this very special and delicious recipe: Maria’s Shortbread Pie Pastry. It contains much more sugar than a typical crust, as well as an egg and lemon zest. In fact, the crust has about the same number of ingredients that the pie filling does. Due to the egg, the crust has a heartier, sturdier texture than average.

Part of the uniqueness of this pie is that is meant to be baked in a springform pan. However, my aunt did not have a springform pan at her home (nor do I have one at mine–we’re more of a pie than a cake family clearly) so I slightly adapted the plan and used a deep dish pie pan. The recipe gives direction to add “ropes” of dough to the inside of the pan as pictured before pressing the dough flatly up against the sides of the pan. As far as I could tell, this just served to form a thicker pastry around the edges and hold the pie together more concretely. And the crust is such a delicious and important part of this dessert. I think it’s a good move.

The pie filling is made from walnuts that get boiled with sugar and water and added to honey and cream. Nothing to object to there. The top crust is brushed with an egg glaze, and the final result is drool-inducing.

If there was such a thing as Baklava Pie, this would be it. (Confusing picture below, that’s pumpkin pie on the plate there, also delicious, just not matching.)

In this shot here you can see the true decadence of the filling.

This pie is one of several to date that fall into the category of, “I don’t care if I still have roughly 150 pie recipes left in my cookbook and I probably won’t finish this project until I’m 53, this is a pie I would make again and again because it’s just that good.”

I’m sharing a few more pictures from the Sweeny family Thanksgiving weekend below. Enjoy and have a beautiful week!

Thanksgiving Feast

Cousin Alex’s Bacon-Wrapped Duck

When you turn 90 you get two cakes.

A little help with the candles!

Unwrapping a birthday birthstone gift.

Matt, the Jenga Master.

Adventure Awaits

21 Thursday Dec 2017

Posted by jessica@peace-of-pie in Berry Pie, travel

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

raspberry, red currant, travel

Dear Friends,

It has been a while, and I have so much to share. This post will be a little longer than usual, will contain more photos than usual (Iceland is just too beautiful) and even contains some exciting life updates, so please do stick around if you have a few moments to spare. As always, thanks for visiting.

I can’t say that I went on a four-day trip to Iceland planning on baking a pie there. It happened something like this.

Levi and I flew to Iceland and met up with Maggie and José. It felt like the dead of night when we landed at 4:00 am and the sun wouldn’t rise until nearly 10. We sort of functioned (and I sort of napped) until the Laundromat Cafe in Reykjavik opened up and served us pancakes.

The rest of the day is a blur of alternating sleepy road tripping (thanks to Levi for being our non-sleepy driver) and cold, windy, breathtakingly beautiful scenery breaks. I’ll include several more photos at the end of this post. In the meantime, would you just look at these horses?! ❤

One of our missions for this first long day was to stock groceries, mainly breakfasts for the next several days at our AirBnB. I went to peruse the fruit selection in the store, thinking perhaps that a pie might be feasible…maybe an apple pie, something really simple…and that was when I saw these beauties.

At long last, I had found the elusive fresh red currant! I knew instantly which pie I would make. It was one that I’d had my eye on during many summer visits to Minnesota, where it seemed like the currants at the local farm were always either almost ripe enough, or the growing season had just ended. A massive frustration in my pie-making career…and now, the red currants had found me–in Iceland, of all places! It was time to make New Hampshire Raspberry and Red Currant Pie.

The team helped me to assemble everything else I would need, including a lemon, red currant jelly, raspberries, and Icelandic butter. (As an aside, I could write an entire blog post just about how good Icelandic butter is.)

Pie-making commenced the following morning with berry-sorting and pastry-forming. It was a Monday, and I was just over ten weeks pregnant with our first baby. Until I hit the ten-week mark on the day before we flew to Iceland, I’d been struggling pretty hard with nausea, exhaustion, and lack of motivation to do much of anything, let alone bake a pie. Given that context, this experience, and really the whole vacation, felt like a small – no, a large – miracle. I was so grateful.

I’m fifteen weeks pregnant now, due in mid-June, and my belly isn’t quite as tiny as it is in the photo above. As our baby grows and I talk to her/him more and more I am also growing more and more excited for the adventure that awaits. I look forward to showing this new little person how beautiful the world can be, how to have faith when things are scary, and how much they are loved–by Levi and I, by our incredible friends and family, by God the Creator and Jesus the Savior.

(Insert sappy family photo here.)

(I also can’t wait to tell baby about the great adventures they had in Iceland while still in the womb. Seriously. This baby is well-traveled already.)

Okay, back to pie.

José had never made a pie before and was a devoted sous-chef/student throughout the making of the red currant pie. We still haven’t quite determined the best Spanish word for pie, so we went with “pastel”.

While this recipe calls for a cream cheese pastry (and I do love Ken’s cream cheese pastry), in order to cut down on ingredient waste and grocery shopping bill I decided to use only the decadent Icelandic butter I spoke of earlier. I have struggled in the past making pie crust in other countries, as I find the flour and fat often don’t combine the way I’m used to with U.S. products, and I sometimes find myself with an overly sticky pastry. This time, the dough turned rock hard (it had been in the fridge during the day while we were out tromping around glaciers) and wouldn’t thaw enough to be rolled for about an hour. #icelandproblems

José has been writing “Amigos 2017” or some variation of this on cakes all year and I think he was excited to be able to write it on a pie for the first time. “Amigos J, L, M, J”. Unsurprisingly he put himself last. He is that kind of a person.

This sounds too poetic to be true, but after we chilled the finished pastel in nature’s icebox (our deck) for about half an hour, we ate this perfectly sour-sweet treat under the green glow of the Northern Lights. It was a night I will never forget for as long as I live.

I always say that pie is for sharing, and it’s definitely for sharing when you’re only baking for 4.1 people. We left a large slice for our AirBnB hosts and I was even able to wrap up a few pieces and smuggle them back to Chicago, our next stop, where we celebrated Thanksgiving with my family. Everyone was able to have one or two bites!