**Thursday Sept. 26th 11:45 AM** CONGRATULATIONS to our giveaway winner, Nancy E.!
---
My guest today is the
New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of Into the
Free, the Christy Award
winning Book of the Year 2013 and recipient of the Mississippi Library
Association’s Fiction Award. The sequel, When
Mountains Move released September, 2013. She and her family live in Mississippi where
they operate Valley House Farm. Please wave your wooden spoons and join me in a warm Authors' Galley welcome for Julie Cantrell!
(I love that Julie has opted to answer one of my favorite Authors' Galley questions):
What would the characters of WHEN MOUNTANS MOVE order if they all gathered at a restaurant?
Well, Millie, my
main character, would likely order something inexpensive and nothing to call
attention to herself. Perhaps a baked potato or soup. And then she would share
it with others at the table, not wanting to take too much for herself.
Her husband, Bump,
would probably dive into a juicy Ribeye, while Fortner would just hunt his own dinner and avoid the stuffy
constraints of a restaurant.
Because these books are set during the WWII era, Oka may not be allowed to dine in the
restaurant due to her Choctaw heritage, and Mabel (who is featured more prominently in INTO THE FREE) certainly would not be allowed to dine with the
others due to the color of her skin. Especially in Mississippi where the story first
takes root.
Kat would order
something expensive, and then she’d take tiny nibbles, declare she was stuffed,
and waste the entire dish.
Here in my real life at Valley House Farm, where I live and operate a small-scale
sustainable, organic farm with my family, we like to eat fresh fruits and
vegetables from our harvests. As I’m writing this post, our pear tree is
dropping gifts by the dozens, so today I thought I’d teach you how to make a
yummy, scrummy pear pie...all from scratch.
You can choose a pie crust from the store or a recipe of
your choosing, but here’s how we make a simple, no-fail homemade crust. The only trick is to use ICE cold water and
cold unsalted butter (not margarine). Roll crust and press into greased pie pan
(I prefer glass or porcelain for more even distribution of heat).
INGREDIENTS FOR PIE
CRUST
·
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour, plus
extra for rolling
·
1 cup (2 sticks or 8 ounces)
unsalted butter, very-cold, cut into 1/2 inch cubes
·
1 teaspoon salt
·
1 teaspoon sugar
·
6 to 10 Tbsp ice water
INSTRUCTIONS FOR PIE
CRUST
Mix flour, salt, and sugar together. Then add slices of cold
butter, cutting it into the dry ingredients (or using a food processor if you
have one. I don’t...sigh.) Mix until a course mixture forms, leaving bits of
butter in the dough...that’s what makes a “flaky” crust. Slowly incorporate
cold water until you form a dough. Spread dough on flat surface sprinkled with
flour and knead lightly, shaping the dough into two disks. DO NOT OVER KNEAD.
You can refrigerate these disks up to two days. I’m using one for a pie and one
for a spinach quiche for dinner tonight. When ready, use a rolling pin to
flatten one disk. Then, place in greased pie pan and trim as needed. (Young
kids can play with the extra dough.)
Then, you pick the pears. Okay, if you don’t have a
beautiful pear tree offering you fresh fruit each morning, you can pretend!
Visit your local farmers market and try to support local growers. (Note, pears
can be substituted with any kind of apples, but the green ones such as Granny
Smith usually taste best in this kind of pie.)
INGREDIENTS FOR PEAR
OR APPLE PIE
·
¾ cup sugar
·
1 tsp. cinnamon
·
Dash or two
nutmeg
·
6-7 green apples or 8-9 pears, peeled and sliced
thin
·
1 ½ TBSP butter
·
(1 unbaked pie shell)
INGREDIENTS FOR CRUMB
TOPPING:
·
½ cup butter
·
½ cup brown sugar
·
1 cup flour
Heat oven to 400 degrees.
Peel the pears, saving the scraps for the compost pile or
the chicken coop. If you don’t have compost or chickens, I bet pinterest has
some snappy way to craft pear peelings into a swanky fall centerpiece or
something even Martha Stewart never thought of. I’m not that crafty, but our
chickens are happy.
Slice pears into thin slivers (the smaller, the more tender
they will taste in the pie, so don’t get lazy here.) Our horses love to nibble
on the leftover cores.
Mix cinnamon and sugar. (You can certainly substitute sugar
with no-cal/low-cal sweeteners like Splenda, etc. I prefer to use natural
ingredients such as raw sugar or stevia. Today, for photo purposes, I’m using
plain white sugar.) Add a dash or two of ground nutmeg. (Sometimes I add three
or four.)
Mix pears lightly in with cinnamon and sugar and nutmeg, so
they are completely coated.
Place pears into pie crust heat about 5-10 minutes until
warmed through. Dot with butter when you remove the pie from warming.
Mix the crumble topping ingredients while pears are heating.
Again, you’ll cut these together or use a food processor to blend a course
crumble consistency. Then, sprinkle topping over the pears and bake for 30
minutes-45 minutes.
Serve warm with ice cream. YUM! (Remaining pie can be stored
in fridge for a few days and reheated as needed.)
When Mountains Move, by Julie Cantrell,
is the sequel to the Christy Award winning Book of the Year and Debut Novel
of the Year, Into the Free, which earned a starred review from Publisher’s
Weekly and became both a New York Times and USA TODAY
bestseller.
It is the spring of 1943. With a wedding and a cross-country move,
Millie’s world is about to change forever.
If only her past could change with it.
Soon after the break of day, Bump will become Millie’s husband.
And then, if all goes as planned, they will leave the rain-soaked fields of
Mississippi and head for the wilds of the Colorado Rockies. As Millie tries to
forget a dark secret, she hasn’t yet realized how drastically those past
experiences will impact the coming days.
For most of Millie’s life, being free felt about as unlikely as
the mountains moving. But she’s about to discover that sometimes in life, we
are given second chances, and that the only thing bigger than her past … is her
future.
***
Oh, Julia what a delightful post! I'm alternately intrigued (by your characters!), laughing, drooling, and sighing . . . I SO love that you have an organic farm--my fantasy. Including the compost, chickens and horses.C I loved that our Texas home bordered a very large ranch, and I could toss veggie/fruit leftovers to eager deer horses, cows . . . and goodness knows what else after darkness closed in! And your pear pie: I can smell it from here. "Yummy scrummy" indeed!
Now for some extra fun, the fabulous Wynn-Wynn Media is offering a great giveaway package: A copy of When Mountains Move, a DaySpring mug, and some Tazo tea--ALL perfect accompaniments to a slice of that fresh pear pie!
To be included in the giveaway, please leave a comment below that includes your e-mail address. US entries only. The winner be chosen (via Random.Org) on Thursday September 26th and notified by e-mail.
Meanwhile, happy reading and . . . Bon appetit!
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