Views from the Pasture

Yum ~ Yum !! BLUEBERRY PIE

posted by all of us, who made pie,

Ellis, Esme, Sullivan, Callopie, Himhe, Piper, Ovi and Noah

Esme here, we have decided that we each will write in this post. Only 1 of us is unknown to you but after today we will assign him to introduce himself on Meet the Ovines. His name is Noah and he will be in some of the photos so perhaps we will ask him to explain the story of photos he is in. And now to begin, go ahead Ellis !

Thank you Esme. As you may have read yesterday it has been a rather active few days. {Baa-haa} But thanks to our Ewe, Esme, things have settled down. And this adventure was her idea really, being a rather clever Ovine of the Ewe persuasion. Knowing how much the flock enjoys berries and having found a single can of blueberry pie filling in a cabinet....apparently she enlisted our HC to gather all the items needed to make a Blueberry Pie. What fun, so I took Callopie, and together, we prepared a dish for the pie. Knowing a bit about baking from past experience helped the more experienced teach the others. So together Callopie and I covered the bottom and sides of the dish with a slippery substance, we decided butter would do. Then I emptied a bit of flour into the dish and.....

Oh, my turn my turn. Ellis was about to tell you that I, Callopie, then covered all the butter on the dish with this flour. {Seemed a bit odd to me since I saw ready made pie crusts so why butter and flour?} But Ellis explained that preparing the pie dish with butter and flour keeps the pie from sticking too badly to the pan, making it easier to remove the pieces to eat. {Remove pieces? Why not just bend over the edge and eat? Why not JUST CRAWL INTO THE DISH AND EAT?}

Ah, thank you Callopie, as head of the flock, I'll finish telling of this part. After we had the pie dish ready, and being on top of the oven, Callopie turned the knob over to BAKE while I handled moving the knob to 425, per the recipe. Sullivan?

Thank you Ellis.~~~ It took many of us to wrestle the bottom dough into the dish. So with my pal Piper we gathered the others and together we put it in place. We let the smaller ones get into the dish and carefully and hoove the crust around the bottom. Once we had that done we needed to push the extra dough up to the edge. Esme was by the book reading the recipe but as you may see from the photo, above, we needed all of us. Below, you can see how perfect we fit.

I was very pleased to fill the hole Sullivan, thank you for calling me over the from the book. So, now I, Esme, can show you our pie dish with crust, ready to fill.

Left to right we admire our work. Esme, Sullivan and below Himhe, Ovi behind and Callopie in front, Ellis, Piper and our Noah. And Noah was invaluable in the next steps.

Thank you Esme. Allow me to introduce myself quickly here. I am Noah. I am grey. Next I took charge of filling the pie dish. You have already noticed from the title of our post that we all love blueberries and that is what would go into our pie. Our HC opened the can and set it on the table with a plastic implement. I pushed the can over then used the plastic implement to scoop the contents into the dish. BUT. We all agreed that it was rather shy of berries. Lots of gloppy blue sweet stuff but few berries. So after a bit of silence Piper offered a suggestion. Piper?

Thank you Noah. None of us thought there was even enough berries for one wedge of pie let alone the entire pie. So knowing we had brought back berries from our summer adventures I asked "why don't we use the frozen blueberries, the ones we picked?" Everyone quickly agreed and Esme went to speak to our HC, who quickly pulled them from the freezer. At first she placed them in a bowl full of holes which she then set in another bowl. Esme explained she did this because they were hard, frozen. And although we would put them in our pie that way, any thawing of the berries would include berry juice which would make stains wherever it dripped. Soon the bowl with the holes and the other bowl were placed by our dish again. We gathered around to admire what all our hard work over the summer was about to become, part of our Blueberry Pie. Around the bowl Ovi, Ellis, my bottom half{Baa~haa}, Callopie and Noah.

I'll finish up the filling part Piper. We decided the best way to put berries into the dish with the gloppy stuff would be to kick them in. Callopie immediately tried to jump in the bowl AGAIN, but Esme and Ellis stopped her, instead telling her an important job would be to guide me where to kick the berries, as each area got its fill.

So Sullivan put the bowl + bowl atop himself with Ovi helping him, and I climbed into the bowl. Slowly I began kicking frozen berries into the dish. By the time I was done my hooves were almost as cold as the berries had been in the freezer. I sure was glad to climb out of that bowl and back onto the cloth, I can tell YOU. Luckily when my part was done Himhe helped Callopie to spread the frozen berries around with the plastic implement.

My turn now....I had to make certain that my Yarmulke {my cap} didn't fall off into the pie. Even though it has a beautiful blueberry color in with the white I didn't think it would feel good on my head if it had fallen in gloppy sweet stuff, Baa~haa. So I stood back a bit and directed Callopie in the spreading of the berries. Then my work complete the flock gathered to put the other piece of dough on top of the dish.

Putting the top on wasn't the hard part But we all decided that to push the top around the edge like we had done to the bottom dough might create quite a mess. So Esme had a fine idea.

I had seen something which seemed perfectly suited for pie making. So my HC took it off the wall and gave it to me. Noah immediately understood, even before anything was said, and I gave it to him.

I carefully and slowly pushed the implement around the edge of the dish. It made a nice edge and the dough hanging over the dish fell to the tablecloth.

Our HC gathered it up and took it away, saying something about a John E. Cake? Although it took a while to understand what she said as she ran it all together~~~johnnycake. {Humans} After that we used the implement and put some holes atop the dough, but Ovi wasn't happy.

No, it just didn't look, well, like a proper berry pie. What it needed was..........WELL~~BERRIES. So I put a few of the frozen berries over the top, not in any order or design. Just wild....FOR OUR WILD BLUEBERRIES. NOW IT LOOKED A PROPER BERRY PIE !!

Back to me now so I sent word via Esme to our HC who put our pie into the oven Now started the difficult part of the 'fun'. We waited. And we all gathered about to see how it would turn out. Callopie insisted on watching the pie as it cooked inside the oven, but soon decided it was far to hot to sit near the stove, especially not on the door of the oven, Baa~haa.

So as the Ewe of the flock I announced our pie was finished baking. We all gathered around enjoying the glorious smell of our berries as gloppy blue berry juice bubbled out of the holes. What a good adventure. What a fun afternoon. And most of all what a wonderful life we live in our Pasture.

Yes I know sometimes there is fussing and hurt feelings. Egos and those who 'need'. It is a big task I have taken on with Ellis the Ram, the care of our Flock. But together we can do what one of us couldn't accomplish. And now, baa-hoo, how to find out just what BFSS knows and in the process teaching her to live harmoniously, or at least without chaos, in the pasture.

So now our pie is cool and it is soon bedtime. We will all enjoy our pieces of our pie and then dream wonderful dreams. Of pastures filled with berries~blackberries, blueberries, red raspberries and strawberries. All cushioned in lovely MLGV!!!

ELLIS THE RAM, ESME THE EWE,

SULLIVAN, CALLOPIE, HIMHE, PIPER, OVI AND NOAH