Ginger Rhubarb Whole Wheat Pie

I scored a huge bunch of rhubarb the other day on my way home from work.
I'm a huge rhubarb fan and I've been meaning to go to a local Farmer's market to get some. Something about the rhubarb in the grocery store, and it's price, keep me from buying it. 
Hey, rhubarb should come from your own garden, or be given to you. 
I was driving home from work the other day, still all dressed up from my day, when I passed a neighbors house with a HUGE pile of rhubarb and leaves sitting at the end of her driveway nearest the street.  It was screaming "Free Rhubarb".... I pulled over.  As I clippity clopped towards the rhubarb in my heels, the neighbor emerged with a smile on her face, so happy to give her rhubarb away. I was pretty happy to be on the receiving end.

One thing about rhubarb, while the "ideal" stalk of rhubarb is nice and ruby red, don't be too picky, even the green ones taste good. As you can see from my picture above, my filling isn't the picture perfect red, but it still tastes great anyway.

This didn't start out being a vegan pie recipe, but I've had one of those sticks of Crisco in my fridge for a while and I wanted it gone!  It's been there since Thanksgiving when I made a Vegan pie for the holiday gathering for my niece, who is a vegan.  Vegan pie crust is pretty much a slam dunk... it involves stuff you already know. If you prefer to use butter, here's my basic pie crust recipe that always works well for me, Easy Pie Crust.

Makes one double crusted pie

Ingredients:

Crust:

1 2/3 cup all purpose white flour

1 cup whole wheat flour

1 cup Crisco

3 Tbsp cold water 

Filling:

6 cups rhubarb, chopped

2 tbsp candied ginger, chopped small

1 1/2 cups sugar

6 Tbs flour

Make pie crust first, as it's best when it has a chance to chill for 30 minutes, or more.  I use a food processor to mix the two types of flour, a dash of salt and the Crisco vegetable shortening and pulse the mixture until it resembles a coarse meal.  Then, add in about 3 Tbsp of ice cold water and mix until just combined. Wrap in plastic wrap, flatten into discs and chill for 30 minutes.

Preheat your oven to 375 degrees.

Chop your rhubarb into 1/2 slices.  If your stalks are super thick, you might want to cut each stalk in half lengthwise first, then into slices for smaller pieces for ease of shoving it into your 'pie hole' later on when eating it.

In a large bowl, add the chopped rhubarb, the sugar, the flour and the candied ginger.  Mix well.  Pretty quick you will see the rhubarb start to release some liquid, which is fine, just give it another stir before adding it to the pie crust.

Roll out the pie crust and line the pan.  I like to use a deeper dish ceramic pie plate, but any 9" will work.

It could be somewhat tender to roll out, I had some breakage with mine, which surprised me. More so than all white flour... must have something to do with less gluten.Oh well, now let's see how I can get by this?  So... I rolled mine between two sheets of plastic wrap and it worked very well! Line the pie plate and fill with the rhubarb filling.

Add the top crust and crimp the edges.  You can also use a fork to seal the edges, that's how you keep all the juice inside the pie!

Preheat oven to 375

Bake at 375 for 1 hour and 15 minutes.  Please use a cookie sheet under the pie pan, it will help keep nasty, sticky spills from making a mess in the bottom of your oven.

Berrylicious Berry Trio Pie

Seems like just about everyone buys those big bags of frozen berries from Costco for smoothies.  But sometimes I would also like to do something else with them.. and the perfect thing is that you can also bake a great pie using the frozen berry trio mix.  

Of course, fresh berries would be best... if blackberries are in season, and you have someone to pick them for you! I saw a snake once, on top of a blackberry branch and that pretty much cured me of wanting to pick anymore berries myself... I know it's ridiculous, I just don't like snakes hiding out in berry bushes scaring unsuspecting cooks like me. Either you pick them for me, or I'm buying them.

The filling is yummy and thick with a natural tang from the mixture of raspberries, blueberries and blackberries. It was much thicker than the picture at the bottom of this posting leads you to believe. I took this picture after most the family had already dove into the pie and I threw one last piece on a plate to try to take it's picture on Thanksgiving Day.  Food and wine coma definitely impaired my judgement on what a good pie picture should look like.  
Please accept my apologies,  just shut your pie hole, you will like this. 

This wasn't my prettiest pie, I will admit I had trouble with it. 

I was trying to rush to make a vegan pie for my niece on Thanksgiving, so I made a different pie crust than usual.  I used the Crisco recipe (all vegetable shortening) but I found that it was very hard to get it to stay together, and my crust broke to bits once I tried to pick it up and put it on the pie.  Once your dough touches your berry filling, you are pretty much committed to continuing to put it on the pie.  While the crust did not look that great, it did taste extremely good. It's on the Crisco baking sticks package if you want to try it.  Next time I will buy the pre-made Pillsbury crust or make my own easy Basic Pie Crust recipe, or even make a cobbler or crisp with this filling.

Makes 1 double crust pie
Ingredients:

2 Pie crusts, one for the top and one for the bottom

Filling:
1/4 cup cornstarch
11/4 cup sugar
6 1/2 cups frozen berries, thawed* (retain juices)
Coarse Sugar for sprinkling on top
     *At least semi- thawed....

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

Stir together the cornstarch and sugar in a large bowl, add the berries and the juices and combine well. Add to the unbaked pie shell, add cut outs to the top, brush with egg yolk, or water, and sprinkle with coarse sugar. I had Blueberry sugar (shown above) so I used that.

(You know you're in trouble when the filling oozes out before you bake it...my crust was too small and had too 

many holes in it to completely keep the filling in.  Yours should be different, but either way it tastes great!)

Put the pie dish onto of a baking sheet to catch any drips. Bake until the filling bubbles and crust is golden, about 55-60 minutes.  If needed, add foil covers to the crust edges to keep from browning too much.

Let the pie cool for about 2-3 hours.  The filling will continue to thicken somewhat as it cools, so don't panic if it looks too juicy.