The "Fruits" Of Our Labors....

Mulberry Pie!  Fresh! 

In the form of Cheryl's First, Totally Home-Made Mulberry Pie.  Her First Pie of ANY sort, as a mater of fact.  The Mixed Berry Oat-bake was good enough.  But this will be the true test of the Mulberry Berry...  ( If that makes sense)  With no other berries to hide its flavor, we shall see who gets the blame if the pie does not taste up to par....  Cheryl, or the Mulberry!

With Egg wash and Sugar topping.

Can't wait to dig in!

It has been said that everyone's first home made pie ends up looking terrible, but tasting FANTASTIC!   I think this is mostly true, because my Mom was a terrible baker and she, somehow, managed to make my Mulberry pies taste pretty good.   Full disclosure:  Her Piecrust was lacking....  she would over knead it and it ended up being more like BARK and less like flaky, crumbly, tender dream pie crust. But her fillings were pretty good.

Running in Muscatine.   Note Yellow
Flowers.

Back to Cheryl!   Unlike my mother,  Cheryl's Pie looks pretty good for a first time go!   I'm hoping the flavor does not suffer for it. (Looked great! but tasted terrible.....)   Well,  that is what experiments are all about.  And over this 2020 lock-down, she has had plenty of disasters we don't talk about...except on this blog... which is rarely ever read by anyone.

Cheryl running a  7:10 mile!

But enough about that!  Today we visited Muscatine for a change in scenery and a Visit to Tee's, our Favorite Burger joint.  There was less wind today, but the temps still kept things cool.   Cheryl even tried to run a fast mile for some "Speed Work"   she has coming up. 

See the Little Guy on the Side? 

The barges were in full swing today.  I snapped a picture of a worker on one of the empty barges to show just how HUGE these things are.  And there was a huge tug pushing 15 of them up the river.  I am always fascinated by the sight.

And lastly,  My latest Origami Stop Motion.   Brian Chan's Lizard is of the best looking origami lizards out there ( in my opinion)  and I only had the Crease pattern to go off of, but recently, I found a video that helped clear a few of the mysteries up.  I probably should have not used Foil paper, but that is the only paper that seems to work for the Stop motion filming.   Enjoy.



UPDATE!   We just tried our first piece of Cheryl's First Home-made Mulberry Pie and it is GREAT!   Ok,  Tasting it with a critical eye, both of us agree top and bottom layers of the crust are slightly different.  However, both are tasty and the berries themselves are the BOMB!




    Looks like another reason to get out there and harvest more berries!  Cheryl is already trying to figure out how to get both the bottom and top crust to be the same flaky consistency.   We shall have to experiment more...  And it looks like half the pie will not even make it into the fridge.