Birthday Pie! Flaky All-Butter Crust Apple Pie

Birthday Pie

Organic cold unsalted butter sliced in 1/4 inch pieces in my food processor, along with only 2/3 of the flour mixture...ready for pulsing.

Several years ago, my friend confided to me that he doesn't like birthday cake (gasp!)
I remembered that.

Blueberry Milkshake

Blueberry Milkshake

My friend gifted me a HUGE ice-cream pail full of perfectly sweet local blueberries from a UPick farm in Richmond.  The blueberry season is here NOW! and I don't know about you, but I have blueberries starting to turn mushy and I'm heading to the freezer now with trays of them to save them for smoothies and baking.  

Aside from a healthy smoothy, a more decadent way to enjoy a nice heap o' blueberries is in a milkshake.  Here's my quick recipe:

Blueberry Milkshake

2 scoops vanilla ice cream (can be made dairy free with almond or coconut ice cream)

1 cup milk (can be made dairy free with almond or coconut milk)

1 cup blueberries

Combine all the ingredients in a blender and whizz until combined and no longer lumpy.

LAZY SUMMER LOCAL STRAWBERRY & VANILLA ICE CREAM TARTS

Fresh local strawberry & vanilla ice cream tarts 

In keeping with my "Lazy Summer" theme I started with my last post, I thought I'd show you a sneaky-delicious treat to use up those local strawberries that are so juicy sweet this month.  After we visited the driving range in Richmond, we noticed the blueberry & strawberry farm next door to it had a "U Pick" sign.  It didn't take much to convince the kids to pick berries.  They were half-way across the strawberry field before I could finish "Do you want to pick..."

MAKING THAT BBQ COMPLETE: STRAWBERRY MEYER'S LEMONADE, YOGURT CUCUMBER SALAD AND ROASTED PEPPERS (GF)

Strawberry Meyers Lemonade

Depending on your lemons, you should get about 1 cup from 5 juicy Meyer's Lemons.  The ones I had were huge and full of juice.   The lemons were also way sweeter than regular lemons, so I didn't need to add much sweetener.  The fresh strawberries also helped with sweetness and added a nice pink tinge to the lemonade.

MINI HONEY MANDARINS

mini honey mandarins: intensely sweet and full of flavour!a mini honey mandarin can be as small as a quarter (that's one of the new Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics quarters there) up to about the size of a Loonie ($1 coin)

At local Asian markets, the Mini Honey Mandarins (a.k.a. Sugar Mandarins, Mini Mandarins, Mini Sweet Mandarins) are here. While at Aberdeen Mall, I purchased a huge bag of these little sugar bombs for the kids because they love them! They are just as easy to peel as the regular Japanese mandarins, but are so small that you can fit 4 or 5 in your hand. The kids love them just because they're tiny, cute and super-sweet.

I saw them again at Kin's Market for $1.29/lb and bought a gargantuan bag. These were even tinier than the ones I purchased at the Aberdeen market, but not as sweet. In my own experience, I have found that the darker orange the little Sugar Mandarins, the more intensely sweet and full of orangey-flavour they are. Size has nothing to do with sweetness, I guess.

because they're so small, you can easily eat a dozen at a sitting.

Mini Honey Mandarins make for fantastic snacks and are perfect for kids' lunch bags. My kindergartener can eat 3 for a snack at school and has at one time eaten 8 at one sitting. My 2 year old, who has a heartier appetite can eat about the same as her big sister! I'm limiting myself to 1 a day because I'm watching my sugar intake !