March 2010 Archives

March fourteen is International Pi day! (Get it? 3.14?) To celebrate, I decided to make the chimpanzees a delicious pit-fruit pie. We had plenty of frozen pitted fruit from the summer (thank you to everyone who donated the fruit from their fruiting trees), so all I needed to make was the crust.

No sweat, I thought. I surfed the Internet, and found a great vegan recipe (since we had no eggs or milk in the fridge). Flour, baking powder, oil, salt, water. No problem. We always have those ingredients, I thought to myself. Well, I was a little "iffy" on the baking powder, but on checking the cupboard, I found a canister almost half full. Great! Next, off to the pantry for some flour and oil. I found the oil all right, but no flour!

Oh no, I thought, no flour. But I so want to make a pie for Pi day! I spied the pancake mix next to where the flour should be. I read the ingredients on the pancake box. Flour, baking powder, oil solids, and salt! Awesome, I thought, now I can make pie crust!

I left out the baking powder and salt, and just added the oil and water, mixed it together, and had something quite close to pie crust. Then I defrosted the apricots and peaches and boiled them down a bit in a pot with cinnamon, nutmeg, and ground cloves. Into the bottom crust it went (in a cast-iron skillet), and then into the oven. For the top I flattened small bits of dough and floated them on the fruit.

The finished product was beautiful. All the chimpanzees were very excited about the pie while I was baking it. Tatu requested repeatedly that I take the pie out of the oven so that she could smell it. However, only Dar and Loulis came in for dinner, and Loulis ended up eating Dar's serving of pie.

There are plenty of leftovers to serve on another day. Oh well; perhaps next time I will make a pie that everyone enjoys.

During the summer we often get invitations to harvest fruit from people who have fruiting trees that produce too much fruit for them to use themselves. This past summer we were lucky enough to be invited to harvest apples, apricots, peaches, and plums. Because there is usually too much fruit for Tatu, Loulis, and Dar to eat before it goes bad, there is usually a small army of interns preserving the fruit by either drying or freezing it. This preserved fruit helps us through the leaner winter and early spring months when we receive smaller amounts of produce from gleaning and fruit can be very expensive to purchase.

This last summer a well-meaning intern froze almost six gallon-sized bags of plums whole.

One dish in which frozen fruit is often used is breakfast smoothie. The frozen fruit can add a thickness because it's frozen. However, if the frozen fruit has pits in it, it might hurt the blender. So, the plums have been sitting in the freezer since they were frozen, almost useless.

But, waste not, want not. I decided to use the plums for something--anything. But defrosted fruit is soggy, and not terribly appealing. So, I defrosted the plums in one pot, cut the seeds out as they thawed and stewed them in another pot with some spices, and served it in divided bowls with plain white rice.

Apparently this was exactly what I should have done because everyone wanted extra helpings. As I sat watching the chimpanzees enjoy their meal, I saw something curious. Dar, who usually enjoys each ingredient of his meals separately (rice first, then onions, then peppers, etc.), took a big spoonful of the stewed plums and plopped it into the rice side of his bowl. Then he stirred it around for a bit and took a big bite. He must have liked his concoction because he ended up licking both sections of the bowl clean.

It always makes me happy when the chimpanzees enjoy something I have made for them so much. I guess I know what to do with the five other gallon bags of whole frozen plums!