Fried Apple Hand Pies from Canned Biscuits - Day 216 of 365, Tutorial Tuesday

My mother made me do it. To be honest though, I made her do it.

On Day 183 I was celebrating my half-way mark. Half way to my journey of wherever it is I'm going.

On that day, my mom and daughter were here and we did some food-related activities. Picked tomatoes, bell peppers, and jalapenos. Made salsa. Baked zucchini bread, banana nut muffins, and fried some pies. Fried pies. A leftover from my childhood.

When I was growing up, we lived right next door to my grandparents. I spent all my days afterschool at their house and my grandmother used to make fried pies. I remember her electric skillet sitting on the counter as she fried them up.

I've never made them myself. I didn't even know how they were made - I just remember some type of fruit was involved and that they were delicious. So when my mom moved back to Idaho and I knew she was coming over, I wanted her to teach me to make fried pies. So on Day 183 I got a taste of how they were done.

If she only knew what she was in for.

Since I started these tutorials, I've been looking for things I've made or baked to show off. Except I'm not a fried pie expert. So I sent my mom on a mission. In between the time she made them at my house a while back and this week, her task was to find the best combination of crust and filling. She used small canned biscuits, jumbo canned biscuits, and pie crusts. She fried some, she baked some. She tried a dried peach filling, a dried apricot filling, and a canned apple pie filling.

She's researched and taste tested and is ready to unveil her recipe. It uses a bit of oil, a can of jumbo biscuits and a can of apple pie filling.

So today's tutorial is my mom showing us all how to make fried apple pies, just like her mom did.

 

  Click on the video for directions:

Day 215 of 365

I've heard you are either an Elvis person or a Beatles person. You can like them both, but you always like one more than another.

I'm a Beatles person. When I first discovered music in the 70s I was listening to Paul McCartney and Wings and John Lennon so I became interested in the Beatles. My memories of Elvis were not positive back then. By the time I started paying attention he had let himself go and was not very attractive. It wasn't appealing to watch him perform.

But years later I'd heard so much about Graceland that it went onto my bucket list. When we did our cross country trip a few years back it was one of our must-see places to visit. Stepping into the mansion was like stepping back in time. Same carpet, counter tops, and furniture, all in 1970s color scheme.

Only then did I appreciate Elvis more for what he had done than for what he had become. I started to like Elvis more. Over the past couple years I've even bought some Elvis fabric. Until yesterday I had no idea of how I was going to use it.

As I was cutting up all those stockings for Stockings for Soldiers, it occurred to me I might use some Elvis fabric. I was second guessing whether it would be a good choice. But Casey Kasem helped me decide. Last night I was listening to a repeat of his show from 1977. A year I remember well. How can someone forget when Leif Garrett and Shaun Cassidy had hits in the top 40? This repeat show mentioned several times about Elvis' death. (He had died just a few weeks earlier.) As I heard them talking about him again and again, I remembered the importance he played in music and sewed up those Elvis stockings.

11 more down.