I made a rhubarb custard pie yesterday after picking up some lovely rhubarb at the farmer’s market. My mother made this pie every spring and would always say that it proved the existence of god. And really it is damn good. The recipe is from Betty Crocker and it’s quite simple, but the lattice top makes it look extra impressive.  I took some pictures while I was putting the pie together and though I’d share a little lattice top tutorial so all your pies can look fancy fancy too.

Make enough pie crust for a 2 crust pie (there is a good recipe here). Roll half out and line your pie pan, put you filling in and pop it in the fridge while you roll out the other half of the dough. Roll the second half out just like the first: about an 1/8″ thick and slightly bigger than your pie pan. Cut the whole thing into one inch strips. Now place two of the longest strips in the middle perpendicular to each other. Fold the strip that is underneath back over the strip on top and add another parallel to the one on top about a half an inch away. Continue weaving the strips by folding every other strip up and putting a new strip in. If your strips are broken or you don’t have enough long ones, just hide the broken bit under another strip and no one will ever know. When you’ve covered the whole top, seal the pie by pinching the top and bottom crusts together (two fingers on the outside and one on the inside, just like the picture) around the whole pie. With a sharp knife cut all the excess dough off and stand back and admire your work. Before putting in the oven be sure to brush the top with cream (or egg wash) and sprinkle with sugar. This will make the lattice top look even better.

Rhubarb Custard Pie
from Betty Crocker

3 eggs
3 Tbsp. milk
2 cups sugar
1/4 cup flour
3/4 tsp nutmeg
4 cups cut-up rhubarb
1 Tbsp butter

Beat the eggs and milk in a large bowl. Mix the sugar, flour and nutmeg together and add to the eggs. Mix well. Add the rhubarb and stir. Pour into your prepared crust. Dot with the butter. Cover with lattice top. Bake for 50-60 minutes at 400 degrees (Fahrenheit) until nicely browned. Serve slightly warm (with vanilla ice cream!) or cold for breakfast the next day.

I was going to make a dress that looked just like this, but then my muddled pregnancy brain got in the way and I cut the fabric on the selvedge instead of the fold. Then after picking out another lovely piece of fabric I did it again. Amazingly I didn’t just go upstairs and eat chocolate, but instead picked out fabric that I had yards and yards of so I could continue to screw up and still get a dress out of it.  And ta da! I cut on the fold (yay!) and used the elastic thread that’s been sitting in my drawer for over a year. I used Erin’s sunny dress tutorial, but stopped after 5 rows of shirring because I liked the baby doll shape of the dress. I never did like the straps that tie (even though I know they are super useful) so I made thicker straps instead. Then high on my one success, I made my son matching shorts. They are a little longer than shorts–board shorts? short pants? long shorts? everyone has a different name for them. I think they are just cute as hell.

oh and thanks for all your comments on the last post. I guess I’ve never read the comments on apartment therapy before. I didn’t know they liked to get down and dirty. I wasn’t hurt at all–everyone’s entitled to their opinions–but I think I may put a disclaimer on my blog about using my photos (to be fair, AT did credit me, they just didn’t get the facts straight) or maybe even have an edited version appear in RSS readers. How do you protect your work?

We had a really lovely weekend. I pretended to know what I was doing in the garden while my kids made mud pies and my husband mowed the lawn. It doesn’t get more suburban than that. And it was awesome. We ate every meal outside, including these ridiculously awesome carrot cake cookies. The recipe says they make 18, but I only got a dozen, so double it because they are super delicious: not too sweet, but not too healthy either and small enough to eat too many without realizing it. And just the cure for when all your decorating decisions get totally panned (in the comments) on a popular website–who knew rug placement was such a hot button issue?

We’ve had jute rugs for a couple of years now (you can see one here) and they were getting ratty as hell. Not to mention totally beige and boring.  They hide every stain though and with two dirty dogs and two toddlers that is pretty huge.  But the boringness was outweighing their usefulness when the spring came, so I sprung for some new ones. Rugs are really expensive (if you didn’t know) and I would like to tell all the shelter magazines and design blogs to stop telling everyone that 1000 bucks for a rug (or a couch or anything really) is cheap, because it is not. 10 bucks is cheap. And that’s what I paid for one of these yellow stripey runners at Ikea.  I duct taped them together–classy I know–and now I have a rug that I is far from beige and cost less then take out.  I got two more for the living room and it like we live in a whole new house (granted one where I have to vacuum a lot more, but still they look pretty good).

I have stocked my little shop in quite some time, but I’m trying to make it look presentable again. There are four new kiddy messenger bags in some pretty fantastic prints: Heather Ross (who I hear won’t be designing fabric for a while–damn!), Alexander Henry, and the Japanese line Kokka, most of them lined with vintage gingham.  I also made the little bear from that awesome Kokka forest print. His name is Julien and he is the first bear of mine stuffed with 100% wool. I need to look around a bit more for wool stuffing, because damn it’s expensive, but so much nicer to work with than sucky poly fil (anyone have a good wool hook up?).  I’m moving to use only natural materials for the stuff I sell. The bags are now lined with cotton twill, because interfacing is weird and god only knows what it’s made of. I switched to using  cotton thread a while ago, mostly because it just sews so much nicer than polyester thread. And now the stuffing is wool, but I do use foam for my diggers and tugboats and I just don’t know what natural material could give them that same structure.  Anyone have any ideas? I will always use vintage and thrifted fabric even though I’m sure most have some polyester in them, but their coolness factor makes up for that. right?