Patches of brightness to warm this Winter Day

Yesterday's special dessert is pictured above ... a fresh fruit pie called Berry Lover's Delight with fresh strawberries and blueberries. I received the recipe in a free email newsletter from this Pillsbury site:

Berry Lover's Delight Pie

You would have to login to get the recipe. It is free and I have found some good easy recipes on this site. Very often I adapt them to our taste. For example, I used my own pie crust recipe, as I much rather make my own from scratch than use a refrigerator crust.

My pie actually looked like the one on their website and it was yummy! In the recipe you placed fresh fruit in the baked pie shell and made a glaze from cooking some of the berries and straining it and thickening it with cornstarch. Well, the recipe did not tell you what to do with the extra fruit pulp after you drained the syrup. I was not sure if I should add it to the pie and I did not want to waste it so I took the leftover pie crust from making the pastry heart cut-outs and rolled it to make a tart with the combined cooked strawberries and blueberries. This was the result ... an extra dessert ... a little "rustic" fruit tart. It was also yummy! I will make this recipe again as it was not too sweet and maybe I will add the cooked fruit into the pie and put a lattice crust on it and bake it as a regular two-crust pie. ;)

It has been a long winter so far and there is a few more weeks to go. A lot of things have been keeping me from sewing and blogging but things are better and I am going to make more of an effort to keep up with these activities which I enjoy.

Although today is very cold and wind has a distinct bite to it, winter is getting old and gray and starting to lose its teeth. This does also mean that the beautiful white snow is now reduced to icy, dirty piles ... still huge icy dirty piles ... but they did melt some and the ice is just about off the roof, thank goodness! We have had some wet ceilings in the last few storms.

The best news I have is that I have been sewing again and it feels so nice to have the pretty fabric flowing through my fingers. I am working on a long-overdue project which is a surprise gift for a friend ... so no pictures yet. The biggest surprise for my very patient friend will likely be getting it at all. I have not been a very good partner in this swap and the one she made for me is still sitting unopened in the box in which she mailed it to me. I could not enjoy it while I knew I had let her down, so we shall someday soon open our gifts at the same time ... as it should have been months ago.

I have also been running another Layer Cake Swap!

My friend Annette wrote to me about co-hosting a fabric swap she wanted to run at the beginning of the year and we set up a vote on the Quilt & Needle and one thing led to another and it ended with her running the "Creamy Neutrals Layer Cake Swap" and me running the "Jewel Batik Layer Cake Swap" at the same time.

Here some photos of these gorgeous batik fabrics ...

... as usual, I had my curious furry little helpers with me in the sewing area. What would I do without them?

I really enjoy receiving these bright fabric layers in the mail during the winter gloom and sitting down to swap and sort them. The fabrics are all beautiful and different and each square is a treasure.

I have everything swapped and today I am packing the "layer cakes" back in the baggies and tucking them into the return packages for the trip Friday to the post office.

I have fabric from several swaps now that I hope to be turning into quilts someday soon. With the price going up on fabric, I think I am going to be happy I have such a stash built up to choose from. Well ... having lots of pretty fabric stashed makes me happy anyway ...

;) Pat