Winner, Winner, Pie for Dinner

Thanks to the wonderful combination of the time changing and having a baby who is a morning person, my day began very, very early.  Alistair's wake up call came at 3:30 am to be exact.

We built many, many block towers today.
Alistair is almost as good a destroyer as he is an alarm clock.

The boys played "baby" by combat crawling across the floor and goofing around with baby toys.

After exhausting all of our typical weekend activities: farm chores, baking bread, laundry, tidying, painting, colouring, reading, homework, and playing with toys, it was time for a morning walk.  The boys picked some apples from Mr. John and Ms. Kathy's apple tree as we passed by their house.  Seamus carried them home in his back pack.

Seamus requested that we use them to make apple pie; so, at noon we peeled, sliced and cored them.

We tossed them in 1/4 cup brown sugar, 1 tbs cinnamon and 1 tbs corn starch.

I made pastry with our homemade lard.  I am still figuring out how to work with our lard as it is quite different than working with store bought lard or shortening; a little homemade lard goes a long way.

Once the pie was in the oven, I pulled together a special dinner worthy of my ultra homemade apple pie.  We had oven roasted ham, GG's scalloped potatoes, multi-grain bread, and orange-ginger roasted carrots.

I was sure glad to have a belly full of warm delicious supper before having to face doing the evening farm chores during a hail storm.  To make matters worse, for the first time in a long time, Houdini Hen escaped the chicken run.

Houdini was not loving the hail but could not figure out how to get back into the coop.
She was running back and forth along the fence line like a chicken with its head cut off and mad as a wet hen (actually, she was a wet hen so maybe that explains why she was so mad).  I must admit that while Houdini's knack for escaping her pen is incredibly annoying, I do kind of respect her cleverness and perseverance.  As such, I can assure you that while she might still be mad, her head is, and will remain, perfectly intact.  

Needless to say, chasing an ornery wet hen around in the dark while getting pelted with hail was not the highlight of my day.  Neither was being awoken at 3:30 am nor building about a hundred block towers.  

Savouring the freshest apple pie that I will ever eat?  Now, that was the winner of my day!