The bake

I wasn’t a big pie fan when I was younger. But as I’ve grown, so have my tastes, and I find myself craving a fruit pie quite a bit these days. I’d been wanting a cherry pie in particular for the last few weeks. (I’m not sure why, as I’ve probably eaten cherry pie only a couple of times in my entire life.) And this weekend I baked one.

I used frozen cherries, since it’s not quite cherry season in Ontario (bonus: the frozen cherries were already pitted). I’ve heard that sour cherries are best for pie, but I could find only sweet cherries in the freezer, and this recipe from Baker by Nature stated any type of cherries would work. Still, I added more lemon juice than the recipe called for, as I didn’t want the pie to be too sweet. (By the way, I used this recipe for the filling only, and I used my tried-and-true pie pastry recipe from Canadian Living.) It was my first time doing a lattice pie crust, too. At first, I was a little confused on how to do it, but this video tutorial from Sally’s Baking Addiction quickly cleared that up.

The result was a technically great pie that I definitely have enjoyed eating. But after weeks of craving a cherry pie, I’m not so sure it’s one of my favourite fruit pie fillings. I think I’ll be making other fruit pies before trying cherry again. (I do want to work on perfecting the lattice pie crust, though.)

The book

I have read and enjoyed every novel Claire Fuller has published, so when I heard that she was releasing her fourth, Unsettled Ground, there was no doubt I would read that one, too. The book was published a couple of months earlier in the UK, and since then it has been shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction. I picked up my copy last week after it was available in Canada and started it a couple of days ago.

The story follows 51-year-old twins Julius and Jeanie who live with their mother, Dot, in a run-down cottage in the British countryside. Within the first pages, Dot dies suddenly, and the twins struggle to survive as they sort through what their mother has left behind: all of her debts and secrets. I am about halfway through, and I can’t wait to see what will happen with the twins.