We actually have beautiful and often very hot summers--short of course. We usually can count on 90 frost-free days but have also had frost in every month of the year some years. I can grow many zone 3 things and will even try the odd zone 4 if I am really in love with it. The upside is long daylight hours. Right now the sun is rising before 5 am and not setting until 10:30 pm so things grow like crazy for the short time they have. Thanks for the advice. My garage will hit -45C most likely this winter but I have a cool spot in the basement I could try. I would really rather have one that can live outside, however. Thanks again, Angeline

Lard has a larger fat crystal than other fats, which is one reason it works so well in pastry. Butter gives great flavor but has a lot of water in it and it melts quickly. The combination of lard and butter in pastry is a great twosome. When I use coconut oil (frozen and grated on the large hole on my box grater), I can reduce the amount of fat by about 25 percent, especially when using pastry flour or milling soft wheat or low-gluten spelt into flour to use for pastry. Good pastry is a combination of tenderness and flakiness and each characteristic is developed differently. Pastry is all about reducing the gluten development in the flour, so choose flour (pastry flour or Southern All-Purpose flours like Martha White, White Lily, Gladiola, Red Band) that has a low protein/gluten content to begin with as a great way to reduce gluten-development up front. If you want more tender pastry while using all-purpose flour you can add a little more fat and add an acid ingredient. Divide the cold fat in two portions and mix one half in the flour until it's very finely mixed. This will coat the flour so it develops the gluten in short strands (hence short-crust pastry) when the liquid is mixed in and will give a tender crust. Quickly add the remaining fat and keep it in larger blobs. When the heat of the oven melts the blobs of fat the steam will raise those layers in the pastry we recognize as a flaky pastry. Vinegar in a recipe is another way to decrease the gluten-development. Adding an acid brings one more tenderizer into play. "Acids soften gluten, breaking apart gluten strands and keeping the pastry tender." When eggs are used in a pastry recipe it is best used for something like a meat pie. The protein from the egg will reinforce the structure of the pastry, making it strong enough to hold a hefty filling. When liquid vegetable oil is used to make pastry it is considered a "warm fat", which coats each particle of flour so completely than no gluten develops. Oil pastries are very tender and tend to be more mealy than flaky since you don't have steam raising those flaky layers. Oil pastry is generally easier to handle and is easy to roll between two sheets of waxed paper. It's neither right or wrong what type of pastry you make - it's just one of those cooking/baking choices we make - BUT - as a general rule of thumb don't take an oil pastry to the fair because it will tend to get judged down because they rarely come up to judging standards. If a sticky dough that is hard to roll-out is your problem, you have too much gluten developed - probably from adding too much liquid and/or using flour that has a high protein content. Northern all-purpose flours like King Arthur and Robin Hood really don't make good pastry because of the high amount of protein. Add as little water as possible!!! As soon as lumps of dough stick together during mixing, stop mixing and adding water. It takes very little extra water, as little as 1/2 teaspoon, to quickly toughen the dough. -Grainlady

Exactly my thoughts.... MUCH too beautiful to eat. -Browning is aided by the addition of a sweetener and/or milk. -Xanthan gum, vinegar, and baking powder are ingredients that will help extensibility to help prevent cracking. -The addition of tapioca flour and/or cornstarch in a recipe will improve handling. -I wonder if using the coconut oil that remains a liquid would make a difference? Carrington Farms Coconut Cooking Oil (I find it at Wal-Mart) has a lot of uses in the kitchen where you want the coconut oil to remain liquid, and this pasty recipe may be one of them. -I found recipes that mist the pie tin with oil, and then mist the crust with oil just before baking. This may help prevent cracking, but it would also add a lot of fat and possibly make a greasy crust. -An egg wash would give it some strength, and that may help. Here's a crust recipe from "Gluten-Free 101" by the queen of gluten-free - Carol Fenster, Ph.D. (link to her web site is below). Coconut Pie Crust: Grease 9-inch pie plate. Combine 1-1/2 c. shredded coconut, 2 T. soft butter or margarine, 1 T. sweet rice flour, 1 t. vanilla extract, and 1/4 t. salt. Press onto bottom and up sides of 9-inch pie plate. Bake at 325-degrees F. until lightly toasted -- about 10-15 minutes. Watch carefully to avoid burning, Cool thoroughly. Add filling of your choice. Serves 6. Nutrition: 160 calories; 12g fat; 1g protein; 14g carbohydrates; 43mg sodium; 0mg cholesterol; -Grainlady Here is a link that might be useful: Carol Fenster Cooks

The worst is when you don't have any protectors and you say to yourself, "oh, it'll be fine". Then halfway through the edges are getting too brown and if it was just for your family you'd serve it up that way. But you are baking this pie for the neighbor's annual bbq/pie contest and you desperately want to win. So you pull the hot pie out of the oven and try to attach the little foil strips to the edges, but it's burning hot and scorching hot juice is bubbling onto your fingers. It's times like these I tell myself I must get those crust thingies!!! Then I forget... I can see it now...I will make myself a note to get the crust shields. Then I will forget. Then the next time I bake a pie I will remember Trailrunner's old sheet method, except I don't have any old sheets handy so I will be cutting edges off the guest bedroom sheets and tucking them back in thinking no one will ever notice... I asked my sisters for pie shields and pie weights for christmas but they said those gift options were too boring. Ugh...I'm never gonna win that pie contest.