Mastering the art of French Cooking - with Lea

One of my new friends Ive made is from France.  Her name is Lea and she LOVES food and to cook.  Also, I just recently rewatched that movie Julie and Julia....so Julia Childs is in my head and very apropos.

Lea has been great - very outgoing and taking me in and including me in things.  Its lovely to have someone like this, just assumes you will join in because it will be silly not to.  So, she has taken me berry picking and mushroom hunting and has been "teaching" me how to cook the items we harvest.

the paper acts as a stove pipe to let
the heat escape without boiling over

Two weekends ago (gosh its been that long?), we went blueberry picking.  Ive been told the blueberries here in Sweden are different from the ones in the USA.  Sometimes they call them (spelled my phonetically) Bullberries (Im sure its something like boulberries with a crazy symbol above the o).  Anyway, they are short and only come to your knee at best.

The oven - reminds me of a toaster oven on steroids

Lea then taught me how to make pie crust - the same way my grandmother taught me to make chocolate chip cookies....you sort-a kind-a follow some measurements, but really its off of feel/smell/texture and whim. Somewhere in the recesses of their minds they were taught the proper ratios, but this has been lost to instinct and taste.  Somewhere in there was a measurement of 250 g of flour and 125 g of sugar, but after that - it all goes to pot on how much.  I did learn that using an egg is necessary to make the dough elastic and then will not require flour to be put on the counter or the rolling pin.  I also learned that you can make the dough without the egg and how different the dough then reacts.  So, I made my 2nd pie ever a blueberry pie using the ingredients we could "find" in sweden.

This followed a course of Moose Taco! My favorite meal ever!!