Remember the Nat King Cole song?

"Roll out those lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer
Those days of soda and pretzels and beer
Roll out those lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer
Dust off the sun and moon and sing a song of cheer
Just fill your basket full of sandwiches and weenies
Then lock the house up, now you're set
And on the beach you'll see the girls in their bikinis
As cute as ever but they never get 'em wet"



His voice is so elegant, even for a light-hearted song like this.

Here is the hazy:


We're having a hot summer day up here in the mountains - 80 some degrees and dry. Maybe the clouds over the front range will organize into a little shower, but I don't think they will.

Summer is pie season. The people renting the Brown Palace are from Illinois and I always bake a cherry pie for him so he won't go buy one at that ugly tourist trap down the road. I put vodka in my piecrust to make it tender. This time it was about 1/3 vodka to 2/3 water.

Sour cherry pie, made with Splenda because Les is a diabetic. The lattices aren't cut very evenly, but I did manage to weave them more or less.



Granny Smith apple pie. I like to use 1 teaspoon nutmeg and 1 teaspoon cinnamon - the perfect flavor.



Sour cream apple pie with a nut-streusel topping.



I have enough cherry filling (home made from sour cherries) and pie crust dough to make another small pie, but I ran out of steam. I'll do it tonight.

It is very hard to find good pie crust without making it yourself, and I pity all the poor fools who think those Pillsbury refrigerated pie crusts are edible. For one thing, they are very firm, or crisp, or hard, depending on how mealy-mouthed a person wants to be. For another, all those refrigerated baked goods from rising crust pizza to butterflake biscuits to pie crust have a funny aftertaste from the leavening ingredients or maybe preservatives used in the refrigerated doughs. I suppose some would say it's better to have those crusts than no pie at all, but I'm not so sure.

Besides the refrigerated crusts are are rolled up tubular in a box, someone makes a pie crust that is already in the pan and sold out of the freezer case. I don't know how those are. I suppose I should try one some time.

I'm going to go sit on the patio and think about nothing for awhile.

The fox was here this morning. He was curled up outside the door waiting for us when I got up. Look at how scraggly his tail is getting.