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The top crust would turn out nice and crisp as it doesn't have a heavy moist filling weighing it dow. I've made pot pies with only a top crust and they always had a good texture.

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I've tried the second recipe with an apple pie and didn't blind bake it before hand. I've added 1 tsp of baking powder to most oil based pie crust recipes to keep it light and crisp.

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Lye might start to eat through the pipes if there isn't a clog. Adding a strong acid to neutralize the lye would be dangerous -- it might cause an explosion as the two chemicals react. You should wear goggles as well as gloves when dealing with lye.

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I did a spinach pizza on Thursday, and two loaves of whole-wheat buttermilk bread with a brown sugar cinnamon spiral on Saturday. I am getting better with this whole wheat bread in loaves. They both turned out fairly well. The only sugar in the breads is in the cinnamon spiral, so I will offer one to a friend who was on a sugarless diet for years but has done so well and gotten her blood sugar down enough that she can add a little bit of sugar to her diet.

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I've used sandpaper and steel wool pads before. The Steel wool does a better job of getting into the corner where the pan bottom meets the edge. I think the sand paper is less messy or at least drier. This is mainly to clean off old finish if there is a thick layer. If there isn't enough finish, just wash and dry and rub a little oil on with a paper towel to remove the rust and bake.
I've had to refinish several times because I put too much oil on at once. Oil the pan lightly and then wipe off all the oil you can with a dry paper towel before baking it in the oven. Bake at 400 degrees, 350 degrees is to low to properly bake the oil into a solid surface.
Refinishing a cast iron pan is a lovely excuse for running the over for a couple of hours on a cold day. I might refinish my chicken frier. The bottom is fine but the sides are lumpy so it doesn't really NEED to be redone its just prettier.

Heating a skillet really hot on a stove top, will weaken the old finish so its easier to remove. I did this on a pancake skillet last year.

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Baker Aunt;
I was counting up my pie pans a couple of days ago and realized that I have 4 of the rimmed pie pans. One I bought new years ago, and three that I found in various thrift stores. I can't find this style new so I check each thrift store and buy all available. One of the pie pans is only 7'' in diameter but so cute the rest are normal 9'' pie pans.

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I did a pumpkin pie on Sunday from puree from baking small pie pumpkins. It took two cups of pumpkin puree about 1 1/2 pie pumpkins. This was combined with a butter flavored oil based pie crust and it turned out fairly well.

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For Thanksgiving I made an apple slab pie -- it was easier to cut than a regular pie and had plenty of crust for crust lovers, and pumpkin cornbread with cranberries.

Thanksgiving evening I baked whole wheat chocolate scones to bring half to a friend who was working overnight at Penneys for their Thanksgiving night sales.

Friday I spent all afternoon baking a 14 lb Red Warty thing -- which was either an odd looking pumpkin or a odd looking squash and had 4 1/2 pints of pumpkin puree out of it.
Today I have sage and rosemary Focaccio -- rather odd shaped I put in too little water and it didn't flatten out completely.

I don't feel like baking or eating anything right now. My Thanksgiving leftovers included a green bean casserole which contained bacon and more bacon and cheese and fried onion bits and while it was all so very tasty, it was very filling.

[skeptic7]

For Thanksgiving I made an apple slab pie -- it was easier to cut than a regular pie and had plenty of crust for crust lovers, and pumpkin cornbread with cranberries.

Thanksgiving evening I baked whole wheat chocolate scones to bring half to a friend who was working overnight at Penneys for their Thanksgiving night sales.

Friday I spent all afternoon baking a 14 lb Red Warty thing -- which was either an odd looking pumpkin or a odd looking squash and had 4 1/2 pints of pumpkin puree out of it.
Today I have sage and rosemary Focaccio -- rather odd shaped I put in too little water and it didn't flatten out completely.

I don't feel like baking or eating anything right now. My Thanksgiving leftovers included a green bean casserole which contained bacon and more bacon and cheese and fried onion bits and while it was all so very tasty, it was very filling.

[skeptic7]

I cut my pie pumpkins with a Chinese chef knife. The thicker knives wouldn't bite through the skin. They had a lot of seeds and less flesh than I expected. It was hard removing the pumpkin strings from the seed cavity.
I like looking at the stories of left over pumpkins going to the zoo. The elephants especially seem to enjoy Jack-O-Lantern pumpkins.

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I use all the big winter squash and pumpkins interchangeably. In the past I've used long necked pumpkin, Long Island Cheese, Boston Marrow, Pink Banana and now I have Red Warty Thing ( I thought the name was a joke but I looked it up and there is a seed company that sells it ). This year the local supermarket had a sale on small pie pumpkins for 50 cents on Halloween, so I got three.
I've been disappointed in some pumpkins which didn't have enough flavor but mostly all of these work well. A check on the Internet showed that pumpkins and squashes are all in the same family and can crossbreed easily.
I was warned that the Jack-O-Lantern pumpkins were bred for color and size and are too watery and tasteless to be good to cook, but all pumpkins are edible.

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I used Indian Head Old Fashioned Stone Ground White Cornmeal. I think this is a medium grind as its courser than corn flour, and more fine than polenta.

This makes very nice baking powder type cornbread both Southern and Northern styles.

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Riverside Len;
Those look beautiful. I'm sure they will taste fine.

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I had November 12 th as a holiday so I baked 3 little pie pumpkins. I bought them on sale on Halloween for 50 cents! I actually bought 4 pumpkins but one started to mold and had to be thrown out. These had a lot of seeds and not so much flesh. I only have 2 pints of rather dry pumpkin puree.
I also made a cornmeal - whole wheat bread flavored with dried rosemary, sage and thyme. I've given the recipe in another posting. The temperature was so cold I felt wonderfully happy to be able to preheat the oven and then bake the bread for nearly an hour and a half. There was no guilt about heating up the kitchen for so long as there would have been in the summer.

I also made a gluten free, vegan apple-walnut maple syrup quick bread the next day. This is the first time I used Bob's Red Mill gluten free flour. Its very white. It seems to behave just like regular white wheat flour and bakes for the same amount of time. I made it for a friend and didn't actually taste it or examine its texture.

On Friday I made the Easy One Bowl No Knead Apple cake from KAF 200th anniversary cookbook. This starts by slicing and cooking two apples with sugar and spices and a little butter. Then making a yeast batter with both white and wheat flour and brown sugar and spices. Place the batter in a 9 inch round, and then carefully placed the cooked apples on top. Let rise ( it says 1 1/2 hours ), I let it rise over night and then bake. This was actually good! Its very strange, I thought it wouldn't rise with the apples weighing down the batter but it does. I also thought the liquid from the cooked apples would wreck the batter but it doesn't. This is amazing.

I also make a cornmeal-whole wheat yeast bread with cheese on Friday, but that is described in detail elsewhere.

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Years ago, I did a white rice and white flour bread from "English Bread and Yeast Cookery" by Elizabeth David. I only did it once but it starts with cooking the rice in a large amount of water until very soft and then mixing in flour and yeast. I gave it to a friend who was suffering from morning sickness and she found it very digestable.

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