August; or, imitation autumn

Oh, thank god, it's fall.
I don't think you'll be hearing that much. The blog world definitely seems to be noticing it, especially in Finland and in my own Pacific Northwest, but it's not being championed so much as accepted. In my small corner of the world, though, I've officially kissed the summer goodbye.
I don't know if I have that reverse-SAD condition ("Summer SAD", google tells me), but the season always seems harried, and overly bright. I have this picture in my mind of the perfect summer moments: twilight dinners on porches, late-night dog walks, watching meteor showers on golf courses. I'm also very partial to gardening when it's sunny. But there's this suspension of regular life during the summer, and everyone gets so frantic to make use of every single summer moment. I don't like the pressure of summer. I'm an autumn and winter girl, I am. I like my seasons imperfect, and honest. February might soak me to the bone and throw mushy masses of grey leaves onto my new suede boots, but at least it tells me that it's going to.
Now that I've said all of that, I will say that I'm rather partial to August. It's not July, after all. It's not bleached out. August is my birthday month, and there's that certain fall smokiness to August. You really have to savor August because there's so much crammed into it, and September is, of course, a month in which everyone gets back to business. August is a month for back-to-school clothes and new beginnings.
And there's so much late-summer produce in August. Tomatoes, peppers, blueberries, corn, melons, huckleberries (especially huckleberries). Pretty much everything everyone loves about summer comes out in August.
In honor of blueberries, I have here a recipe for blueberry pie. It's gluten-free blueberry pie, at that. It's kind of the perfect August food, because it can be eaten barefoot, picnic-style, in your backyard early on in the month; or it can be eaten out of the pan on the counter, in a sweater and thick socks on one of those first cold evenings. And we all now know how I feel about cold evenings.

Gluten-Free Blueberry Pie
The crust is an altered version of this glutenfreegirl classic recipe. The filling is everything that sounded good to me, with the half-cooked/half-raw trick that I read about somewhere on the internet last summer.

Crust
1 cup rice flour
1/2 cup teff flour
1/2 cup potato starch
3 teaspoons sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon cinnamon
8 tablespoons cold butter
1 large egg
2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar
ice-cold water, enough to make the dough stick together (approx. 1/4 cup)

-Mix together all dry ingredients.
-Cut the butter into small pieces. Deposit into dry ingredients. Cut the butter in until the whole mess is comprised mainly of small crumbly balls.
-Make a well in the center. Deposit the egg and the vinegar, and mix it all together, starting from the inside.
-Add just enough water to make the dough stick together. It shouldn't be overly wet, just enough to stick together.
-Put in the freezer for at least two hours.
(-Shauna, of glutenfreegirl, suggests an elaborate rolling out of the dough pre-freezer. I actually just dumped the dough ball in the fridge for two hours, and then tore off small pieces and mushed them into the pan. Get the dough into the greased pie pan, somehow).
-Put in pie weights. Bake 350 degrees until somewhat browned, 15-20 minutes.

Filling-Cream cheese
4 oz cream cheese
sugar to taste, a few tablespoons would probably do it
1 teaspoon vanilla

Filling- blueberries
4 cups blueberries, picked over and washed
1/3 cup sugar
1 1/2 Tablespoons potato starch
1/4 cup water
pinch of salt
1 Tablespoon lemon or lime juice
1 Tablespoon butter

-Combine the cream cheese ingredients, mix until well combined.
-Combine half the blueberries, the sugar, the potato starch, the water, and the salt in a saucepan. Cook over medium heat until the berries are tender and the liquid has thickened. Remove from heat.
-Spread cream cheese filling over the bottom of the pie crust.
-Place uncooked blueberries in the pie crust. Pour the cooked blueberry mixture over it.
-Chill, or eat warm and gooey.