I did not grow up in a household where dessert was a regular thing. More often than not, when we asked about a sweet treat after dinner, we were pointed to the fruit bowl or a jar of applesauce. However, once or twice a year, there would be pie.
The pie happened on no particular schedule. My mom baked in response to her own cravings and could not be hurried or begging into producing pie. We learned early that it was better to leave her alone and accept the serendipitous pie than try to wheedle it into being. And accept it, we did. Her pies were always sturdy, not-too-sweet creations that piled mountains of fruit into a nutty, half whole wheat crust. My favorite thing was being allowed a slice for breakfast the next day.
Thanks to this early conditioning, pie will be forever feel like a way create a special occasion out of a Wednesday evening. It’s one of the things I hope to do with my kids someday (of course, I have to have them first).
You may be asking yourself, why is Marisa waxing poetic about her childhood pie memories? I recently got a review copy of Ashley English’s new book, A Year of Pies
Some of you probably know Ashley from her blog, Small Measure, or from her other four (!) books on all manner homesteady topics like Bee Keeping
Once through that grounding section, the rest of the book is arranged by season, proving unequivocally that pie isn’t just a summer and fall dessert. Any winter day would be made better by the Maple Orange Walnut Pie on page 55 on the Carrot Pie on page 77.
The book contains sweet pies, savory pies (like the homey Chicken Pot Pie pictured below), tarts, galettes, crostada and hand pies. There are both bake and no-bake options and even a pie version of Polish-style stuffed cabbage. Ashley also invited a few of her blogging friends to contribute recipes, including a Gluten-Free Streusel Apple Pie from Hip Girl’s Guide to Homemaking
For those of us who are working our way through baskets of berries and armloads of peaches this time of year, I think it’s important to put a little of that fruit aside and make something that allows us to enjoy the bounty now, as well as later. Pie is on my to-do list for later this week.
Thanks to Ashley and her publisher, Lark Crafts, I have a copy of this lovely pie book to share with one of you. If you want a chance to win a copy, here’s what you do.
- Leave a comment on this post, sharing a pie story. It can be your favorite kind of pie, a memorable slice you once ate or anything other pie fact you’d like to mention. .
- Comments will close at 11:59 pm east coast time on Friday, August 3. Winner will be chosen at random (using random.org) and will be posted to the blog on Saturday, August 4, 2012.
- Giveaway is open to US and Canadian residents.
- One comment per person, please. Entries must be left via the comment form on the blog, I cannot accept submissions via email.
Disclosure: Lark Crafts gave me two copies of this book, one for review purposes and one to giveaway. However, my opinions remain, as always, entirely my own.
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Oh how I love pie! In 2004 I set a goal to make a new pie recipe every week, taking advantage of Chicago’s summer fruit bounty. Rhubarb week went well–that rhubarb custard pie was a revelation! But something went terribly terribly wrong on strawberry week. Somehow the strawberries in my single-crust pie ended up liquified, and the mint extract that I used in place of fresh mint imparted a strong bitter flavor to the hot strawberry soup. Yuck! Since then I’ve stuck to no-bake strawberry dessert recipes.
My family is small, so when I was growing up, we always shared Thanksgiving and Christmas meals with a couple of other “orphan” families in our area. The dishes would all get split up – the hosting family doing the turkey and the others bringing sides and desserts. Of course, there was always a pumpkin and a pecan pie. One year, a Middle Eastern family in our town wanted to have a traditional American holiday, so they traded a giant pan of homemade baklava for our pies. Everybody was happy – they got their traditional, American, homemade pies, and we got a gorgeous tray of homemade, incredibly delicious baklava! It seemed so exotic to us at the time. But, of course, the next year, we were happy to be back to our traditional pumpkin and pecan pies.
Sweet potato pie has a special place in my heart. It’s like pumpkin pie that actually tastes good!
I’m like you; I didn’t grow up with pies (though we did have simpler desserts fairly often), so I don’t have much in the way of a pie story. I do like savory pies, and have tried making David Friedman’s “Icelandic Chicken,” which is sort of a calzone/hand pie with chicken, bacon, and sage leaves. Quite tasty!
The book looks lovely! Can’t wait to check it out. As for my favorite pie memory, it would probably be the pie-baking party a friend hosted many moons ago; it was great fun to have everyone gathered in the kitchen, creating so many different, delicious treats… Yay pie!
My husband and daughter (at the ripe age of 4) are all out pie aficionados. I, however, didn’t love pie until later in life. I don’t know if it was a deep (and far too early) seeded fear of fat (I’ve done a pretty good job of getting over that), culinary challenge, or what, but I definitely preferred a nice crisp or crumble. I do remember the first pie I made. I was two hours away from home at my best friend’s mom’s house. It was July. We were in West Michigan. There were cherries. We opened up the Joy of cooking while her mom was at work, and our 13-year-old selves figured out how to make pie. In place of a lattice top (see aforementioned fear of fat), there was a cut out of double stemmed cherries with a little leaf. We also made chicken parmesan with spaghetti. A decade later my best friend walked with my husband’s brother in our wedding. Two and a half years later I got to walk in her wedding and now she’s my sister-in-law. It was a good cherry pie.
I often think about the blueberry pie from the White Spot in Vancouver, though I don’t think they make it anymore…
Pie is indeed a “special occasion” food in my family. My mom and I are the only ones who love pecan pie, so she always makes one for the two of us every Christmas, but didn’t usually make pies of any other sort the rest of the year. It isn’t Christmas without my mom’s pecan pie.
I remember my grandfather leaving a bucket full of cherries on our porch while we were out, complete with a recipe for cherry crumb pie. It was his subtle way of asking my mom to make a pie for him because he loved cherry pies.
I’ll never forget my first apple pie made in Family and Consumer Science class (the modern day Hom Ec). I can’t count the # of times I shaved my finger off while peeling.
When my step-grandmother came into our family, she also brought her love of Strawberry-Rhubarb Pie. My brother and I love this pie, but members of the other side of our family do not. We are considered strange because we’re willing to eat rhubarb, while everyone else sticks to cherry, apple, or chocolate creme.
My daughter loves the chocolate chess pie I make. I always send a little slice in her school lunch when I bake one. Her friends started loving that pie so much that now I have to send a big wedge to school so Mia can share with all her girlfriends and everyone gets more than a bite. Last Christmas I made all the middle school teachers that pie for their teacher gifts. They loved it.
I remember one year I asked my mother for pumpkin pie instead of cake for my birthday. I got it and enjoyed it immensely.
I love pie. When I was growing up my mom always made pie for my birthday instead of cake.
Mmmm, pie! My very favorite dessert. For my birthdays when I was little, instead of a cake I’d request a pie – my mom complied, although baking my favorite lemon meringue was hard in the humidity of late June!
My grandmother made a lemon meringue pie every single July for my grandfather’s birthday for a good 60+ years. He’s gone now, but I think it’s time to revive the tradition of summertime lemon meringue pie.
When I was in college 43 years ago (gasp!) a friend came over to eat an apple pie I had baked. He declared it “perfect” and I was hooked on baking pies as a display of affection.
i will eat pie any day over a piece of cake. my favorite is my mother’s coconut cream which i will request for my birthday instead of cake. i have decided that when i get married, i won’t have a cake, i will have a table full of pie.
My girlfriend did that – huge hit with her guests!
Ooh, pie! I love pie, especially savory pie. Smitten Kitchen has a BALLER tomato pie recipe that I could eat forever and ever.
I used to help my grandmother make Key lime pie with fruit from the spot my great-grandmother used to own in the Keys — special memories. I live in Florida, and I still don’t eat Key lime pie out because it just doesn’t measure up
I know what you mean. I have posted about grandma Lucy’s key lime pie recipe below.
I love pie. When I was little, an older lady from our church made a “famous” apple pie. She was my adopted grandmother, since my “real” family lived hundreds of miles away. When my family eventually left our hometown for another state, my adopted grandmother wrote out her pie crust recipe and tied it to a rolling pin as a going away gift. That rolling pin has been part of every pie crust I’ve ever made.
My grandma always made the best apple pie…with LOTS of cinnamon!
This is not a post about pie.
Well, actually, it is. Technically. A pie by any other name is still a pie, right?
This is a post about my grandmother’s currant cake. Or, more accurately, currant pie: It’s baked inside a shell with a fruit filling. In a pie dish. It is, therefore, clearly a pie. But I grew up calling it “currant cake,” and currant cake it shall always remain in my mind.
I love currant cake more than any other pie in the world. I think, like your mother’s fabulous pies, the magic of the elusive currant cake was in how seldom I got to eat it, and how unexpectedly it would appear: Baked in Ohio, frozen, then shipped to us in Georgia on rare and wonderful occasions.
If you’ve ever tried to grow a currant (we did) or locate fresh currants (I did) in Georgia, then you know that the South is not a place where currant cake is easy to come by. So my recent move to Illinois — a place I wasn’t terribly keen to go — has a consolation prize: There are currants here. They grow here and I have a small batch in the freezer from last month’s farmer’s market.
By God, I am going to learn how to make currant cake.
Or, you know. Currant pie.
Have a family recipe for Kuchen. People always ask, “what is that?”
Answer? A cakey-pie-thing-with-crumbles-on-top.
We’ll just call it Kuchen from now on, though.
LOVE SOME PIE!
Pie has turned into one of my favorite desserts to make, and I think I do a decent job on them at this point, but I remember the first pie I made by myself. It was late July, the kitchen was HOT and humid, and the oven I was using was terribly miscalibrated. When I pulled the pie out, the crust was pale and the fruit filling was as runny as when I put it in the oven. I’m not sure why I didn’t bake it longer…tasted alright though, and my college housemates gobbled it up pretty quickly, so all was not lost.
Every night when my mom would ask what people would like for dessert (which she meant “orange or apple?”) my dad would ask for lemon meringue pie. So one day my brother wanted to surprise my dad and made a homemade lemon meringue pie. He put it on the back porch so my dad wouldn’t see it. We were almost done with dinner when we heard a crash. The pie had fallen on the porch – upside down! My mom somehow saved it – it didn’t look pretty – but my father loved the surprise!
Pie! I adore pie! My father’s family lives in rural Oregon, and all my fond memories of pie involve family reunions/visits to elderly relatives/stops at diners in Oregon.
Pumpkin is my favorite kind of pie, although I often don’t bother to eat the crust because I love the filling so much just by itself! I have also fallen in love with apple pies — I don’t follow an exact recipe for the spices, so every one comes out a little bit different.
My favorite pie is sweet potato, which I make with a nut crust and rather a lot of butter. Mmmm.
I wonder if my preference for pie over cake might be attributed to my being born on Thanksgiving Day? I always wanted blueberry pie for my birthday instead of cake!
Oh yeah pie! Nothing like a fresh home made pie. During the summer months, when our favorite fruits are available. I’ll make my own pie filling and can it. So when we’re knee deep in snow in January/February I can quickly and easily create a yummy summer pie making the snow a little more tolerable!
My mother NEVER baked sweets when I was a kid, let alone pies. So, I’ve discovered the simple joy of a homemade pie as an adult as I’ve learned how best to handle pie crust. Now, that I’m pregnant, I’m looking forward to creating good memories around homebaked pies with my family. I can’t wait.
I’d love to win a copy of this book, love all of Ashley’s work! One thing about pie I’ll never get over, is the fact that my mom won’t eat cherry pie with me, she’s crazy!!
I spent my entire childhood and most of my young-adulthood thinking I didn’t like pie. The only time pie made an appearance was at Thanksgiving and it was always made the day before and served cold. Something about this just didn’t appeal to me as a kid. Then, shortly after meeting my now-husband’s family, we went apple picking in upstate NY. When we got home, my husband’s aunt whipped up a fresh apple pie with our bounty and served it hot out of the oven. I had my doubts, but I didn’t want to be rude. It only took one bite to know that I had never tasted anything so good. It was a revelation! Now I can’t get enough of pie, whether sweet or savory, and enjoy making my own. And when pie is served cold? 20 seconds in the microwave does wonders.
My Mom wasn’t much for baking, but my paternal Grandmother made the best cherry pies! To this day, I associate ‘pie’ with ‘cherry’. Currently, I always have cherry pie to myself as no one else in the household likes cherries!!!!
MMMMMMM pie. My mom used to make tiny leaves out of crust, then slit the top crust into an apple tree. SO beautiful. My favorite pie experience was a hot chicken pot pie presented to me as my birthday dinner, complete with candles that immediately melted INTO the filling…. yeah… we had a good laugh about that
My father comes from Key West, Fla. We have descended from founders of the island. The now famous Hemmingway House was once my g-g-g-uncle Asa Tift, the boardwalk, the ice house, etc all part Of my history. So too is the Key Lime Pie.
We have a very, very, very old key lime pie recipe passed from generation to generation, one of the likes I have yet to see elsewhere. I have had the recipe in my possession for about 15 years now, but terrified to try it and fail to live up to grandma’s reputation for being an amazing chef. In February my father entered the final stages of Alzheimers. He still could recall his mama and her key lime pie with a serving of coconut ice cream. I promised him I would make him that pie. 10 days later he died. I never got to make him his family recipe for key lime pie.
The day before his funeral, I finally made the pie. Because I have yet to master high altitude cooking, it was runny! But oh so delicious and my brother, mother and I were cheered with the memories of dad stories and playful character. Also of his stories of grandma’s cooking (which involved her sending him up coconut trees and stewing his pet chicken).
Goodness !!! The memories surrounding pie are flooding theough me now!! Thanks for opening this post up!!!! Every year since I was 12 I have had strawberry pie on my bday. My last summer woth maternal grandma wearing an apron and putting pie in the window to cool. Steak and kidney pie in Ireland on my first overseas trip. Thank you Marisa for bring back these memories.
My sister’s father-in-law was in his last few days on earth and he asked for me to make him an apple pie. He ate that whole pie by himself! Now that’s going out eating what you want!
Pie is a special occasion thing for me as well. Both of my grandmothers were pie makers, each with her own specialty. As my grandmothers have aged, it is my father that has picked up the pie making torch. His pie crust is a thing of beauty. He will frequently make a large batch of pie crusts and wrap up a couple extras for me. Pulling that pie crust out connects me to generations of my family, and let’s me explore my own creativity. I feel fortunate to have those pie memories, and more chances to make memories of my own.
My favorite pie memory is watching my mom hand make the crust. It was such an involved process, but it always (and still does) turned out amazingly.
Pie! Few desserts seem more special to me. A few years ago I took up the pie making torch in my family, spurred on by discovering the secret of using vodka in the crust from the Cook’s Illustrated Foolproof Pie Crust recipe. My favorite to bake is peach pie – I try to freeze disks of peach pie filling when I can find local peaches to give a taste of summer mid-winter.
One late-summer evening, back when my interest in baking was just a tiny bud, I decided to make a blackberry pie! I looked up a bunch of recipes, consulted with my mom, and settled on a recipe. The only problem was that it called also for apples, and we didn’t have any. I didn’t think that was such an issue – I’d seen my mom cook before, substituting, leaving things out, adding things in – and forged ahead anyway. My mom didn’t say anything, I assume to let me learn from my own-mistakes. Well, when that pie came out of the oven steaming and fragrant, I only expected perfection when I cut into it. What a disappointment it was when I lifted out that first piece and all the filling fell out, and the rest of it seeped from the pie into that empty space where the piece had been! My little brother still refers to it as my berry-mush-pie!
I’m more of a savory person so home made chicken or spinach pie is my fave!
As I child, I despised pie, or at least the crust. I would eat the filling and pass my crust shell on to a parent or grandparent. I’ve since seen the error in my ways and fully embrace eating and baking pies!
We grew up eating pie with the store bought crust and we loved it. When I married my husband, however, he came from a family with a long history of pie making from scratch. I’ve never been able to live up to his memories of homemade pie, but I’d like to be able to make pie for my children that will instill similar memories in them!
I love rhubarb pie. It’s quirky and delicious, and what my dad always requested growing up.
I love the idea of pie. It sounds homey and old fashioned, and reminds me of being young, even though I did not see a lot of pie in my youth. Maybe I’m just remembering the Andy Griffith show. I sure wish life were like that now. Much simpler, kinder, gentler. I don’t really have a favorite. I have a sweet tooth and would eat just about any pie. Thanks for the terrific giveaway.
I’ve always struggled to make a pie crust that wasn’t brittle and tough, trying one recipe after another and measuring meticulously. But I remember my aunt’s pies as perfection… made in a farmhouse kitchen, cooked in an erratic wood-burning oven. No measurements: she tossed a couple of scoops of flour from the flour drawer onto the counter, cut in some lard, added chilled water as needed, and created perfect pastry right on the countertop, all by look and feel. The filling was dark luscious blackberries picked from the hedges around the pastures, the top crust was an intricate weave of pastry strips, sprinkled with sugar. Beautiful and delicious, those blackberry pies remain my ideal!
Spending my summer’s in Maine and having an August Birthday meant Blueberry pie instead of birthday cake
The best. When my husband and I got married (in Maine) last year, we knew immediately that there would be no wedding cake, just pie!
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