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, and now I can’t stop thinking about tucking food, both sweet and savory, between layers of crust.
Some of you probably know Ashley from her blog, Small Measure, or from her other four (!) books on all manner homesteady topics like Keeping Bees and Canning and Preserving. This book is similar in organization to her previous ones in that it offers an extensive section towards the front of the book that walks you through the equipment, the different kinds of crusts (and what each is best for), tips on rolling and the various techniques you can employ to achieve gorgeous crusts, before moving on to the recipes.
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 author Kate Payne.
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.
What a yummy looking book! Must have. Must have.
Perhaps my still most favorite pie in all the world was peach pie from summers long ago. Made by grandmotherly types using no recipe. Wonderful stuff, with sugar crystals on top. Crust probably made with lard.
Have had great pies since then, but nothing quite as good as eating some of that peach pie in a church food tent at the fairgrounds on a summer day. Uhmmmmm.
The only pie stories I have a disasters. Like the time I made my wife to be an apple pie, her favorite. The recipe called for lard but I figured, “Well, bacon comes from a pig, so bacon grease should be a good substitute.” It is not. Or the time I made a cherry pie and the dog ate it. And then threw it up. In the kitchen. In short, I desperately need the help this book would provide!
When I was little my dad about SO MANY bushels of apples one fall. A guy from work lived on an old family orchard, and the crop was excellent that year. My family made 12 pies in one weekend! By the end of the weekend our freezer was full of pie, and every friend of the family had a pie of their own!
It is not a Christmas celebration in our family without grasshopper pie. As kids we fought over the rolling pin to smash Oreo cookies for the crust, and we were completely convinced real live grasshoppers were somehow incorporated into the pie. That’s why the filling was green, wasn’t it? I still love grasshopper pie. It is like a great big after-dinner mint!
At a family reunion last summer, an aunt showed us how to make a double-crust gooseberry pie. The demo was a hit! And, of course, we sampled the delicious results.
My favorite pie is actually my mom’s Fudge Sundae pie. The crust is whole vanilla wafers and the filling is softened vanilla ice cream layered with fudge (chocolate melted with marshmallows). Halved maraschino cherries are placed on top. The whole thing is in the freezer until serving. If I found one in the freezer when I was a kid I always got in trouble, hours later when my mom found my finger indentations in the pie.
Pies are a family thing in my family, but my wife’s family aren’t big pie people — or so they thought.
I just took a peach-blueberry pie to my new in-laws last week, and I think we have a new family pie tradition starting. My father-in-law had a kidney transplant two years ago (after seven years of dialysis), and we get together to celebrate his kidney-versary every summer. Bringing him a pie (all the way from Delaware to Ohio) was a big hit — and will definitely be a part of every kidney-versary from here out.
I would love to find a good recipe for baked strawberry pie — not the kind where you dump glaze over strawberries in a pre-baked shell, the kind where you bake the whole shebang at once, berries and all. I’ve been trying for a few years now, but it always comes out a bit runny.
My friends and I always celebrate Pi Day (March 14) by making and eating only pies all day. We usually make quiche for breakfast, pizza pie for lunch, and pot pie for dinner, with fruit pies for dessert all day. It’s a beautiful day.
There is nothing better than the first apple pie of the fall. We live near an apple farm, and every year we go and pick our own. I bake a lot of pies every year, but that first apple one is always the gateway pie.
The worst pie I ever made was when I was in college and we tried to make a pumpkin pie out of a jack-0-latern. We scraped off the sooty bits and chopped up the pumpkin (didn’t bother to cook it!) and followed some recipe we had. Inedible but memorable. I think there’s a picture out there somewhere.
To celebrate the inauguration of President Obama, my son and I made an “All American” meal including an apple pie. I love the memory of us baking together!
Fav pie? Too hard! But right now I’m loving making sour cherry pie, as this is the only kind of cherry that grows locally. Sour cherry tart with pistachio frangipan is pretty deadly too. I’m loving your book Marisa- I made the homemade Nutella-divine!
I love making pie, in particular with homegrown fruit (I canned apple pie filling last summer – as an experienced canner I can say that it’s a pretty tricky process). I’ve also spent years trying to perfect the crust: about two years ago I rendered lard from leaf fat an organic wild boer farmer gave me and that did the trick! I keep the lard in the freezer and I’ve found that, when combined with butter, and the Joy of Cooking piecrust recipe it makes the best crusts for both savoury and sweet pies. (On a side note, I was all set for rendering lard to be a really gross & stinky process, and it was not smelly at all. Perhaps because the fat was organic and really fresh.)
My husband is a pie-guy, but I’m so much more comfortable with cakes and other baked goods! I would love this book!
My mother has never really enjoyed cooking and baking, and even less as she has gotten older. When I was a child, it always seemed like we were having a lot of fun while cooking anyway (there is probably some profound psychological explanation why I, on the other hand, find deep satisfaction in cooking for as many people as possible, as often as possible…but that is for some other time). My favorite pie memories were of using mom’s cookie cutters on dough scraps, sprinkling them with cinnamon sugar, and baking the “dough cookies” in recycled aluminum pie pans.
Pi Day is March 14th
My dad’s favorite pie is a caramel pecan pie and I’ve never found anything quite like it. When I think of his favorite desserts…caramel pecan pie and marachino cherry cake. Love my dad.
My favorite pie is a toss up between apple and my mother’s peach cobbler. Given a choice side by side, I’d probably go with the peach.
We often have pie instead of cake for special occasions like birthdays.
Once when we were visiting my grandfather in the nursing home he was recovering in, I had asked him if there was ANYTHING we could bring that he would eat since he had no appetite and would soon need a feeding tube. His only request was apple pie. “Mile high” apple pie, to be specific. I got right to work making him individual pies in 4″ tins and delivered them warm! I’m sure they weren’t the best he had ever had but he acted like they were and it was a start to his eating well again.
So excited for this book!
I love pie so much that, as a kid, I used to ask for blueberry pie every year on my birthday instead of cake. Yum!
I have lots & lots of pie memories. I grew up in a household where dessert was a standard after dinner event. My dad loves pie, and my mom is excellent at making it, so I learned about pie making early on. My mom would have me sift the flour and count the tablespoons of water as she added it. I love making pie & this cookbook looks excellent!
This book really appeals to me. In my house, pies replace cake for birthday celebrations. And my mom used to literally scold us if we considered buying apple pie at a store/restaurant rather than waiting for hers.
Pi day is March 14 (3.14) and each year my husband’s office celebrates with pie of all sort. Pizza pie, fruit pies, quiches (which are sort of like egg pie) and various other round things on crust. They also have a contest to see who has memorized the most digits of this inexhaustable number.
This is how geeks have fun!
A couple of years ago I baked some pies to take to the cousins’ house for Thanksgiving. I must have been multitasking because I forgot to add sugar to the pumpkin pie! When I realized what I had done, I told everyone that it was a sugar-free pumpkin pie. ALL of the girls loved it! That pie went fast!!!
My parents made Juneberry pies out of, yes, Juneberries, incorrectly named, perhaps, because they ripen in July. Those pies were amazing!!
When I was seven we lived in Australia for six months. More than 30 years later I still remember the individual-serving meat pies my mom would buy for an easy dinner every once in a while — tender ground lamb meat, a thick gravy, flaky crust. Mmm. I’d love to find a good recipe to make them myself.
My dad always loved lemon merangue pie, and every once and a while my mom would make him one entirely from scratch. I’ve never had anything else as good as that. I bet this cookbook has a recipe for something along those lines, and I’d love to give it a whirl.
My mom and grandma always used store-bought frozen pie crusts. They instilled in me the idea that pie crusts were scary and difficult to make, and also that they didn’t taste very good. Making my first all-butter crust was a revelation! Easy and delicious. I’m a super pie snob now, no store-bought for me.
mmm pie. I love key lime pie and chocolate pie with graham cracker crust but I’m not crazy about fruit pies. Maybe the book could change my mind.
Since I was about 16, I have been in charge of making the pies for our holidays. Mastering the classics ties me to my family and our history!
I love pie way more than any other dessert. I always request it for my birthday instead of cake. And since my birthday is in March, it’s always strawberry pie with real whip cream topping. My birthday always evokes images of strawberry pie!
My Godmother, Aunt Thelma, was a fabulous cook who was known for her delicious & flakey pie crust. She was also a chain smoker. As kids, we always joked that her “secret ingredient” was cigarette ash. Even still we devoured her tasty pies. Perhaps she was on to something. 😉
I remember going to my grandparents house in Pasadena, Texas every year for the week of Thanksgiving. My grandmother would always have several cherry pies witing for us because she knew it was my favorite. I sure do miss eating those pies, now that she is gone. I would love to win a copy of this book so I could learn to make some pies of my own. Thanks for offering such a wonderful prize.
I used to spend part of each summer with my grandparents. They had a u-pick strawberry farm and lot of apple trees, raspberries and wild blackberries, so pies were a frequent dessert option. My Nana lost all but peripheral vision in her late 70’s but continued to bake by feel, with wonderful results– except for the one time she “sweetened” a strawberry-rhubarb pie with salt instead of sugar. I will never forget sitting at the dinner table with my cousin Brian, choking down a few bites of that pie while my aunt sent us warnings with her eyes not to let on. Nana never knew!
So I love Pecan Pie of pretty much all types. Yes, it is overly sweet and sticky and so not good for you, but I think I love it so much because the only time I had it growing up was at one of my grandmother’s houses and she lived 9 hours away. It was a rarity and something made by my amazing cook of a grandmother and often came with ice cream too (as she does with all her pies) and I so want a piece right now! It would mean I was sitting with her and that she made it (she rarely cooks these days) and oh, would I love, love, love it!
Heather
My husband does most of the pie cooking at our house, while I do the bread baking. He used to be very afraid of experimentation, especially with family recipies, but this year we took on his mother’s “infamous” black berry pie. His changes were fantastic! (even though his mother will never agree)
When I first met my girlfriend’s family, it was to go to their Thanksgiving party. I asked what I could bring, and was told, “oh anything”. So I decided to bring pumpkin pi. That’s a regular pumpkin pie with the greek letter pi cut out of scrap dough and laid on top to get browned in the oven. I think it was a good introduction to my sense of humor, and it was nice for me to have something on the table that was really mine.
We didn’t have dessert normally when I was little either–and pie was relegated to Thanksgiving and Christmas, so it was a really big deal. The pie I remember most fondly is my grandma’s pumpkin chiffon pie. No ordinary pumpkin pie ever, ever graced our Thanksgiving table–always pumpkin chiffon. I need to get over my egg white apprehension and make one for our next Thanksgiving!
I’ve never been good at making crust and have never made it often enough to perfect my technique so…my favorite pie is peach cobbler.
My Favorite dinner? A savory hand pie, fresh salad, and a dessert of any kind of pie (apple, banana cream, strawberry, you name it). Double pie whammy!
Pies have been used in our family as gifts during trying times… the warmth and love from a homemade pie can hold people in hard times.
isn’t everything better with pie? my own personal fave is the all from scratch pumpkin i make every month…cook the pumpkin, add the spices, let sit..add the egg and butter milk..leave over night..butter milk needs this trust me!…home made crust..of course next morning when the sun rises pop in oven and voila..”breakfast pie”..totally ok in the morning and with great tea or coffee..this is best served with home made lemon infused whipped cream and jam.. mm mmm pie!
My mother and I make a peach pie every summer. It’s become our way of marking the beginning of the season. We all ways cut up the extra crust into strips, sprinkle them with sugar and cinnamon, and bake them as ‘cookies’ to munch on. The crust is my favorite part!
We are big pie fans here. I always make a few to pop in the freezer to have on hand ready to go during the winter. Sometimes I make pie just for breakfast.
After pickling peaches for the first time this summer, my daughter suggested I make a pie with them. Seriously good. I highly recommend pickled peach pie.
Deep fried pecan pie. On a stick.
Hot and cold, sweet and salty.
I can’t wait for the State Fair!
I’m a recent convert to fruit pies (not sure why I wasted all those years bemoaning my dislike of cooked fruit! crazy), but I have long loved chocolate pudding pie. My Mom and her mom are famous for their chocolate pudding pies. Every Thanksgiving my Mom would combine a graham cracker crust, a box of pudding and some whipped cream. Heaven!
In search of interesting recipes for Thanksgiving I came across mini pumpkin pies from Baked Bree. You know how you choose a recipe without realizing it has the potential to become one of your trademark dishes, but then suddenly everyone expects it each year? That’s these pies. Plus it introduced me to my favorite crust recipe.
One of the first impressive feats of baking I saw from my now wife was an apple pie she made just for fun 🙂
Mmmh, pie. At one point in time, my great-grandmother lived with my grandmother. Both were excellent cooks and bakers, and both knew that their lemon meringue pie recipe was superior to the other’s. We’re talking family feud here! Shhh, don’t say it too loudly, but everyone always preferred my grandmother’s unbaked filling to my g-g’s baked filling. To this day, my grandmother’s LMP is my family’s birthday cake.
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!
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!
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 love rhubarb pie. It’s quirky and delicious, and what my dad always requested growing up.
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!
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!
I’m more of a savory person so home made chicken or spinach pie is my fave!
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!
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.
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 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 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!
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.
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 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!!!!
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.
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!! 😀
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.
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!
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!
My favorite pie is sweet potato, which I make with a nut crust and rather a lot of butter. Mmmm.
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. 🙂
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.
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 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.
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!
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.
My grandma always made the best apple pie…with LOTS of cinnamon!
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.
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.
Ooh, pie! I love pie, especially savory pie. Smitten Kitchen has a BALLER tomato pie recipe that I could eat forever and ever.
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!
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.
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.
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!
I love pie. When I was growing up my mom always made pie for my birthday instead of cake.
I remember one year I asked my mother for pumpkin pie instead of cake for my birthday. I got it and enjoyed it immensely.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 often think about the blueberry pie from the White Spot in Vancouver, though I don’t think they make it anymore…
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.
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!
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!
Sweet potato pie has a special place in my heart. It’s like pumpkin pie that actually tastes good!
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. 🙂
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.