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.
I didn’t really eat pie until I had a Bennett’s mixed berry pie. They’re located in Sacramento, a family run small operation. I tell you what, the crumb topping and luscious berry filling would convert the pickiest eater you know! Although I don’t make many pies, I do make galettes- I guess that counts!
My mom made the best pies!!! Loved her blueberry pie best.
One of my favorite pies is spinach pie! (What? Really??) Yup! It not only has spinach, but beet greens, swiss chard, egg, and the best part- lots of feta cheese! I’m hungry just thinkin’ about it. Its a great recipe to make if you need to use up some greens in the garden.
I love this book- and want it so bad. I have been following Ashley’s blog for a long while now and love her! I love pie, too! I got your book and thought- they will be
in constant use, so this will add to my obsession w/ your blogs and PIE!
Lovely book….The one pie I always tried to recreate was my mom’s sweet potato pie. She passed away years ago before I asked her for her recipe; so continue my search for the perfect sweet potato pie.
Oh, a Year of Pies — what a wonderful title! My children LOVE anything with a crust, and therefore just about any kind of pie! I am especially partial to a one-crust, streusel-topped fruit pie, so you get the flakiness and the crunchiness all in one dessert!
I promised to make whatever he wanted for my roommate’s birthday: it was October and he wanted a peach pie. They might have been frozen, but it was made with love, and isn’t that what makes a pie taste so darn good?
A couple years ago I read up on how wonderful freshly rendered lard makes pie crusts so I contacted a pork farmer and rendered the fat to make a special apple pie. It was quite good but don’t think I’ll be rendering own fat again anytime soon… there are lots of other recipes that make very wonderful crusts.
Oooooh, I love pies! I was lucky enough to grow up in a community that made lots of pies and shared them at most community get togethers. My mom also made pies, so there were sometimes pies just for us. There were mulberry pies, rhubarb pies, raisin pies, and all the other more usual fruits as well – apple, cherry, peach, etc. I can remember standing in front of a long table and looking at all the choices of pies, each piece already placed on an individual dessert plate, and wondering how on earth I was going to choose just one! I’m wondering the same thing about choosing a favorite pie. 🙂 But, if I had to choose, I’d say that it would probably be a raisin pie, or maybe a rhubarb raisin pie, or maybe strawberry rhubarb pie, or….
Pie is an occasional treat at our house too-usually only at the holidays. The problem is we can never agree on what kind we like. My dad and I like pumpkin, and my mom like pecan, but no one else will touch either, and we end up with an apple too. So even though there are usually only 5 of us, we end up with at least 3 pies (and usually finish them, much to the expansion of our waistlines!)
I was so excited to recently recreate my favorite pie ever: berry pie with three types of berries! Better than the famed Marie Callendar’s pie…yay!
My mother could be cajoled into making a pie occasionally if we picked the contents. One day my brother & I came across a HUGE Huckleberry patch. We took off our shirts, filled them with Huckleberries & hauled them all home to Mom. She made a Huckleberry pie for dessert that night in one of GreatGranny’s old fashioned, English stoneware pie dishes. That must’ve been 5o years ago. My Gawd, does that ever make me feel old.
I can still smell the apply pie baking at my grandmother’s house. Just simple apple pie. She also made strawberry rhubarb pie. …and now I’m hungry.
When I was young I lived in Europe and we weren’t able to have sweets everyday as well! I was usually pointed to a jar of nutella or honey. However the mornings that I would be at my grandma’s she would wake up early and make pie! She would make the pie with whatever seasonal fruit she had picked from our garden. My favorites were cherry and apple. I love a good pie and I love to roll out dough! I used to play with the flour when I was little.
My favorite pie without a doubt would be apple of course. Being from New England I think we are all born with a need for a great piece of pie any time of year.
My Mom was a farmgirl from Nebraska and the woman could make pies in her sleep! She started teaching me to make pie when I was 7. Everyone’s favorite was her cherry lattice-top pie. Her crusts were made with lard and the extra pieces always went in the oven sprinkled with cinnamon sugar — cookies that melt in your mouth! I inherited her old wooden rolling pin and during the holidays when I make a pie to share with family, I can feel her behind me helping me roll out the dough.
Chocolate pie with a graham cracker crust was always a family favorite. I made one one evening and put it in the refrigerator. We woke the next morning to a very quite house. Our 3 year old had found the pie and ate the whipped cream off the top giving the rest to his 2 year old sister who was finishing it in her crib! He had given her a wash cloth to clean up with. We laugh to this day about it and they are in their 40’s now. Chocolate pie is still a favorite.
Fave pie story: Thanksgiving. Two fresh pumpkin pies cooling in a bottom cupboard. Family leaves house for a bit. Family comes home to two dogs eating two pumpkin pies. 🙂
I just love cherry pie & apple pie. I’ve made and re-made an amazing cherry slab pie, but I’ve also eaten my mother unforgettable apple pies.
Bring my dad a pie, make a friend for life. To celebrate his 90th birthday we had pie after church. One of my Sunday school kids had the idea — ‘Let’s make 90 different kinds of pie!’. We did end up with about 30; and had pie for breakfast for many days.
There’s nothing better than a warm, homemade slice of apple pie…or cherry pie made with cherry pie filling that my friend and I canned ourselves. 🙂 That was pretty good too.
Pies, mmm. All my pie memories involve my 90 year old grandmother. She made the best blueberry pies. Along with her regular sized pies, she would always make me a mini pie because she knew it was my favourite. Even at 90, she still continues to make the most amazing pies. This post really got me thinking about how I should spend some time baking with her and learn her pie secrets before she is not around to share them.
I have a killer pie crust recipe from Cooks Illustrated. It includes gin or vodka as part of the liquid. I have customized it slightly and use butter-flavored Crisco instead of regular. It is tender, flaky, and flavorful. Look for their “Fool Proof Pie Crust” recipe.
I always pick pie – preferrable peach or coconut cream, for my birthday. And my Grandma is the pie queen, no one’s is as good as hers – so she says, anyway.
One year, I crimped up the Thanksgiving pumpkin pie crusts nice and high, and optimistically used all the filling I had mixed up — right to the top of the crust, well above the level of the pie plates. While tidying up, I noticed that the oven looked brighter than I expected. The crust had crumbled and a good amount of the custard had flowed out onto the oven floor and caught on fire — could the 2′ flames I’m remembering be accurate? After the oven had been cleaned out, I just kept baking the now smoked pies — I was already running late. Somehow, they tasted no different than when they hadn’t been set on fire — a truly foolproof recipe!
The first pie I ever made from scratch, I did it with a friend and it was rhubarb lattice pie. It was delicious, but it had taken us hours to do. I don’t eat a lot pie now, but I do much prefer to make my own crust and filling. When I buy it, it doesn’t taste as good. I really enjoy rhubarb, apple, and this year, I’ll probably do blueberry since I picked and froze some for a pie in the future.
My mother never made pie. If we had pie, it was at one of my grandmother’s houses, and it was usually apple, pumpkin or raisin pie. The most memorable pie I remember having is when I tasted my first peach pie, made from fruit picked from my Aunt Margaret’s mom’s tree when I was 7 or 8 years old. I wanted to inhale it. I wanted to savour it and make that tiny piece last. All the grownups kept laughing at me because I kept going “Mmmmmm, mmmmm, mmmmmmmmmmm!”
My favorite pie? Blackberry! Or, fresh blueberry pie with a flaky crust and fresh whipped cream 🙂
I love baking pies. I use a wonderful all-butter crust, but my beloved grandmother taught me to make the crust using lard. Just can’t bring myself to use lard these days, although apparently I loved to stick my fingers in Grandma’s jar of lard and lick it off when I was little. Yuck!
I love pie! My childhood is full of pie recipes. My father had fruit trees in our yard, including a tart cherry that was perfect for pies. We would pick a bunch and sit on the front porch and pit them. What a mess, but so much fun. I learned to make crust by age 12, and was pretty good at it. I wish I could eat pie every day without suffering the consequences.
I have many memories of Saskatoon berry pie…so good! Now if only I could master the perfect crust…
Wow, that looks like a special book! I’ve always been more of a cake fan than pie fan, but I think there’s more than enough love to go around for both, and I’ve recently been coming around more and more to the splendors of homemade pie. It turns out, I didn’t hate pie crust, I just hadn’t realized I really preferred all butter crusts. I remember my aunt showing me how to relax when I roll out dough, and how to flute the edges with my thumb. I have many fond memories of time spent on her farm in Wisconsin, and the pie making sessions are among them!
I made my first from scratch apple pie with a crisp topping two years ago and ever since I tasted that pie I knew I would never eat another store-bought one!
i have an ongoing love affair with pie, especially in the summer with so much fresh produce to enjoy. i too loved nothing better as a kids than when i was allowed a slice of leftover pie for breakfast, usually following a holiday spent with family. grandma was always perfectly happy to spoil us with a leftover slice of apple or pumpkin. my favorite pie-related memory would probably be when my mom first made grasshopper pie for dessert at her monthly dinner club. she had me briefly convinced that there were tiny grasshopper legs among the chocolate crust. it’s still one of my favorite pies today & i always share the story with my little ones when i make one for dessert. 🙂
Oh, pie! Every holiday, my grandma would make a series of pies, usually pumpkin, rhubarb, and apple. The best thing about them was the crust; I’ve yet to recreate her perfect crusts, though I’m getting closer (lard! who knew?).
This book looks amazing; I’ll have to buy a copy!
Best pie I ever had was a Chicken and Leek Pie in a London pub. It had puff pastry on top and came with mashed potatoes and green beans. Lovely!
my mom was never a big pie maker; she was very good at cakes and brownies. but once or twice a year she would make a chocolate cheese pie. it has a chocolate graham cracker crust which is filled with an oh so rich chocolate cream cheese filling! we loved this pie!!!! now my girls help her make this pie for her birthday dessert and yes…there are just enough leftovers for breakfast!
Pie was, and still is, the birthday dessert of choice… I almost did pie at our wedding, but decided to do cake at the las minute. Mmmmm…now I am craving pie. Fresh peach pie might be in order once I hit up the market this weekend!
ooooh….looking forward to seeing this book.
sounds yummy!
I made a very rustic peach gallette last summer with some super fresh peaches that sang in our mouths!
The first pies my partner used to eat were with a woman named Freda Unsworth who lived on the edge of a logging town on Haida Gwaii, BC. He would go over to her place with his sisters and do a few chores for Freda and then get fed Rhubarb pie. One of his fondest memories from childhood. No birthday cake in our house. It’s always birthday pie. Already pre-ordered the book, but hope to win another copy for a friend. Thanks for writing it!
I have a great reason to learn to cook & bake and could use all the help I can get….I will be married next year and we are expecting our first child. I have to feed then and I’d prefer it to be delish!!
I still can’t live down the thanksgiving I forgot the put sugar in the pumpkin pie. and I’m a professional cook!
I had to live down a thanksgiving my professional chef friend told me allspice would substitute for nutmeg, cinnamon and cloves. Ick! Strangely, one of my friends thought it was the best pumpkin pie he’d ever eaten.
(Is this my comment?)
I havent met a pie I didnt like (except for this one meat pie tart thing topped with century egg i tried a while back…), but I find myself longing for peach pie all year til they come into season (very soon!).
That’s crust, not Crist!
My favorite pie memory was at my neighbor’s house when I was young. That was some 60+ years ago. She made the best egg custard pie. I rarely see it anymore and I don’t know how to make it. But I still taste it in my mind.
It never occured to me that I could bake a pie, until one Thanksgiving a decade ago.I made an apple pie & a sweet potatoe pie. And what a hit, now pies are made & eaten frequently depending on the fruit in our csa. My boys LOVE pie!!
I have been on a pie kick! I have a friend who actually begs me to bake her pies publicly on Facebook. This time of year it has to be peach pies, line the Crist with almond paste and add a crumb topping that has a hint of ginger. Yum!
My first pies were what my grandfather made every holiday. I love chocolate pie to this day & have never been able to recreate his recipe
My mother makes the best apple hand pies in the world. She would always make them before we went camping so it was a great treat after a long day of playing outside.
I’ve never really made pies, although I’d like to try. On holidays and other special occasions I bought the most delicious pies from a man in the Italian Market who took orders weeks in advance. Sadly, he died, so now I have to learn to do it myself! Thanks so much for the giveaway.