Sara shared a recipe in the Wilmington Forum. We thought it was well worth a share:
“Today I had the pleasure of attending the ‘Back Roads Stories’ event at the Broad Brook Community Center. I told a story about a blue ribbon pie, baked solo, by my then 9-year-old daughter, and its not-so-tragic demise at the fair. The pie was baked using her great-great-great-gramma’s recipe. I was asked if I would publish the recipe. So, here it is!
Filling:
5 -6 large apples washed, peeled, cut into maybe 3/4″ to 1″ chunks, not thin slices. We want this pie to brown and bubble without the apples turning to mush!
Mix together and set aside:
1 cup sugar, 1 tsp cinnamon, 1tsp nutmeg, 1 heaping Tbsp flour
Make the easy peasy double crust:
2 cups flour, 1 tsp salt, whisk together, 1/2+ cup oil, 1/4 cup milk
Mix lightly with fork then fingers. If too dry – add more oil, not milk. Don’t over mix. Roll out between layers of waxed paper and flip into pie plate.
“Now here’s Gramma Canfield’s best trick – spread half of the sugar mix into the bottom crust. Then pile in apples, sprinkle the rest over, dot with butter, add the top crust, pinch and cut vents. Bake at 425 for 15 minutes, reduce to 350 for about an hour or so, until it’s golden brown and bubbling.”
“Pie is my happy place. Sometimes I dream that we could achieve world peace if we could only bake enough pies. Who could not share love while sharing pie? The world could use a little extra love just now – in any way we are moved to give it.”
After being prompted with requests for the full story, Sara graciously responded to the FPF team.
“The pie story I told, in short version, is that my then 9-year-old daughter baked her 1st solo pie to enter in the Farmers’ Day Fair. She carefully wrote out the recipe card entitled “Grate Grate Grate Gramma’ Apple Pie.” I hadn’t the heart to correct her.
“Amy entered her perfect golden brown pie, and we went on to enjoy the animals and displays. A reporter from the local weekly paper tracked us down. Judging was over, and he wanted to take her picture with her blue ribbon pie!
The recipe card was there. The blue ribbon was there. The pie was….not there. Much clucking among bystanders. The nerve of it all!
“Amy looked at the empty spot for a few moments, then burst into laughter. ‘I know! It’s those darn boys in my class! They’re down by the brook pigging out on my pie!’ Later that night, Amy said, ‘Mom, those boys are really dumb. They forgot the best part. They didn’t take the recipe!’
“Ancestors honored. A beautiful pie baked and enjoyed, a blue ribbon brought home, and I knew that my daughter had inherited a generations-long sense of humor.”
Posted in: Best of FPF
Ghost of Midnight is an online journal about fostering community within neighborhoods, with a special focus on Front Porch Forum (FPF). My wife, Valerie, and I founded FPF in 2006... read more
I love pie, as well. I feel that any two opposites sitting down over pie could bring world peace. But that’s me.
Several years ago, my wife and I went to a memorial service on Martha’s Vineyard for a friend of ours, who had died a few months earlier. John was nationally known in journalism circles, and he and I had become friends and spent time in Vermont, NYC, and in his home on Martha’s Vineyard, where he and his wife lived.
At the outdoor memorial service, under the big tent, people got up and spoke about John. Anecdotes I’d never heard before, stories I wish I had known while he was still living. At the conclusion, it was time to eat. The sheets were pulled from 50 feet of tables lined end to end that were loaded with pies of every conceivable type. If I had died myself at the end of the pie feast and gone to heaven or anywhere else, I would have died happy. Ends up, John was a pie freak. Who knew! And I was pissed that I never knew. But was delighted nonetheless.
Fast forward to last Spring. Totally unrelated event. Am browsing a huge craft fair and home tour in Inman Park, an historic Victorian Atlanta neighborhood. All the leafy streets are blocked off for this fabulous event. I come across a woman and her two daughters selling pie. The sign above their vendor tent said this: A Party Without Pie is Just a Meeting.
Same event, 30 minutes later. Dude wearing a t-shirt that says, “Equal Rights for All Does Not Mean Fewer Rights for You. It’s Not Pie.”
– Rob, Mad River Valley Forum
Sara, feeling ever more creative, shared a poem that the local paper declined… because they don’t print poetry! (April IS National Poetry Month, by the way)
Ode to the Pilfered Pie
Well pie in my eye!
Someone swiped the pie!
Right from the hall at the fair on displie!
That pie made by hands of my own Amy-Pie
(Her appielation since days gone by,
When she was just knee-high to a grasshopper pie.)
Apple piefection, ribbon of blue,
First place in Youth Hall, and from there it flew!
Oh polecat! Oh poser! Oh pieverse pretender!
Who stoops so low as to pilfer a pie?
Did you plié with politeness, pierusing the pies?
Post pal by the portal, conspiere to spie?
Did you practice and plot, and piesumptiously piellage?
Partake of the profits as peers in the pranking?
Or pounce on that pie, pig it all for yourself?
Or did you just pass that most precious of pies
And panging with pieteous pit in your belly,
Posses of that pie out of piemeval passion?
That we piecieve, for we prowl with a purpose
Subconscious, you see, even while we are sleeping.
It’s powerful magic, when pie be in kitchen!
The epietomy of compliments, the pienacle of praise
Is to have one’s pie fly with not even a trace.
And it’s wise, we suppiese, if one’s going to snitch pies
To plunder the one with the blue ribbon prize!
But we have to surmise, and we tell you no lies:
Your haste made a waste of your future pies’ taste.
With nary an eye for the pie in the sky,
Off you did fly, without recipie!
When it comes to a pie, one must set one’s eye high
And always consider tomorrow is nigh.
When today’s pie has flown, and the morrow is born
And you sit all alone, and you’re sad and forlorn,
With your flour and apples, your wishes and sighs,
All the recipes tried, and none can arise
To the height of that prize-winning best of all pies,
Your partial pieloining you’ll surely decry
That you’re not in possession of Gram’s recipie!
Like love does a recipie grow when it’s shared,
Its secrets are gifts that increase with division.
This one, bequest from Great Grandmother dear
We’ve copied and passed on to friends far and near.
It’s never diminished by giving away,
For six generations it’s flourished this way.
So easy and quick, with the spicing just right,
But the method’s a trick, should be taught once by sight.
If you watch Amy Pie you will surely succeed
With your very next try. Pielicious indeed!
And you’ll know she believes, by the smile on her face,
The more pies in the world, the better the place.
For my Pie loves pie and she loves to create.
Just ask her for help,
She’ll say bring back Mom’s plate!
Whether your’e prompted by passion or ponderance
You pinched with an eye for the premium pie.
And plucking that pie up like Yogi the Bear,
You made off with my pie plate that’s one of a pair!
Not pricey nor precious, my old deep dish plate.
Not antique nor heirloom, from no one’s estate.
Made of clear glass, one can barely see through,
I could buy another, but it would be new.
All mellowed and muted, it’s ambered in sheen,
The best thing about it, it never comes clean!
It’s fluting is darkest where fingers have pinched
The edges together around every inch.
Before I had children my fingers did mold.
Now they’ve learned the art, and it’s their pies it holds.
It’s wearing the stories of twenty five years.
The thought of a new one just brings me to tears.
Poach pie without plate? That’s impossibly keen.
I do understand that, but you could come clean!
Just end this pie lie, it is not a defeat!
For all is forgiven, in our Land of Pie
In the wink of a blink and the bake of a pie.
You know you’ll feel good if you bring back our dish.
So here’s pienance for you, to do if you wish:
Just give us a call, and set up a date,
And come to our house, and bring back the plate!
Bring one of yours too, and we’ll bake you a pie
Of apples and spices and crust with a flake.
We’ll walk through the gardens and chat while it bakes.
Then you can go home with your prospects secure
And Grandmother’s gifts will be growing once more!
I loved seeing this pie recipe because it is the same thing handed down in my mother’s family from Charlotte. I never knew anyone who made crust this way, including the wax paper trick. Everyone always uses butter or lard. Before my mother passed she taught my wife how to make the crust so I can still enjoy pie, my preference over cake any time. We don’t use salt, thought. We do use the crust for pot pies and anything else requiring a base or a top!