Thanksgiving Pie Ideas

This is the first time in ten years I'll have spent Thanksgiving with my family. This past decade of Friendsgivings, celebrated from Maine to Maryland, have always been a rowdy delight and have taught me about how to do holidays at the grown-ups table right-- I hope there are many more in store. But this year I'm looking forward to spending the day at home in Indiana. In the past few years, my family has become particularly fond of Hoosier Mama's Cranberry Chess Pie, so I expect to fulfill a request for one of those, but I'll also likely venture in to new territory-- a Pumpkin-Pecan Pie, Aurora Tart, or Apple Cider Cheesecake, perhaps? If you're also still deciding, here are a few suggestions for your Thanksgiving table-- both savory and sweet. If you don't find quite what you're looking for, check out the Recipe Index, as well as past guides from 2014, 2013, and 2012.

Pumpkin, Squash & Sweet Potato
Delicata Squash Pie (pictured, top right)
Drunken Pumpkin Bourbon Pie with Mascarpone Cream
Pumpkin & Chai Spice Nut Butter Pie
Sweet Potato Pie with Cornmeal Crust
Sweet Potato Speculoos Pie

Fall Fruits
Apple Pie with Salted Caramel Glaze
Cranberry Chess Pie
Cranberry Pie
Red Wine-Poached Seckel Pear Tartlets (pictured, top left)
Persimmon Pie

Chocolate & Nuts
Bittersweet Chocolate Pecan Pie
Bourbon Ginger Pecan Pie
Chocolate Chess Pie
Cranberry Chocolate Chess Pie (pictured, bottom left)
Pine Nut & Honey Tart

Custard & Cheese
Cranberry Goat Cheese Tart with Almond Shortbread Crust
Kentucky Lemon Chess Pie
Maple Bourbon Buttermilk Pie with Apple Syrup
Pumpkin-Ginger Cheesecake Pie
Salty Honey Pie

Savory
Celery Ham Tart aka Pissaladière
Gordy's Cherry Pepper Spread Galette
Pear, Gruyere & Caramelized Onion Hand Pies 
Puff Pastry Hand Pies with Goat Cheese & Hot Pepper Jelly (pictured, bottom right)
Swiss Chard & Goat Cheese Galette

And whether from this list or not, I'd love to hear what you'll be making this Thanksgiving-- I may even have to borrow your idea. 

Thanksgiving Pie Ideas

As usual,  I'll be making a game-time decision on my Thanksgiving pie selections. In general, though I tend to go for at least one classic pick and one new, experimental, or non-traditional option. It will be hard to top last year's Cranberry Chess Pie, which has since become a new favorite, inspiring many variations with other fruits. If you're also still pondering what pies to make, here's a few suggestions for your Thanksgiving table-- both savory and sweet. If this list doesn't do it for ya, check out the Recipe Index, as well as past guides from 2013 and 2012.

Pumpkin & Sweet Potato
Drunken Pumpkin Bourbon Pie with Mascarpone Cream
Pumpkin & Chai Spice Nut Butter Pie
Sweet Potato Pie with Cornmeal Crust (pictured top left)
Sweet Potato Speculoos Pie

Fall Fruits
Apple Pie with Salted Caramel Glaze
Apple Slump (not really a pie, but so what, who cares?!)
Cranberry Chess Pie (a new favorite, pictured top right)
Cranberry Hand Pies
Cranberry-Sage Pie
Persimmon Pie

Chocolate & Nuts
Bittersweet Chocolate Pecan Pie
Chocolate Chess Pie
Pecan Pie with Brown Sugar (pictured bottom right)
Samoa Pie

Custard & Cheese
Cranberry Goat Cheese Tart with Almond Shortbread Crust
Pumpkin-Ginger Cheesecake Pie
Salty Honey Pie

Savory
Celery Ham Tart aka Pissaladière
Colcannon Pie
Gordy's Cherry Pepper Spread Galette
Pear, Gruyere & Caramelized Onion Hand Pies (pictured bottom left)

As always, I'd love to hear what you're baking this holiday, whether from this list or not. Have fun and happy Thanksgiving!

Thanksgiving Pie Ideas

I never know what pies I'm making for Thanksgiving until the very last moment. There's just so much to choose from and I wonder if should go with an old standby or try something new and experimental and potentially risky?! I feel overwhelmed by the possibility. If you're like me and still at a loss, here's a handy list of suggestions to help guide you in your selection. Still haven't found what you're looking for? Visit the Recipe Index for more ideas, and take a gander at last year's guide.

Pumpkin & Sweet Potato
Drunken Pumpkin Pie with Mascarpone Cream
Pumpkin & Chai Spice Nut Butter Pie, pictured top left
Sweet Potato Speculoos Pie

Fall Fruits
Apple Pie with Salted Caramel Glaze
Cranberry-Lime Galette, pictured bottom left
Pear & Cardamom-Fig Pie
Quince Biscuit Pie, pictured bottom right

Chocolate & Nuts
Bittersweet Chocolate Pecan Pie (a long-time Thanksgiving favorite)
Chocolate Chess Pie
Lemon-Hazelnut Tart

Custard & Cheese
Cranberry Goat Cheese Tart with Almond Shortbread Crust (a favorite from last year's Thanksgiving)
Maple Bourbon Buttermilk Pie
Pumpkin-Ginger Cheesecake Pie
Salty Honey Pie, pictured top right

Savory
Gordy's Cherry Pepper Spread Galette
Red & Golden Beet and Goat Cheese Tart
Swiss Chard & Goat Cheese Galette

I'd love to hear what you come up with, whether it's from this list or not (and maybe it will help me in my own decision). Happy baking!

The Long I Pie Shop's Shauna Lott & Apple, Brie & Prosciutto Pie

I believe it was Jess who first "introduced" me to Shauna. She showed me a Long I Pie photo-- of a golden crust baked in a cast iron skillet, and said I should probably check it out. Since then I've been a devout oggler of the whole Long I aesthetic, following closely as they've launched their new website and business in Denver, Colorado (if only it weren't so far away!) As Shauna and I started to correspond, we found we had a lot in common-- pie, sure, but also a love for folk music and butter and Americana. Then we realized that we're both from Indiana and it all made sense. 

I was pretty jazzed that Shauna was game to share a few words about her pie baking, The Long I Pie Shop, as well as the recipe I was MOST excited about-- "Too Piglet To Quit Pie" or her Apple, Brie & Prosciutto. At least it will assuage my hunger before I can get myself out to Colorado to taste it and meet Shauna in person. After you're done reading her words, head on over to Long I Blog to find more about the shop and read my thoughts on these same questions.

Tell us about yourself! Where are you from, what are your hobbies, whaddaya like to do on the weekends, what books do you like to read, etc.?

I’m from Fishers, Indiana originally --- born and raised.  Now,  I have been living in Boulder, CO for the last 7 ½ years.  I really enjoy traveling and try to get out of the United States at least once a year to see friends that live around the world. On the weekends, you’ll probably find me hanging out with friends at one of Colorado’s amazing breweries or distilleries, listening to live music, sitting around a table with my dearest friends eating a home cooked meal and catching up on life, finding a photo booth to take ridiculous photos in, or baking pie.  As for books, I love people’s stories, so I like to read memoirs or autobiographies. 

What led you up to the point of opening a pie shop and why did you decide to do it?  

Honestly, I feel like it was a mix of a few things.  One was the desire to honor a legacy of hospitality and generosity that my grandmother has left after she passed a year and half ago and one my mother is still building.  Baking is something that my family does well.  Pie is the baked good that I think of when I think of the feeling of being at “home”.  It’s not like a cookie that you can eat in passing.  It’s a conversation dessert.  You sit down at a table with your family or friends and laugh or cry, but definitely enjoy each other’s company.  The thing that led me to opening a pie shop was to combine my love and skill of pie making with my passion for helping people.  I’ve done social work type jobs since I graduated college.  In this past job, I worked primarily with youth and refugee families.  In working with those two populations, they have one thing in common --- a low chance at obtaining stable employment.  Youth and refugees have different kinds of barriers, but they both lead to not get a first chance at employment.  My plan is to start a youth employment services program to go with our first mobile pie shop.  We’ll teach a curriculum that discusses everything from hygiene to resume building to interview skills along side pie making and customer service skills training.  My hope is that as we grow that we can expand to an employment program that focuses on refugee women as well. 

What's the intersection between pie and social justice/community and specifically your social justice mission?

Pie is a creative tool for me to pursue justice in my community. Our social justice mission is two fold --- employing youth at risk of homelessness, exploitation, or incarceration and giving $1 per slice to an organizations working to prevent or restore children who’ve been trafficked in to the sex trade both locally in Colorado and around the world.  Pie feels like home and safety.  I want to provide a workplace that provides a place that is safe and feels like home for our youth.  Also, I want to put money into organizations that provide for other youth in the city and around the world. 

Why Pie?

Pie is home. Pie is family. Pie is comfort. Pie is laughter around a table. Pie transports people to good memories.  Pie is an art form that you can consume and enjoy.  It’s creative and I happen to be good at making it.  The “why” is how it makes me and others feel when we are eating it with our family and friends.

Tell me your pie aesthetic in one pithy sentence.

Think “what would my great-grandma do?” --- simple recipes, fresh ingredients, and butter.

I have to ask--what's your favorite pie?

My favorite pie is the pie my grandma used to make all the time when I was growing up --- Spiced Apple Cranberry Pie.  It’s the best combination of tart and sweet.  It brings back beautiful memories around my grandma’s kitchen table for dinners of homemade chicken dumplings and playing a rousing round of rummy after dinner.

Where'd the Long I name come from?

The Long I came from one Tuesday night sitting around the kitchen table with a couple of friends.  We’re all a little nerdy, but one of my best friends from college, Mandy, is the English Lit/grammar kind of nerdy.  We were dreaming together about what an Americana, homey airstream food trailer could look like.  I was set on pie, but Mandy thought sliders and fries.  Then, the name "The Long I" was birthed because they all have the long “I” sound in them.  I chose to stick with pie.

What's your crust philosophy?

I want my crust to always be simple, buttery, flaky goodness. You achieve that by making the crust as cold as you can and bake it as hot as you can.  Cold butter.  Ice water.  400 degrees.

Any special pie-making tips for home bakers?

Be creative with your pie.  Think of some of your favorite flavors in other foods and try them out in a pie.  Experiment.  Experiment.  Experiment. 

What do you like to listen to while baking?

I LOVE music which makes it hard to choose just one genre.  There are days when I listen to banjo and fiddle-filled folk music like Gregory Alan Isakov.  Other days, I listen to Beyoncé and dance around my kitchen. 

What pies will you be making for your own Thanksgiving feast?

My Grandma’s pie --- Spiced Apple Cranberry, Bourbon Chocolate Pecan (“The Drunken Nut”),  and an experimental Chocolate Pumpkin Pie.

Tell us about the recipe you're sharing. How did it come about and what should we pair it with (other food or drink)?

I’m sharing the recipe for my "Too Piglet to Quit Pie."  Last Spring, I went to Paris with a few of my close friends. Oh, it was a treat!  One night we went to Rue Clar, picked up some brie, prosciutto, baguettes, wine, and macaroons, walked to the Eiffel Tower, sat on a bench all buddled up and ate until our hearts were content.  It was a dreamy French picnic.  I wanted to put that experience into a pie, so the Too Piglet to Quit pie was birthed.  I’d pair it with a generous glass of a red wine blend from Bordeaux. 

Too Piglet To Quit

From The Long I Pie Shop

Ingredients

Pie crust dough (your favorite recipe)

7 small/medium Granny Smith Apples (cut in 1/4 inch slices)

1/2 c. packed brown sugar

1/4 c. granulated sugar

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/8 teaspoon ground allspice

1/4 teaspoon ground cloves

1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg

1/4 teaspoon salt

4 teaspoon cornstarch

Juice of 1 lemon

1 tablespoon vanilla extract

1/4 lb. prosciutto

1/4 lb. Brie

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. In a dutch oven or a cast iron skillet, combine apples, brown sugar, granulated sugar, cinnamon, allspice, cloves, nutmeg, and cornstarch, then stir until everything is evenly coated.  If you're using a cast iron skillet, cover with foil.  Bake apples on 400 degrees for 30 minutes.  Remove from pan, pour into a medium size bowl and stir in juice from lemon and vanilla extract.  Let cool for 30 minutes.

2. Roll out your favorite pie crust recipe. Line a 9-inch cast iron skillet with dough. Evenly layer the thinly sliced prosciutto on the bottom of the pie. Dump in the cooked apple mixture. Evenly layer sliced Brie on top of the apples. Lattice the top of the pie and bake in oven for 35 minutes at 400 degrees. Let pie sit for 30 minutes before serving for pie to set. Enjoy with laughter with friends or family!

Big thanks to Shauna Lott of Denver, Colorado's Long I Pie Shop for the lovely words and recipe. 

All beautiful photos by Caitlin Fairly.

Eating Our Words: A Progressive Dinner

As I previously mentioned, this spring at NELP I taught a Food Writing Society to a wonderful group of five talented women. The final project of the society was to create a culminating event that would allow us to share our work with the rest of the community. We wanted to convey the principles of our class-- that food is a language and that exploring the foods of our required authors (Thoreau and his beans and bread, Sarah Orne Jewett and the pies in The Country of the Pointed Firs, Wallace Steven's "Study of Two Pears," etc.), informs our reading of the text as well as our "reading" of the food. We also wanted to communicate our belief that food is an important foundation for intellectual thought and writing, and can be a symbol for relationships, identity, history, and culture. At NELP and in many of the communities that we inhabit, food is the nexus of social life.

With these goals in mind, we collaboratively developed a progressive dinner, "Eating Our Words," that would allow us to recreate and share the foods of our authors in different settings around Camp Kabeyun. We started with chowders, beans, and bread in the dining hall, and via a map, lead everyone on a self-guided eating tour. 

There were stops at the herb garden for a sampling Alymer's elixirs, from the Nathaniel Hawthorne story "The Birthmark," a recreation of Phoebe's kitchen from Carolyn Chute's novel Merry Men, a half-bushel of cornmeal-- weekly rations for four slaves, which Frederick Douglass writes of in his Narrative, and pickles on the dock as per the Lloyd S. Barrington poem, also from Merry Men. It all culminated in the Bowden/NELP family reunion, inspired by Country of the Pointed Firs, with pies and Emily Dickinson's coconut cake, and a reading of the student's work.

Though we had to change some plans due to windy and rainy weather--we had wanted to have our "doughnut island" on the floating dock (mostly to see who would swim for a doughnut) and our Family Reunion in the meadow-- the dinner was wonderful and left me inspired and full. I think we met our goals of prompting others to consider the importance of food in literature and our own lives.


I was so impressed and thankful by the work of the society members-- Abby, Ariella, Brooke, Emily, and Madalyn. They put in a lot of time and hard work in the kitchen and the typewriter to pull it all off. In the words of Sarah Orne Jewett, "The feast was a noble feast," with "an elegant ingenuity displayed in the form of pies, which delighted my heart."

 

The America Eats Project's Vermont Spiced Pie

writing by Emily sent from New England, illustrations by Elizabeth Graeber

Apple Pie with Salted Caramel Glaze

It is my little pie baker's secret that I am not that into apple pie. I find it a bit "meh"--somewhat bland, generally unexciting and when it's bad it can be REALLY BAD and when it's good, it's just...good. Despite my usual traditionalist leanings, I just don't understand the fascination. Of course I get the whole nostalgia around it, and there is something really special and comforting about my mom's apple pie--always done with a brown sugar crumble top. But other than that, I can take it or leave it (or make an apple galette instead).

But apple pie is often the test of a pie bakers skill, so instead of shunning it, I instead try to find ways to make the classic dish a little more personally appealing. Last year I made it savory with grueyere, caramelized onions and sage; recently I added green chiles to my apple fried pies (recipe coming soon); and previously I'd tried some caramel apple pie recipes, with mediocre success, as the caramel always seemed to dissolve or melt in the oven. So I decided to try adding the caramel after--once the pie had been baked-- as a salty-sweet (and eye-catching) glaze. As usual, I opted for Northern Spies, my go-to baking apple (spies are for pies), which I picked up at the Mt. Pleasant Farmer's Market.

Apple Pie with Salted Caramel Glaze
Caramel recipe adapted from Judicial Peach

Ingredients
For pie:
Nothing-in-the-House pie crust
8 medium-sized apples, peeled, cored & cut into 1/2-3/4 inch slices (sometimes I leave the skins on, as it doesn't bother me, and they are the the healthiest part of the apple. It also saves time.)
1/4 c. brown sugar
1/4 c. maple syrup
1 tsp. lemon zest
1/2 tsp. cinnamon
1/4 tsp. allspice
1/4 tsp. ground ginger
3 Tbslp. cornstarch or all-purpose flour
1 Tblsp. fresh lemon juice
Turbinado sugar, for dusting

 For salted caramel glaze:
1/2 c. sugar
1/8 c. water
1/8 c. light corn syrup
1/2 c. heavy cream
2 Tblsp. unsalted butter
1/2 tsp. sea salt
1/4 tsp. vanilla extract

Directions

For pie:

1. Prepare the Nothing-in-the-House pie crust as per the directions. Chill dough at least 1 hour. Once chilled, roll out 1/2 of pie crust and fit into a 9-inch greased and floured pie pan. You can choose to roll out the top-crust now and refrigerate it flat, or roll it out once you've prepared the filling. Either way, you should put both the remaining crust and the pie pan in the fridge while you prepare the filling.

2. Preheat oven to 425 degrees F. Place apple wedges in a large bowl and set aside. In a medium bowl, whisk together brown sugar, lemon zest, spices and cornstarch or flour and add to the apples. Mix well, then add maple syrup and lemon juice and stir to combine.

3. Pour the apple filling into the bottom pie crust and spread evenly. Add the top crust, crimping and fluting the edges decoratively and cutting vents in the top so steam can escape. Brush on an egg wash (using the remaining 1/2 egg from the crust) and sprinkle top with Turbinado sugar.

4. Place pie in the oven and bake at 425 for 20 minutes. Reduce heat to 375 degrees F and continue to bake for about 40 minutes more or until filling is bubbling and crust is golden brown. Remove from oven and let cool.

For caramel glaze:

1. While pie is in the oven, prepare the caramel glaze. In a small pot, bring cream, butter, and sea salt to a simmer over low heat, making sure to not let it boil. Once it begins to simmer, remove from heat and set aside.

2. In a medium saucepan, mix water, corn syrup and sugar. Place over medium heat and stir until sugar has dissolved. Then without stirring, bring the mixture to a boil until it is golden brown in color. Make sure to keep an eye on it as this transition can happen quickly.

3. When the mixture is done, remove from heat and carefully add the cream mixture (it will bubble up so pour it slowly). Stir in the vanilla.

4. Return the saucepan to the stove and cook over medium heat until it reaches a temperature of 248 degrees (you'll need a candy thermometer for this), approximately 10 minutes. Once it reaches 248, remove from heat and let cool just slightly.

5. When pie is out of the oven, use a spoon to drizzle caramel glaze over the top crust. Let cool until the caramel begins to harden and serve warm, preferably with vanilla ice cream.

Sure enough, the salted caramel really upped the ante, and I rather enjoyed this pie. Part of it may have been because I ate it at midnight in the midst of a honky-tonk jam & dance at one hell of a party at the "slice of heaven" home of Buckeye Banjos, after having enjoyed a few picklebacks, but whatever the reason, this really hit the spot. I made it again for my Pie CSA members, and it seemed to do the trick for them as well.

Pie & Doughnuts for Woodsmen and You

A few weeks ago, I was scouring the Library of Congress Print & Photograph Online Catalog for work. I was looking for images of western culture and song--mostly cowboys and Texas fiddling and pow-wow drum, but I was having so much fun looking at those old photographs that I decided to put in a few search terms that were of a more personal interest, namely "pie" and "doughnuts" (another baked good favorite). The search yielded exciting results--historical images of a little girl feeding doughnuts to a bear cub, national doughnut queens and pie contests and socials. One group of photos combined these two queries--a collection of images by John Collier from May 1943 of Maine loggers and woodsman on a Spring pulpwood drive on the Brown Company timber holdings.

According to the photos' captions, the woodsmen ate four meals per day, with the two "lunches" at 10am and 2pm served "on location", cafeteria style into individual pie tins. Desserts included "several kinds of cookies, gingerbread, doughnuts, and two kinds of pie." Hmm... that dessert menu sounds familiar... Maybe we should start serving our doughnuts out of barrels too.

 

In the above picture, "Cookie" the cook's assistant is dishing out pie at the mid-morning lunch near where the men are working. Below, a woodsmen enters the Pie Enjoyment Zone during his mid-afternoon "lunch" by Long Pond. On the menu that day: roast pork and dressing, boiled potatoes, turnips, baked beans, hot cakes, hot biscuits, bread, butter, cookies, apple pie, orange pie, milk, tea, coffee, and water. These men must have been working hard. I also wonder what that orange pie was all about?

  

Based on the limited knowledge I have of New England foodways, mainly from folklore and literature (I'm thinking of Sarah Orne Jewett's The Country of the Pointed Firs, which is full of both doughnuts and pies!), pie and doughnuts were traditional rural foods, consumed for both dessert and for breakfast. I wonder when and where doughnuts became more of a standard breakfast item than a dessert?

This whole post wasn't just an excuse for me to use the pie blog plug my friend Amy's donut zine release party tonight, but I'll let these Maine woodsmen's pie-and-doughnut pairing serve as one. If you're in DC tonight and want to learn more about and of course, eat some doughnuts (some even filled with pie filling!), make your way over to the Velvet Lounge at 8pm for "Donut Go There" A Zine Release Party. Tarts by Tarts will be contributing some special edition doughnuts to the doughnut buffet, my friend Pete will deliver a west coast doughnut scene report, Amy will be speaking, bands are playing, I'll be performing this little doughnut ditty, and you can get your hands on one of these zines, free with admission. There wont be pie, but who doesn't love doughnuts?

My Grandma Georgette's Apple Pie

My grandma Georgette is Belgian. When my brother and I were growing up, our family celebrated St. Nicholas Day, on the eve of the 5th/6th of December, in an adapted Belgian tradition. We'd leave out our wooden shoes overnight, and in the morning they were filled with little treats, "shoe stuffers" and a new ornament for our miniature trees. In the evening our grandma would come over and we'd eat Belgian chocolates, and speculoos (windmill cookies) & pizelles she had made.

Now my brother and I don't live close enough for "St. Nicholas" to put gifts in our shoes, but my grandma and mom still carry on the tradition. This year my grandma made a beautiful apple pie for my mom to take home and share with my dad.

My grandma's beauteous apple pie, which she put in a trompe l'oeil pie tin for transport. She is cute like this.

I'm excited to go home and visit with her over Christmas. This year I plan to make some audio recordings of us in the kitchen together, with her talking through some of my favorite recipes of hers, including her chicken soup, sugar cookies, speculoos, and apple pie. I'll be sure to include it here.

A Apple Pie

While researching archival pie images and literature, as I am wont to do, I came across this version of a nursery rhyme A Apple Pie, estimated to be from 1870, and published by Kronheim & Company. This nursery rhyme seems to have missed me as a a child, but maybe some of you know it? Here's the illustrations, though you can see a pdf of the entire book here.

A apple pie  B bit it  C cut it  D dealt it  E eat it  F fought for it  G got it  H hid it  I (invisible?)  

J joined it  K kept it  L longed for it  M mourned for it  N nodded at it  O opened it  P peeped at it 

Q quartered it  R ran for it  S stole it  T took it  U (understated?)  V viewed it  W wanted it

XYZ& amperse and all wished for a piece in hand.

I think my favorite is the girl (Q) using the compass to exactly quarter the pie, though the baby (B) taking a bite and dogs (F...foxes?) fighting for it are also quite humorous. I also came across this edition, c. 1886/1900 (?), by Kate Greenaway. More about her classic and slightly different version coming soon...

Texas Thanksgiving Pies

My friends Stacy and Chris are the official Nothing-in-the-House Texas correspondents (though let's not forget our friend Shannon!), always sending photos of pies they eat and bake. This year, Chris sent me three pics of Stacy's Thanksgiving pies-- all fall classics of pecan, apple, and pumpkin.

The pecan pie recipe is from Homesick Texan, though Stacy likes to toast her pecans first for added flavor. The apple pie was "grandma" style, with Granny Smith apples and Grandma Ople's recipe, which calls for pouring the sauce/filling over the apples as opposed to mixing the apples with the sauce.

 Stacy and Chris also had another pie at this year's Thanksgiving--cutie pie Hudson, who helped roll out the crust. Baby's first pie crust--looks like he did a great job!

An Apple A Day

Do you remember my friend Emily's awesome "pie kills cupcake" illustrations? Well here's another pie-related drawing she did as part of her adorable "North Carolina State Fair Illustrated" series for the Independent Weekly.

So cute! I'm not sure if a deep fried candy apple would really keep the doctor away, but I am willing to test it out...

Montgomery Place Orchards

I spent this past weekend at one of my favorite places in the world for my friends Marina and Louis' wedding at Rokeby in the Hudson River Valley (HRV) of New York. Whenever I'm there, we almost always stop at the Montgomery Place Orchard farm stand for some of Doug and Talea's fresh apples, pears, berries, veggies and more, and more often then not, I bake a pie (or six) from what I find there.

The stand holds an annual pie contest, this year on October 15-- next weekend! My visit has never coincided with the contest, but someday I hope to enter.

One of the best things about Montgomery Place Orchards is that they grow and sell my favorite baking apple-- the Northern Spy. When I was growing up we used to get them at Eberly's Orchard in North Liberty, IN, though they only had one tree left, as Spies are difficult to grow and aren't cosmetically perfect. They seemed to have made a comeback, though, among heirloom growers, and pie bakers are thankful for it.

I also like to pick up a jar of Doug and Talea's delicious farm-pressed "Annandale Atomic Hard Cider". It's the perfect thing to sip as you roll out dough, slice apples, and flute crusts.

This visit I made 6 pies/tarts for the wedding...2 apple-ginger double crust pies, 3 apple tarts with homemade apple butter, and one pear tarte tatin. Stay tuned for wedding pie pics...