A Deepe Coffyn

Willem Clausz. Heda

SOOOO ……

I’m  reading and writing about PIES, specifically apple pies, and I get a package in the mail from a dear friend.

A book.

.

 A Deepe Coffyn by Janet Laurence

It’s a culinary murder mystery…the main character is cooking up an Banquet for a   group of culinary historians…and the next thing you know

someone is DEAD

But not because of the food.

If there’s one thing I love to read at the end of a week, it’s a murder mystery. Something about a problem and a solution all wrapped up in under 400 pages….It’s Murder, She Wrote between covers.

(Is there a book series for the TV series?)

 

And this book is the first of a series, a series I haven’t read. The author is from England. And there are nine more where this came from. They evolve/revolve around Darina Lisle – the cook- and William Pigram- the cop.

So now when pies are too hot a thing to contemplate (is there ANY cool weather out there anywhere?) I have something a little lighter to keep my brain occupied.

Thank you, Clarissa! A most appropriate and timely gift.

 

National Apple Pie Day

was May 13th.

How did I miss this????

Who makes apple pie in MAY??????

There’s rhubarb and blueberries and strawberries…..but apples…

Not still and not yet.

Now, if were

National Mock Apple Pie Day

I could get behind that. A little pastry practice for all the lovely real fruits that are just ahead.

Ritz Cracker did not invent the mock apple pie….but it certainly popularized it.

When there are no apples people still wanted apple pie. Dried apples were the thing that used to extend the season. After the fresh apples, the dried apple. After the dried apple, the crackers….and then Spring and Summer fruits until the new apples.

Here’s an earlier then Ritz version:

A CALIFORNIA PIONEER APPLEPIE-1852
Mrs. B. C. Whiting.

Break four soda crackers into an earthen bowl. Pour
over them a pint of cold water, made very tart with citric
acid. When soft, but not mashed, removed the soda crackers
to your pie plate, with the under crust already on; then sift
over two tablespoons of light brown sugar, and a little all-

spice and cinnamon to flavor. (The brown sugar and spice
give the requisite color), after which put on a prettily per-
forated top crust, and bake in a very quick oven a few
moments.
The deception was most complete and readily accepted.
Apples at this early date were a dollar a pound, and we
young people all craved a piece of mother’s applepie to
appease our homesick feelings.

Los Angeles, C. Simpson Methodist Episcopal Church (Ladies Social Circle).1894.How We Cook in Los Angeles. A practical cook-book containing six hundred or more recipes….including a French, German and Spanish department with menus, suggestions for artistic table decorations, and souvenirs.pp.240-1.

 

 

Here’s what used to be on the back of the Ritz box:

I have made this pie. More than once. The first time I made it, there was a certain amount of disbelief. So, I made it a second time (in the same 24 hours) –  with witnesses.

Which also happened the second time I made it…..and I have made it since then, too. Because sometimes crackers are better then apples.

.It’s still a little hard to believe how much like apple pie it tastes. And looks. And smells.

Is it the cinnamon?

Or is it just how bland so many of our apples have gotten that they taste like crackers?

Part of the ruse is science.

Newsweek has an article on the appleless apple pie.

Part is that your eyes and nose believe, and then convince your brain.

from Saveour, Feb 2008

And it’s really, really good – if  ironic  – with cheddar cheese

This is pretty orange cheddar….but for cheese and cracker pie …

Just like Real Apple Pie.

 

 

Snow Daze

I have never been so done with SNOW

as I am right now. Enough already. Is it because I don’t come from Snow People? My ancestors – immediate and the not all that far back  – didn’t come from snowy places. Is that is the root of my discontent?

Ireland, for instance is the Emerald Isle, NOT the Snow-up-to-your-eyeballs Isle

Ireland – pretty green – average snowfall? Most years, next to none. When it does snow, the whole country pretty much shuts down.

Gaeta, Italy average snowfall? NONE. Maybe every hundred years or so…but pretty much never ‘neve‘. (Neve is snow – I had to look it up because, really, who from Gaeta talks like that?)

Gaeta average snowfall? Not worth mentioning

Shoveling snow has taken up a considerable amount of my winter time. Being worn out from shoveling takes even MORE time. Sigh.

And the month has had other kinds of busy:

•  February 7, 1867 was the day Laura Ingalls Wilder was born and Sarah Uthoff  had a birthday party on her radio show Trundlebed Tales. So one night I stayed up late to chat on talk radio about birthday and other cakes from the Little Houses all over the places that the Ingalls lived, with an extra special shout out to Barbara Walker who wrote the Little House  Cookbook that is such pure delight.
• The link to the radio show – it ran a little long… Trundlebed Tales Laura Ingalls Wilder On-Air Birthday Party
•   That reminded me of the snow candy that the Ingalls girls made in Little House in the Big Woods

“One morning she boiled molasses and sugar together until they made a thick syrup, and Pa brought in two pans of clean, white snow from outdoors. Laura and Mary each had a pan, and Pa and Ma showed them how to pour the dark syrup in little streams on to the snow. They made circles, and curlicues, and squiggledy things, and these hardened at once and were candy.” – Laura Ingalls Wilder, Little House in the Big Woods

• Then I got a call asking about oysters, colonists and aphrodisiacs – my work as a foodways culinarian is never dull….

The link to that interview is here: NPR The Salt For the Love of Oysters how a kiss from the seas evokes passions

Jan Steen The Oyster Eater

Shovel snow. Shovel snow. Shovel snow. I’d like a week without the word Blizzard in the weather forecast….

Then there’s prepping for February Vacation  at Plimoth Plantation Workshops

 

Tuesday, February 18
10 a.m. Take and Bake – earn your baker badge
Make an apple pie to take home and bake. When the English arrived in New England, there were no apple trees here. They created orchards here as soon as possible – they really missed apples! You will learn all sorts of modern-day kitchen skills while you follow a 17th-century English recipe to make your pie!

11:30 a.m.  Behind the Scenes Museum Tour

1 p.m. Cook over a Hearth Fire – earn your chef badge
Prepare a few familiar foods over an indoor hearth in the modern Visitor Center. In the 17th century, pancakes weren’t made from a box! Learn about interesting English recipes for pancakes and fritters, and how to prepare some deliciously different versions of foods we still eat today.

Still some openings for Tuesday – and there’s a full week of other workshops, too. Check out the Plimoth Plantation Calendar of Events

Each workshop is $5 ($4 for museum members). Bundles of programs can be purchased. Call 508) 503-2653 or groupsales@plimoth.org

Tomorrow is another Meatless Monday, hot soup edition.