By Rick Houser
I see it as the real way to see how the season has delivered to us what it has grown. That is when the cooks take what came from the gardens or the orchards and put their best recipes to use to deliver each item at its very best.
At that point as each food reaches your taste buds you are sitting inside thinking to yourself, “Oh yeah that was why we raised that one!” To taste new strawberries or fresh corn on the cob or even a slice of a fresh ripe tomato, that was the payoff.
The great thing is after the winter passes (and none too fast in my opinion) we start the cycle of reaping what we sow and gathering what Mother Nature has grown. . Here in itself is one of the great blessings that our Lord gives us to enjoy. I, just like each of you, enjoy the harvests.
I know that in the fall of the year we would get a couple bushels of apples and from them came some very good apple pies. We raised pumpkins and cushaw squash in the cornfields so they had space to grow among the corn stocks to shelter it. Of course from the pumpkins came the symbol of autumn and fall. (Mom used the cushaw mostly to make her pumpkin pies, saying that the cushaw ground up into a smoother filing than the pumpkin.) All I knew was Mom’s pumpkin pies tasted delicious and if she asked for a cushaw then that was what she got.
The results were always coming to the table tasting great. My Mom seemed to have the largest variety of beans to raise. The last of the season was a dried shuck bean she called a “cranberry bean”. The bean was white and speckled red. She would cook them in a large pot on the stove with a piece of pork in them for flavor. The cranberry bean after its first cooking isn’t in my opinion very tasty and the bean was still on the crunchy side. However, it seemed the more times she put them on the stove and they would simmer, the better they would taste until about maybe the third time and they tasted very good and with a slice of corn bread to go with them I kind of look forward to them.
I think that about the start of October we dug our sweet potatoes. Mom would pick out the big ones and bake them in the oven and then we would cover them in butter and after having a steady supply of Irish potatoes the prior couple of months, the baked sweet potato was a pleasant change. It is safe to say that with each season some new items would appear on our kitchen table that hadn’t been there the prior season. I guess this helped the cooks to deliver meals that didn’t grow old to those at the table.
One year during the fall season when I was maybe 10 years old the change in the season was more of a surprise. I got up one morning and was sick so I stayed home with my Dad. Since it was tobacco-stripping season he was busy stripping some of the tobacco in a building behind the house. He would check in on me from time to time. I had made up a bed on the couch and was deeply involved in watching television. When noon got near and Dad was up to the house checking on me, my Aunt Margaret and my Grandma Houser called to see if they could fix us up with lunch. Now my Aunt Margaret Hetterick was maybe the best cook on the face of the earth at that time. (At least I was convinced she was and she liked to spoil me.) But add in my Grandma who had taught Aunt Margaret how to cook and was helping her that day and I almost floated off the couch with the anticipation of what this duo could prepare.
My Dad realizing this also decided to let that pot of cranberry beans stay in the refrigerator. He took Aunt Margaret up on her offer and told her he would come and pick it up from her. As this conversation carried on my Grandma wanted to talk to Dad and now was on the phone. Aunt Margaret asked Grandma if we wanted any pie which was about the silliest question I had ever heard. I had already decided to save room for some anticipated pie. It was a well-known fact that my Aunt Margaret was maybe the best pie maker of all time. Therefore, Dad told her that I definitely edwanted some pie. She asked which one as Aunt Margaret always made more than one, at least one fruit and one cream filled. I asked what kind and Grandma said apple and banana cream.
I asked if it would be alright if I could have one of each. Since I was spoiled, I was told that would be no problem. Dad ran up and picked up our meals and those pieces of pie, as he liked her pies too. When he arrived back home with this bountiful meal, I looked at the pie they sent and noticed that the apple pie looked different. I asked Dad to take a look at it, as it was pink. He looked and declared that she must have used that new variety of apple. So since my Aunt and my Grandma both had told me apple pie then it was apple pie and I stopped asking questions.
Dad and I ate the roast beef and mashed potatoes and green beans and I can tell you I was beginning to feel that I was on the road to recovery. I looked at the pies and decided to leave the banana cream pie until later in the day. This was Grandma’s specialty in my eyes. I dug into that pink apple pie. It tasted very sweet but the texture was different than any apple pie I had ever eaten. However, my Grandma had told me it was apple so therefore it was apple. In a little bit I finished that pink apple pie.
Shortly after lunch was over and Dad and I were just sitting and talking, I asked him just what was the name of that new variety of apples they had used. My Dad grinned very big and said, “Why son that was the rhubarb variety”, and then chuckled. It took me a minute to let what he had said to soak in. Then I realized I had eaten a piece of rhubarb pie and well folks, I don’t like rhubarb. Even though the meal was awesome, I still felt that my dear old Grandma had betrayed and tricked me. Later she swore up and down she was told it was apple and she hadn’t looked at it.
Needless to say, my Dad and my brother Ben and sister Peg gave me a pretty hard time about that piece of pie. That was the first and last piece of rhubarb pie I ever ate. First time shame on them and second time shame on me. It took me awhile to trust Grandma again but hey she was my Grandma and that day I learned to look closely and not just take someone’s word. There was a treat for the season that became more of a big surprise.
November 14, 2020 at 02:45AM
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There’s a surprise in Grandma’s pie! - The People's Defender
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