Blueberry pie for dessert last night, a sweet treat at the end of another long winter day. We finally finished watching "100 Years of Solitude" on Netflix. It was beautifully filmed in Columbia, but heavy going with all the weirdness and violence.
Today is National Pie Day, created in 1986 by the American Pie Council to commemorate Crisco’s 75th anniversary of “serving foods to families everywhere.”
A big can of Crisco was ubiquitous in every kitchen and used for almost all frying and baking. It was considered healthy and much cheaper than butter, even margarine, which in our house was doled out for table use only. Crisco is on the trans fat blacklist now, and like lard, you would be hard-pressed to find it in a Seattle grocery store.
We had pie at least once a week growing up, from molasses shoo fly to egg custard. All cheap. Mom could whip up a pie for a few pennies if she scored free fruit. In retrospect, we got small potions of meat and vegetables, so the hungry family often filled up with bread and dessert.
John, on the other hand, reaches for the impulsive good stuff when he occasionally goes to the store to buy wine. I never know what he's going to find, and more than once I've shouted, "Have you gone crazy?" But I'm happy to cook up what he brings home.
Bonne Maman has a hold on the preserves industry, and now the brand has expanded into pie filling, which is essentially preserves, imported from France. So far we've had the apple and blueberry. One jar makes a small but intensely jammy pie and not overly sweet, like typical canned filling which is mostly corn syrup. Delicious and relatively quilt free.
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