Lest you think I'd forgotten, the recipe for Grimmle Boi (Crumb Pie) is now posted at Part 2.
Green Tomato Harvest Ideas: Chutney
2 years ago
Showing posts with label desserts. Show all posts
Showing posts with label desserts. Show all posts
Thursday, December 22, 2011
Monday, December 12, 2011
One Big Weekend - Four Small Posts...Part 2
The Amish Relatives
One joy of family hardship is the coming together of all the relatives. My husband was never Amish, his parents were never Amish, but beyond that, all bets are off.
After the funeral, the local tradition is for the church to provide a meal for the family and anyone else they wish to have as guests. It's a nice way to allow more time for visiting and a chance to maybe get cheerful again after the goodbye in the church. About 20-30 Amish relatives stayed for this (as well as the 50-75 non-Amish) and my husband made a beeline for them as soon as he did his fatherly duty by eating with this household. He thinks they are fun and sassy and "good people." I agree.
At his grandmother's funeral dinner several years ago, Michael trotted some of these ladies over to me saying I wanted to ask questions about why Amish women did the things they did. Indeed, I had been asking a lot of questions during our years of driving through the Amish countryside in the area where we live. These women seemed reluctant and a bit suspicious, not hankering to answer a bunch of ignorant questions from a worldly English girl. (I don't have ancestors from England... English is just what the Amish call the non-Amish.) But my husband had forced the issue. I furrowed my brow intelligently and leaned in to ask, "Why are your gardens in the front yard?"
They looked at one another and shouted their laughter at me. One howled, "Well I'm not about to put it in the back where the horses poop!"
[Not long ago, an Amish relative passed away who had been close enough to my immediate in-law family that we all went to the funeral. My formerly-Amish friends advised me not to take the kids - Amish funerals are long, uncomfortable and not in English. But I decided that cultural issues were not valid reasons for not paying respects which you would ordinarily offer, so I put my kids in their starched collars and drove them to the farm where the funeral was held.
The service was held in the family's pole barn/shop where an open space was cleared for rows of backless, wooden benches for the bereaved. We sat on those benches and, yes, the service was long and, yes, impossible to follow for a non-Pennsylvania Dutch speaker. But what a rich experience for me and my kids - who were PERFECTLY behaved as I recall - to have. Without being too detached and academic over the sad loss of a close family's beloved, I certainly watched the proceedings with interest as well as compassion, wanting to commit it all to memory.]
Anyway, our interaction at Aunt Bonnie's funeral dinner was lighthearted with those fun Amish relatives, to whom we refer by long, geneology-informed descriptive names (Elmer T.'s Larry Mary) and who know all our relatives, too, even the ones we didn't know we had. When Michael and I were first married and I was a substitute teacher in the school system out in the country, an Amish boy approached me in the hall to say he had read the paper and seen our wedding announcement and that we were now cousins.
This time Michael had called us over because our formerly Amish friend, Dean, had told me that his mother's best dish was was "grimmle boi," (Margo, do you know what I mean?) a phrase which has subsequently become a catch-all in our home because it is fun to say. It's now used as an all-purpose swear word, a replacement for forgotten song lyrics, whatever the situation requires. The Amish wanted to hear us say "grimmle boi" and laugh at our accents and discuss their own recipes for "bois" of all types.
Ooh, how I want to hang out in their kitchens, rummage through their pantries, remove their bonnets and inspect their hairpin configurations!
I'll post the recipe after you've have a chance to wonder and Margo a chance to answer!
Updated 12/22
Grimmle Boi (or Crumb Pie)
In a saucepan, combine:
1/2 c. brown sugar
1 T flour
1/2 c. light corn syrup
1 c. hot water
1 t. vanilla
I mixed this before turning on the heat so that the lumps were removed from the flour. I brought it to an easy boil, stirring constantly, until I was sure the sugar was dissolved.
Pour mixture into an unbaked pie shell. Cover with crumbs.
Crumbs:
1 c. flour
1/2 t. soda
1/2 t. cream of tartar
1/2 c. brown sugar
1/4 c. butter
Bake at 350 for 45-60 minutes.
Thursday, May 6, 2010
Just Call Me Simple Simone
I got some comments on Facebook and in real life that it was unforgivable that I was asked to bake six pies for the teacher appreciation dinner at school yesterday. I suppose I should mention that the president of the PTO and the hospitality officer both go to church with me and are good friends of mine. They seem to feel sort of reverant about my pies and if you can't ask big favors of your friends, well then, who?
Oh, and they also paid me.
I managed my time well for this project, if I may boast. I made my pie crusts well in advance and put them in pie-sized blobs in the freezer. Two days before the meal, I put the frozen blobs in the fridge to thaw. The morning before the meal, I rolled out and baked the two crusts that needed to be pre-baked before filling. That afternoon, I made a strawberry pie. I use a different pie crust for strawberry pie. It is easily made - mixed up and patted out in the pie pan. That evening, I filled those two pre-baked crusts, and rolled out and fluted two more crusts. I kind of decided at the last minute to do Erika's recipe for frozen coconut pie. I used a purchased graham cracker crust and it went together in less than 15 minutes. Great recipe. No baking required, just popped it in the freezer.
The morning of, I had four chilled (or frozen) pies ready to go and two pies yet to bake that were meant to be served warm. One was a Peach Cream Pie. I prefer to make it when peaches are in season, but since they aren't I had to resort to frozen peach slices. I consider it my best pie, so I didn't want to leave it off the menu. I'll share the recipe with you in late summer when I'm making the pie left and right.
The final pie was Rhubarb Crumble Pie, which I've never made before. My family likes rhubarb, but when I use it, I usually make a crisp. Since pies were the thing this week, I found this recipe for and it was a rousing success. The teachers really liked it.
Rhubarb Crumble Pie
1 unbaked 9-inch pie crust
1 1/2 lbs. rhubarb stalks
1/3 c. water
3 T flour
3/4 c. sugar
Topping:
1/4 c. butter
1/2 c. sugar
1/2 c. flour
1/3 c. old-fashioned rolled oats
1/2 t. cinnamon
1. Preheat oven to 350.
2. Trim and rinse rhubarb stalks. Slice them into 1/2 - 1 inch chunks. Especially large stalks might need to be cut in half lengthwise.
3. Combine the rhubarb and water in a medium saucepan. In a small bowl, combine 3 T flour and 3/4 c. sugar. Mix it up well and add it to the rhubarb mixture. Stir it up in the saucepan and bring the whole thing just to a boil.
4. Reduce heat and stir often while it cooks for five minutes. It will thicken significantly, but another goal is to get the rhubarb tender. Remove from heat. The recipe suggests that you could add some red food coloring at this point to make the filling more attractive, but I didn't do that.
5. Combine the topping ingredients in a small bowl until blended and crumbly. Sprinkle over the top of the pie. Bake for 35-45 minutes, until topping is browned and filling is bubbly.
6. Serve warm.
The run down of the pies was this: banana cream, peanut butter (When I have to make large amounts of pies, I always make these two, because I can just make a big batch of vanilla pudding and line the bottom of the pies with different ingredients: banana slices or peanut butter crumbs.), frozen coconut cream, strawberry, peach cream and rhubarb crumble.
The teachers were very appreciative of the whole meal and couldn't believe they were getting homemade pies. See, that's why I feel sort of evangelical about kitchen work. These are things that our mothers and grandmothers did without thinking they were special. And it seems insurmountable to many of my contemporaries. I really would hate for this kind baking to be lost and I hope my kids will feel like it's something they could do when they are grown.
(Anyway, I forgot to tell you that the rest of the meal was Haystacks. I think this might be a colloquial kind of thing that all of you may not know about. Hmmm... maybe it's another blog entry...)
Oh, and they also paid me.
I managed my time well for this project, if I may boast. I made my pie crusts well in advance and put them in pie-sized blobs in the freezer. Two days before the meal, I put the frozen blobs in the fridge to thaw. The morning before the meal, I rolled out and baked the two crusts that needed to be pre-baked before filling. That afternoon, I made a strawberry pie. I use a different pie crust for strawberry pie. It is easily made - mixed up and patted out in the pie pan. That evening, I filled those two pre-baked crusts, and rolled out and fluted two more crusts. I kind of decided at the last minute to do Erika's recipe for frozen coconut pie. I used a purchased graham cracker crust and it went together in less than 15 minutes. Great recipe. No baking required, just popped it in the freezer.
The morning of, I had four chilled (or frozen) pies ready to go and two pies yet to bake that were meant to be served warm. One was a Peach Cream Pie. I prefer to make it when peaches are in season, but since they aren't I had to resort to frozen peach slices. I consider it my best pie, so I didn't want to leave it off the menu. I'll share the recipe with you in late summer when I'm making the pie left and right.
The final pie was Rhubarb Crumble Pie, which I've never made before. My family likes rhubarb, but when I use it, I usually make a crisp. Since pies were the thing this week, I found this recipe for and it was a rousing success. The teachers really liked it.
Rhubarb Crumble Pie
1 unbaked 9-inch pie crust
1 1/2 lbs. rhubarb stalks
1/3 c. water
3 T flour
3/4 c. sugar
Topping:
1/4 c. butter
1/2 c. sugar
1/2 c. flour
1/3 c. old-fashioned rolled oats
1/2 t. cinnamon
1. Preheat oven to 350.
2. Trim and rinse rhubarb stalks. Slice them into 1/2 - 1 inch chunks. Especially large stalks might need to be cut in half lengthwise.
3. Combine the rhubarb and water in a medium saucepan. In a small bowl, combine 3 T flour and 3/4 c. sugar. Mix it up well and add it to the rhubarb mixture. Stir it up in the saucepan and bring the whole thing just to a boil.
4. Reduce heat and stir often while it cooks for five minutes. It will thicken significantly, but another goal is to get the rhubarb tender. Remove from heat. The recipe suggests that you could add some red food coloring at this point to make the filling more attractive, but I didn't do that.
5. Combine the topping ingredients in a small bowl until blended and crumbly. Sprinkle over the top of the pie. Bake for 35-45 minutes, until topping is browned and filling is bubbly.
6. Serve warm.
The run down of the pies was this: banana cream, peanut butter (When I have to make large amounts of pies, I always make these two, because I can just make a big batch of vanilla pudding and line the bottom of the pies with different ingredients: banana slices or peanut butter crumbs.), frozen coconut cream, strawberry, peach cream and rhubarb crumble.
The teachers were very appreciative of the whole meal and couldn't believe they were getting homemade pies. See, that's why I feel sort of evangelical about kitchen work. These are things that our mothers and grandmothers did without thinking they were special. And it seems insurmountable to many of my contemporaries. I really would hate for this kind baking to be lost and I hope my kids will feel like it's something they could do when they are grown.
(Anyway, I forgot to tell you that the rest of the meal was Haystacks. I think this might be a colloquial kind of thing that all of you may not know about. Hmmm... maybe it's another blog entry...)
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