The Twinkle-in-Aunt-Betty's-Eyes Pies: Raspberry or Pumpkin

Aunt Betty's Pie crust: makes two, 9", or one lattice crust:

2 cups flour

1 tsp salt

1 tsp sugar

2/3 cup shortening + 2 Tbls Margerine

~ 1/4 cup water

Mix in the dry ingredients, shortening and margarine until you have pea size pieces (sometimes I use a pastry blender, sometimes 2 knives in a fast flurry, sometimes my hands). Add water gradually -- form two balls. Roll out a ball of pie dough with some extra flour on the board, and line a pie pan.

Raspberry pie

3 cups of berries

2 Tablespoons of cornstarch

Dash salt

1 cup if sugar

Put into pie shell, dot with butter. 

Make a lattice top:

Roll out the other ball of dough and slice thin long strips for the top of the pie crust, about 1/2 inch wide. Make a lattice crust with the strips. I’m not sure how Aunt Betty approaches this. I just try to be sensible. Lay the strips flat across the pie vertically. Then gently fold every other one back, and lay a horizontal strip. Weave the vertical ones so they cross above and below, and follow your nose to make the lattice, laying down one horizontal strip at a time.  It isn't hard if you think about it.  It is a thing of beauty.

Bake at 400, 40 minutes.

Serve warm with a scoop of vanilla ice cream

Pumpkin pie:

1 15 oz can of pumpkin

1 14 oz can of sweet condensed milk

2 eggs

1 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp ginger

1/2 tsp nutmeg

1/2 tsp salt

Pour filling into unbaked pie shell, bake at 425 15 minutes, 350 40 minutes.

Serve with whipped cream.

Music to close-your-eyes-and-imagine-the-Prairie by.  Two tunes for Aunt Betty’s pies: raspberry for Wild Cat, pumpkin for Old Bill Jones, as Old Bill could use something completely comforting with that family.  You could use these as tunes to cook by, or for the road trip down the long straight stretch of highway that takes you home. 

 

Johnny Cash - I Ride An Old Paint / The Streets Of Laredo

Ella Fitzgerald - Don't Fence Me In

I have it on good authority that Aunt Betty adores Johnny Cash, and Ms. Ella Fizgerald drives Aunt Betty's grandbaby to dancing.  Here he is, dancing in anticipation, as he is future recipient of many pies-to-come:

Montana is delicious. The taste of a wild wind bringing up a storm on the prairie – ozone and grass, mixed with raw essence of lightning strike and a rage of thunder.  The taste of a gentle pine scented cool-of-the-evening slip of quiet night in the high Rockies, forest holding you gently on the cusp of wake and dreams. The taste of a crystal of snow mixed with a spark of light on a bough. The perfect empty taste of the night sky and the Milky Way, best sipped slowly with howl-of-coyote. That is a rare savor in these crowded times, but one that can make you whole and refreshed and small and grand and filled with hope and gratitude for your humanity, for your own small bit of universe shaped to hold thought and memory.

And last but not least Montana holds the taste of my Aunt Betty’s pies.  Through days and years of my childhood, her pies were anticipated and oft contemplated through the long dry seasons of California, while we waited to go “home”. Then Summer would arrive with a road trip to Montana in her suitcase. It was the 1960 and 70s, and we drove. And drove. Montana via Alaska; Montana via New York; Montana: turn left at the Grand Canyon, head North. Usually first we would go to my mother’s family in Bozeman, and so the pies would be on hold. Temporarily. But we could almost taste them. Then past the Crazy Mountains, through counties Sweetgrass and Stillwater (Stillwater named for a River that was anything but still, a silvery little frolic of a river) on to the grand Yellowstone River with her golden Rim Rocks, and to the welcome of my father’s family. 

My Aunt Betty’s house was always at the heart of a rose garden. She breathes fragrance of rose; it is just what she does. Her sheets were always cool and fresh, the very best thing against your cheek. Her eyes and smile were beautiful and exotic. Her dogs and cats lived in a sort of dog and cat paradise, because my Aunt Betty knows how to take care of things, animals, people -- she has a sense about it. She was practical, she was magical, she was friendly, she loved her home, she loved her family. And she could really cook. Still can. Her raspberry pie wins my personal “Best in Universe Category”.