Pie & Whiskey
I love the title of a 2017 book edited by Kate Lebo and Samuel Ligon—Pie & Whiskey: Writers Under the Influence of Butter & Booze. In the forward to the anthology, Kate and Sam tell the story of its origin. “Pie & Whiskey started in 2012 as a reading in Spokane, Washington. The idea was to serve good pie, good whiskey, and good writers reading prose or poetry about pie and whiskey.”
Get Lit!, Spokane’s literary festival, hosted a Pie & Whiskey event at the Spokane Women’s Club that year. There were twelve writers who each read for five minutes. Whiskey was donated by Dry Fly Distilling, and the couple baked ten pies. Three hundred people showed up, and ten minutes after the doors opened they ran out of pie. Five minutes later, they ran out of whiskey.
My favorite essay in the anthology was written by my friend Nina Mukerjee Furstenau who I met decades ago in Columbia, MO when I was just beginning to write a weekly column for the Columbia Tribune and she was dreaming about breaking into the world of food writing. Nina followed her dream in spectacular fashion and ultimately earned international acclaim when her book Biting Through the Skin: An Indian Kitchen in America’s Heartland won the M.F.K. Fisher Book Award, the Grand Prize Award for Culture/Culinary Writing, from Les Dames d’Escoffier International.
Kate Lebo and Sam Ligon attended the Unbound Book Festival in Columbia in 2018 and hosted another Pie & Whiskey event. I was among the volunteers who made pies, and a local bourbon brewery provided shots of whiskey. Among the readings that evening was Nina’s “And Then There was Rum Cake” from the Pie & Whiskey anthology. It’s the story of the crust on an apple pie Nina made for her husband Terry’s Nebraska relatives not long after the two were married. I won’t spoil the secret of her pie crust or the rum cake she made for a later Furstenau family pot luck. Order the book and find out for yourself. It’s full of great reads!
Lately I’ve had pie on my mind. And as if reading my mind, Nina sent an email last week checking on what I was up to and how Kit is doing. She’s in Port Townsend, WA for the summer with Terry and read my recent blog about our granddaughter Catalina who just graduated from Cambridge University’s Queens College. In the blog, I mentioned Cata’s first visit to Boomerang Creek and her initiation into pie making. https://www.cathysalter.com/blog/catalina-salter-martin
I told Nina that I was going to make a peach and blueberry pie for our neighbors because local peaches are really delicious right now. I was perusing recipes I’ve accumulated over the past decades, and cookbooks with recipes for peach pies, homemade crusts, and pies with crumble toppings. In the end, what I made was a peach and blueberry pie with crumbles on top.
Peach and Blueberry Pie
The Filling:
5 cups of sliced peaches and a cup of blueberries.
1 cup of brown sugar
3 tablespoons of flour
2 tablespoons of milk
½ teaspoon of nutmeg
The Crumble Mix:
½ cup each of brown sugar and flour
3 tablespoons soft unsalted butter
Directions:
Toss the filling ingredients together in a bowl and pour into a chilled, one-crust pie shell.
Bake at 400 degrees for 30 minutes while you make the crumble mix.
Work the mix with your fingers until the three ingredients are well blended.
Remove the pie and top with the crumble mix.
Return it to the oven and bake another 15-20 minutes until the top is golden brown.
The day I made the pie, the forecast was for temperatures to reach 100 degrees by late afternoon. That morning, the pie was assembled, baked, and cooling by 9:00 a.m. That evening, slices of pie were delivered to four neighbors on our road along with French vanilla ice cream, because ice cream makes a fruit pie super delicious.
On July 17, I participated in a “Make Good Trouble” gathering in honor of civil rights leader Rep. John Lewis that took place in downtown Nevada City. My neighbors and I were among hundreds of supporters who assembled to peacefully protest the egregious attacks on our country’s laws, civil liberties and democracy today. That morning, a chocolate pecan pie with bourbon went into the oven and it was a hit with my neighbors when we returned from the protest. More gatherings are being organized around Nevada County, and we plan to show up at them all. If ever there was a time for a Pie & Whiskey rebellion, it is now.
I’ve just purchased Kate Lebo’s revised and expanded cookbook entitled Pie School: Lessons in Fruit, Flour & Butter. I can’t wait to make the sweet and savory pies she has dreamed up, including her Whiskey Maple Pecan Pie recipe. Stay tuned for what’s cooking in my kitchen in the weeks ahead. You can be sure it will include pie!