Zaftig mit Zest

When I was a little girl, I used to sit at the kitchen table while my mother made dinner and read her cookbooks. My favourites were the entire Time Life Foods of the World series and Edna Staebler’s Food That Really Schmecks. 

I was a terribly picky eater until my twenties (pickles, olives, tomatoes, brie, these are but a few of the things I didn’t even try until university!) but I loved to read about food from an early age, even foods I wouldn’t have touched with a ten foot spatula. Edna Staebler’s book focused on Mennonite and country cooking from the Waterloo, Ontario area, many of the stories and recipes about/provided by her friend Bevvy Martin, matriarch of an Old Order Mennonite family, and I was absolutely entranced. I loved the book’s description of the Martin family and the groaning boards of food they consumed to fuel their farming life. And while there’s no way I would have eaten headcheese or beef tongue with raisin sauce or most of the savoury recipes in the book, Food That Really Schmecks’ extensive cake, cookie and pie section was right up my alley as a kid.

Especially the pie section and MOST ESPECIALLY the recipe for Shoofly Pie.

Oh, sweet merciful mother of molasses, how I love Shoofly Pie. I love all pie, to be honest, especially peach pie, but Shoofly Pie, with it’s blatant disregard for seasonality (it works all year round), it’s pantry-staple ingredient list, it’s perfect pairing with a hot cup of black coffee, and the fact that it gets better and more candy-like the longer it sits on your countertop — well, what more do you want in a pie?

Shoo-Fly Pie

from Food That Really Schmecks by Edna Staebler

Pastry for one-crust, 9 inch pie

Bottom part:

• 1/2 cup molasses
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 cup boiling water
• pinch salt

Top part:

• 1 1/2 cups flour
• 1 cup brown sugar
• 3/4 cup butter or lard
• 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

[In a bowl] Dissolve the soda in the molasses and stir until it foams; add the boiling water. [In another bowl] Mix the flour, cinnamon, sugar and butter into crumbs. Pour one third of the [molasses, soda and water] liquid into the unbaked pie crust; sprinkle one third of the crumbs over the liquid and continue alternating layers, putting the crumbs on top. Bake in a 375-degree oven for about a half an hour until the crumbs and crust are golden [and the pie is firm-ish to the touch]

It occurred to me this morning that all the other saints probably really hate St. Patrick.

“That jackass,” scorns St. Cuthbert, “A whole day! And for what, I ask you?!”

“I know, right?” says St. Lawrence, “What did he do that was so special? I got GRIDDLED fer chrissakes [literally] and no one celebrates that with booze.”

“Quit your moaning, at least you don’t spend all your time looking for everyone’s lost crap,” admonishes St. Anthony of Padua.

“And at least you aren’t portrayed as The Human Pincushion for generations of snotty art history students,” gripes St. Sebastian.

“Or a demented ecstatic,” sighs St. Theresa.

“Whatevs,” concludes St. Cuthbert, “we’re screwed no matter what. Who wants to egg Patrick’s house while he’s out drinking?”

The key to a good Christmas drunk is my mother’s homemade egg nog.