Huckleberry Pie

Going quickly.

My wife introduced me to huckleberries a long time ago. Well, the first summer after we met – which was, admittedly, a long time ago.

Actually, that’s not quite true – she didn’t introduce me to huckleberries, she introduced me to alpine huckleberries. The huckleberries I was used to are coastal – bright red, taste like not much of anything, are really tart and full of seeds. I eat them when I run in the forest. Grab a few as I go by… I couldn’t imagine making a pie from them.

I preferred blueberries, anyway.

But the pie. Let’s talk about pie. Betty is my mother-in-law and makes a mean huckleberry pie. And she does it the same way every time. (why mess with perfection, really?)

She has this ancient cookbook with the lemon juice pastry recipe (right next to the Lard Pastry recipe). She pulls an old ice cream bucket of huckleberries out of the freezer… Throws in a bit of this and a bit of that, some sugar, lemon, eye of newt…

Not sure if she used this recipe, but few cookbooks have been as loved as this one has.

And fires it in the oven, forgets to set the timer (true story) wanders back into the kitchen at exactly the right time, pulls the pie out.

Perfection. I think that this pie – the one from last night – is quite possibly the best huckleberry pie I have ever had. I have no idea what the difference was between it and the others I have had before, but this one was spectacular.

Made with love, and with a bit of practice.

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Goldfish

Used to describe an anecdote about my grandfather enjoying his after-lunch snack of ice cream and canned peaches.
No Koi were harmed in the making of this blog post.

I saw this image and it, strangely, reminded me of my grandfather. That shouldn’t come as a surprise in its own, but what it did was bring me back to 40 years (or so) ago with the family sitting in my grandparent’s backyard having a bit of dessert after lunch.

It was a small bowl of vanilla ice cream and some canned peaches.

My grandfather looked and said, “Oh, goldfish. I like goldfish.”

I was horrified. And then I figured out the joke. He was a simple man, my grandfather, but he did like a few things that I can remember: boiled eggs in an egg cup, almond chicken at the local Chinese restaurant, a decent cup of tea…

And, of course, goldfish.

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First Try. Not sure how to do this, but we’ll figure it out at some point.

So, this is all new to me. I wanted to just click a few things and start writing, but obvouisly that’s just not going to happen right away. Testing, testing…

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