Pie Crust and Pagan Babies

Growing up, we were on the edge of being poor.  My Dad was a self-employed, non-union heating and air conditioning contractor.  There were six kids in the family ("in 9 years!" as my Mother always reminds us) and never enough money.  I remember one time my mother took those little Pagan Baby banks that we were given in Catholic school in which to put coins and  then send to some kid in Africa who would have no idea what to do with a penny or a nickel and my Mother boldly cut the top off of each bank and went to the market with a pocket of coins to buy eggs and bread for dinner.  We, the four oldest who got those tiny banks with a coin slot in the top, were convinced that our small amounts of money (most of which we found on the street while walking home from school, a lot of pennies) would buy us a Little Brown Pagan Baby that we would name Harry (I don't remember why) and that Jesus would love us for that purchase.  Honestly, what were those nuns thinking?  Coins for Pagan Babies?  And that is exactly what they called the kids we were saving: Pagan Babies!  How did they know what those kids believed in?  How did they know they believed in NOTHING and were thus pagans?  And really, where did those coins go that our (richer) classmates dutifully brought in at the end of Lent?  Did the nuns themselves pry the tops off (like my Mother did) and buy a pack of smokes for themselves, a half pint of cheap rum to put in their tea, some forbidden luxury like..... a Hershey's Chocolate Bar?  I cannot believe they actually took the coins and sent them to Africa, and I hope they didn't, but then, I was a cynic at the age of 6, so maybe they did.  Who knows?

But I digress.  Since we were on the edge of being poor, or because of it, or because she had no practice and way too many kids, my Mother was a terrible cook.  She is the only person I know who could turn a fine chuck roast into the worst stringy, gray, tough pot roast with mealy potatoes, oily gravy and carrots that had been cooked until they were a mockery of a root vegetable.  To this day I am not a fan of hamburgers  because every Saturday night we had what Mom called "hamburgers" but what were actually (I believe) meat-covered hockey pucks.  Burnt, flat, as dry as a camels hump, tasteless.  She also had a really great concoction that I called, at the age of 6, "shredded cardboard and flour water" which was accompanied by plain boiled mealy (again!) potatoes. It was cheap ground beef, fried up and then flour and water were shaken together and poured over the meat to pretend to be some sort of gravy and then you were supposed to put it on the plain, gross potatoes and EAT IT!  It was gag inducing.  I couldn't eat it.  I don't remember what my five siblings did but I know my Dad just loaded it up with salt and pepper and spooned it down.  I sat at the table and prayed that they would believe I had a bad stomach ache and couldn't eat anything that night.  Being hungry for an evening was preferable to eating the cardboard.

But my Mom did make three things that were really good.  Excellent fried chicken (flour and salt, fried in Crisco), a really good apple crisp and great pies.  Pumpkin in the winter, apple in the spring and fall and, the best, real lemon meringue pie in the summer.  She would actually cook the lemon custard over a double boiler, and once the meringue was on, it went under the oven broiler to get the peaks toasted golden brown.  It was the best L.M.P. I have ever had.

And she made great pie crust.  No measuring, just flour, salt, Crisco and ice water.  It was flaky, tasty and it never was tough.  I learned by watching and doing (although child participation in the kitchen was never encouraged, unlike when I raised my kids.  Heck, if they wanted to cook, far be it from me to discourage them from getting dinner on the table!)  I grew up with Crisco pie crust and I learned to make a damn fine Crisco pie crust that I was proud of.  When people complained about making pie crust, how it never worked for them, how they found the most excellent frozen pie crust (yikes!) I remained silent.  Or not.  Mostly not.  I am a preacher for making your own pie crust and I was a convert for Crisco.

Until this week.  This week I made the best pie crust I have ever made, with butter.  Butter and flour, salt, a tiny bit of sugar (optional) and ice water.  In a bowl, with a pastry blender.  NOT in the Cuisinart.  It took five minutes, I had one bowl and the pastry blender and a fork to clean up.  It was flaky, golden, crispy, delicious.  It's now my go-to crust and I am as happy as a Pagan Baby with a pocket full of coins.  And tomorrow I will tell you how to make it.  This blog post has gone on long enough.

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