Are you a member of the
Clean Sandwich Plate Club?
Card carrying? If so, read on.
If no – honesty please – close this tab and get back to your online bill paying.
I was here, at Hoosier Mama, with my mama, in Chicago, after a long walk. Insistence and persistence are one of my most annoying specialties, particularly in pursuit of food. Relentless foraging. My mama, bless her pie-loving, 84-year-old-tomorrow heart, is always always always game. No joke.
She said it was the best banana cream pie she had ever eaten. This from the woman who, as a child, carried pie making ingredients from the basement every morning at 5 am, to her mother who baked them, over the years, during The Great Depression, into 14 thousand pies. Sold for 25 cents each.
The same woman who won a 4-H blue ribbon for her lemon meringue. She just makes pie. Nothing precious about it.
Her dad could sit down and eat pie on demand. “There’s always room for pie,” said he, and put his mouth where his money was. My grandpa was a lovable skinny dude, with a righteous appetite.
In turn my mother taught me to bake pie, and I became adept at it in high school, carrying warm apple pies to the occasional sweet boy who caught my eye. I have no fear of pieing. None. Thank you, Mom. Happy Birthday!
Deluxe!
The Lunch Encounter 