3 cups whole milk
5 eggs (separate yolks and whites, saving whites for meringue)
3 tbsp butter
1 tbsp vanilla
4 sliced bananas
Whisk dry ingredients together in heavy saucepan, then gradually whisk in milk. Stirring constantly, cook until thick and bubbling. Once it bubbles, continue cooking for another 2 minutes. Remove from heat. In a separate bowl, add about a cup of the hot filling to the beaten egg yolks, then add this egg mixture to the pan of pudding. Constantly stirring, bring to a gentle boil and cook for another 2 minutes. Remove from heat and stir in butter and vanilla. Fill bottom of blind-baked pie shell with sliced bananas. Pour hot pudding on top, then make meringue.
MERINGUE:
5 egg whites
1 tsp vanilla
½ tsp cream of tartar
½ cup sugar
In a clean mixing bowl, beat egg whites, vanilla and cream of tartar at high speed for several minutes. Gradually add sugar, just a little at a time. Continue beating on high speed until stiff peaks form. Spread meringue over warm pudding until it covers the entire pie, sealing the crust edge. With the back of a large spoon, dab at the meringue, lifting the spoon high as you pull back to create curlicue effect. Bake at 425 for 7 to 8 minutes, until meringue looks toasted. Watch carefully so as not to burn!
Lana Ross’s Better-Than-Sex French Silk Pie
(Second-place winner at Iowa State Fair, 2010)
CRUST (Lana’s recipe is for a blind-baked single crust):
1 cup flour
½ tsp salt
1/3 cup lard
scant 1/3 cup water
Prepare crust by cutting the lard into the flour and salt. Gradually add water until all is moist. Roll out and place in a 9 or 10-inch pie pan. Blind bake for 15 to 20 minutes, then let cool.
FILLING:
1 cup butter
1½ cups extra fine sugar
4 ounces unsweetened chocolate, melted
4 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
TOPPING:
2 cups whipping cream
4 tbsp powdered sugar
1 tbsp vanilla
Beat butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Blend in chocolate and vanilla. Add eggs, one at a time, beating at medium speed for 5 minutes after each addition. Pour into cooled pie shell. Chill at least 4 hours. Whip the cream, sugar and vanilla until thick. Pipe onto cooled pie. Garnish with chocolate shavings.
Shirley Stacey’s Peach Pie
(Served as my housewarming treat by the Mayor of Eldon, Iowa)
CRUST:
1 double-crust (see Beth’s Pie Crust recipe on page 301)
FILLING:
6 to 8 ripe peaches (peeled and sliced into pie crust)
1 to 1 ½ cups sugar
2 tbsp flour
¼ cup tapioca (small pearl)
small amount of cinnamon
1 beaten egg
Mix sugar, flour, tapioca and cinnamon and sprinkle over peaches. Dot with butter. Add second (top) crust and brush with egg. Sprinkle top crust with sugar and cinnamon, if you like. Bake at 425 until crust is set (about 20 minutes). Reduce heat to 350 and bake until peaches are done (about 1 hour total baking time). Insert fork in the middle. If peaches don’t cling to fork, they’re done.
Arlene Kildow’s Coconut Cream Pie
(Eldon, Iowa’s, finest and first-place winner of Wapello County Fair, 2011)
CRUST:
1 blind-baked single-crust pie shell (half of Beth’s Pie Crust recipe on page 301)
FILLING:
½ cup sugar
3 tbsp cornstarch
3 cups half-and-half cream
4 egg yolks
1 cup coconut
1 tsp vanilla
1 tsp coconut flavoring
1 tbsp butter
In a sauce pan, combine sugar and cornstarch. Stir in half-and-half and egg yolks. Cook over stove until thick, then add coconut. Remove from heat and stir in vanilla, coconut flavoring and butter. Pour pudding into prebaked pie shell and prepare meringue.
MERINGUE:
4 egg whites
½ cup sugar
1 tbsp cornstarch
Beat egg whites until peaks form, then add sugar and cornstarch. Spoon meringue on top of warm pudding. Sprinkle coconut on top, then bake at 350 until egg whites turn brown (10 to 15 minutes).
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
It takes a lot of people to tell a story. It takes a tremendous amount of support to recover from grief. These are the people, who, during the past two years, helped me through the most unimaginable darkness. Some of them are featured in the book, some read my early drafts, some knew Marcus, some were just really great inspiration or influence, some made me laugh, some even made me pie. Regardless of their direct involvement in Making Piece, these are the people who have touched my life and who deserve my public gratitude. This book would not exist without them.
Deidre Knight (my literary agent, a goddess and Steel Magnolia), Ann Leslie Tuttle (my compassionate and enthusiastic editor) and the staff at Harlequin Nonfiction.
Team Marcus (and the first three numbers in my speed dial): Nan Schmid, Melissa Forman and Alison Kauffman.
My grief counselor and godsend: Susan Hodnot (How did I get so lucky?!).
My family: my parents, Tom and Marie Howard; my sister, Anne (thanks not only for reading my manuscript, but for the supersoft pajamas, the “Daisy” perfume and Bach Flower Essence “grief drops”—that care package really cheered me up); my brothers, Tim, Michael, Patrick; Patrick’s family; and my aunt Sue and uncle Mike Finn.
In Terlingua: John Alexander, Cynthia Hood, Mimi Webb Miller, Betty Moore and Ralph Moore (three weeks of dog sitting while I was at Marcus’s funerals earns you a lifetime supply of Guinness and guitar strings, Ralph).
In Portland: Frank Bird, Arlene Burns, Bennett Burns and Andrew Rowe, Janine Canella, Colleen Coleman, Saumya Comer, Liz Heaney, Don Hofer, Stacy James, Thomas Lehman, Donn Lindstrom, Sylvia Linington, Megan McMorris, Marty Rudolph and Heather Wade. Ein besonderes Dankeschön to the Portland/Freightliner gang, in particular: Dayna and Gerald Freitag; Julia Hofmann, Joerg, Katrin and Nolan Liebermann; and Lyndsay, Andreas and Heidi Presthofer and Rachel Wecker.
In and around Eldon, Iowa: Priscilla Coffman; Meg and Jeff Courter and family; Linda Durflinger; Patti Durflinger (who delivered dinners to my back door to keep me writing); Don and Shirley Eakins; Cari Garrett; Brenda Kremer; LeAnn Lemberger; Allen and Rosie Morrison; Molly Moser (who holds the distinction of being the very first reader of my book and my salvation for getting through my first Iowa winter in thirty years and whose painting inspired my book title); Shirley and Gene Stacey; Carrie, Chloe and Tony Teninty; Bob and Iola Thomas; Jerome Thompson; and the ladies at Canteen Lunch in the Alley (Yvonne Warrick, Linda Grace and the rest of the crew).
TV Shoot in California: Janice Molinari (my coproducer—thank you for your laughter, your singing, your vision for the pie show and for giving me a purpose when I desperately needed one). Sunny Sherman and Martha Gamble of The Apple Pan, Natalie Galatzer of Bike Basket Pies, Bill Miller of Malibu Kitchen, Karen Heisler and Krystin Rubin of Mission Pie, Dorothy Pryor of Mommie Helen’s, the Law family of Oak Glen, Carlene Baime, The Doscher Family, Kathy Eldon and Amy Eldon Turteltaub, Prudence Fenton and Allee Willis, Susanne Flother and Anthony Scott, Elissa Harris, Jeff Mark, Thelma Orellena, Elana Pianko, Shanti Sosienski and Jane Windsor.
Pie People: Kathleen Beebout, Gina Hyams, Arlene Kildow, John Lehndorff, Tricia Martin (also my ace web designer), Mary Pint (the original “Pie Lady”), Lana Ross, Mary Spellman (my pie mentor, to whom I’m forever grateful), Mary Deatrick and Linda Hoskins of the American Pie Council, and Arlette Hollister, Patt Kerr and the food crew of the Iowa State Fair.
Friends, colleagues, readers, advisors and general hand-holders: Christine Buckley, John and Laura Climaco, Susan Comolli, Barbara DeMarco-Barrett, Julia Gajcak, Maggie Galloway, Angela Hynes, Steve Johnson, Ji
m Keppler, Ann Krcik, Dana Long, Patti Nilsen, Alayne Reesberg, Maria Ricapito, Jean Sagendorph, Andrew Salomon, Sue Sesko and Jonathan Wight.
My blog followers (who encouraged me to keep writing about my grief publicly): Chris Bauer, Sigrid Holland, Jeff “Prop” O’Brien, Kelly Sedlinger and Paul Szendrey.
Journalists (the people who discovered my story and wanted to share it): Jennifer Anderson (Portland Tribune), Mike Borland (WHO-TV), Steve Boss and James Moore (KRUU-FM), John Gaps III, Kyle Munson and Tom Perry (Des Moines Register), Lianne Hansen and Jacki Lyden (NPR), Kelly Kegans (Better Homes and Gardens), Katherine Lagomarsino (Spirit magazine), Ron Lutz (Our Iowa), Trevor Meers (Midwest Living), Meghan Rabbitt (Natural Health) and Peter Tubbs (Better TV).
Pie makers and pie lovers everywhere: you all help make the world a better place.
And last, but certainly not least: Banana Cream Pie.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Beth M. Howard is a journalist, blogger and pie baker. Her articles have appeared in Elle, Shape, Travel + Leisure and Natural Health, among many other publications. In 2001, at the height of the dot com boom, she quit a lucrative web producing job in San Francisco to bake “pies for the stars” at a gourmet deli in Malibu, California. Her popular blog, The World Needs More Pie, which she launched in 2007, regularly receives national press that has included Better Homes and Gardens, the New York Times and NPR’s Weekend Edition. Beth lives in Eldon, Iowa, in the famous American Gothic House.
ISBN: 978-1-4592-2574-9
MAKING PIECE
Copyright © 2012 by Beth M. Howard
All rights reserved. The reproduction, transmission or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher. For permission please contact Harlequin Enterprises Limited, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario M3B 3K9, Canada.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Howard, Beth M.
Making piece: a memoir of love, loss and pie / Beth M. Howard.
p. cm.
Howard, Beth M. 2. Journalists--United States--Biography.
3. Bakers--United States--Biography. 4. Widows--United States--Biography. 5. Consolation. 6. Bereavement. I. Title.
PN4874.H685A3 2012
664’.752092--dc23
[B]
2011029012
® and TM are trademarks owned and used by the trademark owner and/or its licensee. Trademarks indicated with ® are registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office, the Canadian Trade Marks Office and/or other countries.
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* It’s also okay to use a combination of apples, try Braeburn and Royal Gala. Do not use Fuji or Red Delicious—they lack tartness. Also note, the approximate rule of thumb is three pounds of fruit per pie.
Making Piece Page 28
