Sweet potato pie

White girls can’t make no sweet potato pie… One year, I made this sweet potato pie for my office Christmas party. On the light-rail train on the way home that evening, I had the remains of the pie under my seat. One stop before mine, I stood up and moved over to the door, and …

Pumpkin pie

Don’t use canned filling! Honestly, it only takes a few minutes longer (plus cooking time) to make pumpkin pie from scratch, and it will taste so much better and be cheaper too. But don’t use carving pumpkins The pumpkins they sell at Halloween for jack o’lanterns are bred to make good jack o’lanterns and not …

Mock cherry pie

Really a cranberry pie People like berry pies, but berries are not in season at Thanksgiving when you have time to make pies and a lot of people coming over. Fortunately, this is the time of year when cranberries are available, and cranberries make a delicious berry pie. Serve this at Thanksgiving alongside the pumpkin pie, …

Cherry pie

Finally some fresh fruit! Cherries are the first local fresh fruit to come ripe in the spring – if you’re really eating local, this will be the first fresh fruit that’s not apples or pears you’ve seen since the huckleberries last August! By May, you’ll be really glad to see cherries! This is a sweet …

Blueberry pie

Unlimited dessert The first term I was at college, once I realized that at college you could just take unlimited desserts and nothing else at dinner, I pretty much lived on blueberry pie and lemon meringue pie. The cafeteria blueberry pie was nasty, gluey stuff though, and once I gained fifteen pounds eating it, I …

Haroset (and haroset pie!)

What is haroset? Haroset is a mixture of chopped apples and nuts that plays a part in the traditional Jewish seder meal at Passover. By March, it’s hard to get the kids excited about more apples, but they love making and eating haroset. Ashkenazi or Sephardic? Ashkenazi Jews from Eastern Europe, like my Lithuanian ancestors, …