Simple Little Pie

Thanksgiving is the best time of the year to roll out the pies. A few years back, I used to make about 6 pies, my neighbor's husband was in Iraq, and I felt bad that she had to spend Thanksgiving without her sweetheart, so I had my husband truck over an apple pie. My other neighbors used to give me Gilfeather turnips and I returned the favor with a pie, and still another couple who were on a fixed budget, I sent a pie. There is something so cathartic about giving.

Pies differ from area to area, I don't go to Oklahoma for a authentic Key Lime Pie, or to California for a Michigan Cherry Pie. My parents live in Maine and that is the farthest north you can get on the east coast. Maine is synonymous with blueberries. When I go to Maine, I want blueberry pie packed thick with tart Wild Maine blueberries, and for unexplained reasons the crunchy breakfast cereal Grape-Nuts has made it's way into pie from Presque Isle to Kennebunkport. Traveling south the Apple pie begins to make its debut. Vermont, New Hampshire and New York are prime growing areas for apples. Apple pie can be double crusted or Crumb, which is my favorite.

As we travel into Amish/ Pennsylvania Dutch country the Shoo-Fly pie is common. It is a mixture of molasses, brown sugar, cinnamon, flour and butter, some pies are considered wet-bottomed meaning there is a sweet filling and then a crumb topping, or dry-bottom the crumb topping is folded into the filling. The unique thing about this pie is that all ingredients can keep without refrigeration. The name came about by the bakers having to shoo the flies away, because the flies were attracted to the sugar.

As we cross the Mississippi River, heading south into Virginia, pie makers compete for the best Sweet potato pie, yams or sweet potatoes were cultivated in the area since the 1600's. The sweet potato is treated much in the same fashion as the pumpkin pie resulting in a silky spicy custard. Moving a little west we enter the Volunteer state where soul food like egg custard pies and buttermilk pies are popular, motoring into the Music City, Nashville has taken the custard pie a step further by adding sweet toasted coconut. The difference is they make a rich pastry cream on the stove, instead of baking the custard in the oven. Folding it with copious amounts of coconut and decadent whipped cream.

Georgia is known for their peaches, and what better way to celebrate Georgia than having a piece of peach pie, what is also surprising is that Georgia is one of the top manufacturers of pecans and pecan pie. The pride of Atlanta, Georgia is Lemon icebox pie, which is the northern cousin of Key lime Pie from Key West, Florida. It is made with lemon juice, eggs and condensed milk. We round out our Eastern seaboard pie quest with, of course Key Lime Pie. The key lime arrived in the Keys with the Spanish in the 1500's, and was described as a confused lemon. Having features of both the lemon and the lime. Surprisingly hurricanes wiped out all traces of the actual key lime. You now, must know someone who knows someone to get an authentic key lime.

In the Midwest, the area still has shadows of their resourcefulness. Settlers developed the land with fruit trees and Yankee ingredients were in short supply. In Michigan they have tart Michigan cherries, made into delicious to die for cherry pies. Pies used less flour than bread and cakes, and could be cooked in fireplaces. Hoosier pie or Indian sugar cream pie was a very simple dessert consisting only of cream sugar and flour. Persimmons and paw paws are made into pies in the Midwest. Persimmons are an unusual fruit in that they ripen towards the end of the fall, and have a pumpkin apricot flavor, is cooked in the same way as a pumpkin. Paw Paws were important to the native Indians and take experience to work with them. They are cross between banana, pineapple and mango and are used in custards. Honorable mention is the Bean pie created in Chicago, made with navy beans.

Pies that have no home or an area to call their own, are pies that are made all over the United States and each state can trace the history of such a pie. Pumpkin pie it is said to have been created near Plymouth plantation, however the pie has made its rounds all over the U.S. Lemon Meringue pie, is said to have originated in the South, however lemons are known to grow out west. Pecans lay claim to Georgia, but Texas might dispute that. Washington might be a little upset about the origin of the Cherry Pie, but I am sure Michigan will debate it. The grand daddy of the pie debate hands down has to be the Apple pie. Apples grow all over the United States, and every pie aficionado from California to Maine claim the best apple pie. It is up for debate! The important thing is that Pie was created. The pie that I am going to share is a blend of pies that I have created in my life. I love pie crust, however I love the cookie crumb crust better.

Chunky Monkey Pie

1 Keebler Ready Crust Chocolate Pie Crust
8 ozs melted semi-sweet chocolate
2 teaspoons Crisco
3 large ripe bananas
12 ozs softened cream cheese
4 ozs toasted chopped walnuts
1 1/2 cups sifted powdered sugar
2 tsps vanilla extract
1 tsp banana extract
1/2 cup marshmallow cream
1 tablespoon dark rum
2 banana cut in half lengthwise and sliced
1 tablespoon banana liqueur
1/4 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 oz of butter

In a sauce pan combine the butter, brown sugar and cinnamon and cook until the sugar dissolves, stir in the banana liqueur, add the banana and cook until the banana softens and browns slightly, carefully add the rum, and tip the saucepan until the rum ignites. When the flames die down, remove the bananas and cool completely. Take your ready made crust and melt only 6 ozs of the 8 ozs of semi-sweet chocolate and spread over the ready made shell and cool. Take your remaining banana, slice and layer over the chocolate painted shell. In a mixing bowl combine the cream cheese and marshmallow cream mix on high until fluffy. Add the sifted powdered sugar, vanilla and banana extract and mix well. Fold in the whipped heavy cream and completely cooled banana mixture. Spoon into the chocolate pie shell. Melt the remaining 2 ozs of semi-sweet chocolate with the 2 tsps of Crisco in the microwave at 10 second intervals until mixable. Garnish the pie with the melted chocolate and refrigerate. Cut and enjoy.

Research tells us fourteen out of any ten individuals likes chocolate. ~ Sandra Boynton

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Adventures in Cooking - Building and Using a Simple Box Solar Cooker

Image : http://www.flickr.com

I don't remember for sure exactly how this project got started but I was over at Brad and Gina Shaw's house here in Cotahuasi, Peru, where we work as missionaries. Brad was talking about trying to make solar cookers to help the people here. One of our church members was looking for a new burro to replace his mother's burro that had died. She needed the burro to haul firewood for cooking. Because Cotahuasi is a large village and a majority of people still use wood cooking fires, the nearby sources of firewood have been depleted. It takes her a full day every week to go and get a week's worth of firewood. Without a burro, she would have to go oftener and bring back less wood each time; only what she could carry on her back. Our area usually gets eight to nine months of sunshine a year so solar seems like a good option for a supplemental cooking source. Brad also mentioned the need for more fuel-efficient wood stoves, rather than just a fire on the ground with three stones to support the pot.

Brad had seen a large parabolic solar cooker in Tomepampa, a village about 20 minutes away. He suggested we go look at it so we hopped in the car and went right away. The cooker wasn't at the home where he had previously seen it, but they told us where it currently was and we were able to go and look at it. It was about five feet in diameter, made of shiny sheet metal attached to a framework of angle iron and a parabolic dish made of one-inch wide metal bars. We were told that it cooked quite rapidly and worked well, so we took measurements and lots of pictures to guide us in making one. However we knew it wouldn't be an immediate solution to the mother's problem because the shiny metal wasn't available here in Cotahuasi.

That evening I did some research on the Web to learn as much as possible about solar cookers and hopefully find some plans for building one. I did see a photo of one that looked very similar to the one we saw, but there were no plans for making it. One of the best sites I found was that of Solar Cookers International, based in Sacramento, CA. Their website is included below, they have many different types of cookers and the plans to make them available as downloadable PDF files. I was anxious to make one right away, rather than waiting until after my next trip to Arequipa where I could hopefully find the materials for the large one we had looked at.

They had smaller parabolic ones, some of them using an umbrella for the parabolic form, others required building your own out of cardboard or wood. The plans that caught my eye were for a box cooker, lined on the inside with aluminum foil and using a piece of glass on top to trap the heat inside of the box. That appeared to be the easiest to build with the limited materials I had available, especially as I could see a large box on a pile of stuff on the other side of the room from where I was sitting at the computer. I excitedly went through the list of materials to see what else was needed. I soon found a big problem; I didn't have any aluminum foil. They didn't recommend using glass mirrors, which I knew I could get in Cotahuasi, and aluminum foil wasn't available. The mission of Solar Cookers International is to promote solar cooking in third world and developing nations, where many people are still dependent on wood fires. The plans had a section on substitute materials that could be used in areas that don't have access to all of the normally used items. Instead of aluminum foil, it said that aluminized polyester film (Mylar®) could be used, although I didn't notice the warning until after I had built the cooker. It said not to use it on the inside of a box cooker because it could melt and give off fumes, but neither of those has been a problem.

I knew I had seen some material like that somewhere in my house so I started searching around. I soon found it! Every morning I have a half of a small bag of Angel Zuck Cereal for breakfast. It is available in larger bags but they are more expensive per gram than the smaller ones, as is often the case here in Peru. They are "plastic" bags but the inside is a shiny reflective surface, just like the Mylar balloons that are so popular. I dug through my garbage for as many as I could find there, and then emptied a few more bags into a plastic container to come up with what looked like enough to line the inside of the box. I buy the cereal by the case and now I had an empty cardboard box as well as the empty bags. About this time I came up with the exciting idea of packaging everything needed to make the solar cooker, along with instructions, inside the large cereal box. Then you could give the whole box to a needy family, they could eat the cereal and then make the solar cooker!

I soon realized that this wouldn't work as you need two boxes, and one has to be larger than the other, along with a piece of glass too big to fit into the cereal box. So I went and got the first box I had seen, it had contained panetone, which is a Peruvian fruitcake, popular at Christmas time. The boxes weren't quite as big as recommended, but the cereal box would fit perfectly inside the panetone box, leaving room to put the necessary insulation between the boxes. It was now late and I needed to get to bed, but I could hardly wait until morning to start building the cooker.

I had everything I needed now except the glass and the adhesive to attach the shiny plastic to the box. Still trying to make it as simple as possible, so that those with limited resources could duplicate it, I checked the substitution list and was reminded that you could make a paste from flour and water. I started on the construction and all was going well. I used crumbled up newspaper and cardboard scraps to insulate the airspace between the boxes, although it says you can use dry plant fibers, feathers or wool, items most people here would have, but I didn't. When it came time to attach the plastic foil, I mixed up some flour and water paste and attempted to glue the foil onto the inside of the box. But as the directions also stated, it can be hard to get it to stick. The flour paste didn't hold it at all so I had to go buy some glue at the stationery store. That worked better but still didn't hold the edges well, plus there were lots of bumps and wrinkles in the foil. The directions also said not to use tape on the inside of the box, but I had some high temperature shiny foil tape that I had bought in the U.S. so I used that. I use the tape to make ultra light backpacking stoves out of aluminum soda cans (search the web for "Pepsi can stoves" if you are interested). I did feel bad about using something that I didn't think was available here, but I just saw a similar tape at the new Maestro (Ace Hardware) Home Center in Arequipa.

The only thing left now was to make the lid for the cooker, which takes another piece of cardboard, that came from one of my storage boxes (originally my kitchen stove box). I have a friend who used to have a hardware store here; he came by while I was working on the cooker. He said he would be gone all day but he still had some glass and would cut me a piece when he got home in the evening. However he never showed up and didn't answer my phone messages. After a few days I gave up and went to the glass shop to get a piece there. The owner was out of town and the shop was closed. It was about two weeks later before he got back and I finally found the store open to get the glass. Finally I finished the cooker, but it was too late in the day to try it out. I was very eager to test it the next day but then we had a couple of unusual cloudy days during our normally sunny dry season.

At last the time arrived, a beautiful sunny day. I decided to keep it simple for the first try and just made plain white rice. I put too much water in it so it was quite sticky, but it worked! It was time for the real test - pot roast. The beef here is not hung and cured, so it is normally very tough. A crock-pot slow cooker works the best for making a pot roast, taking about eight hours on low. It was a perfect test for a solar slow cooker. On my first try, the weather turned cloudy after about 4 hours so I had to finish it in the oven. Then I was busy (and there were a few more cloudy days) so I couldn't try it again for a couple of weeks. It also isn't possible to buy roast beef here every day. It is usually only available a few times a week, early in the morning (6 or 7 am) on the day they butcher. I stopped at the meat market and the owner said they would have some early in the morning so I asked them to hold two kilos of boneless beef for me until I got there.

In the morning, after getting the beef and peeling carrots and potatoes, it was 10:30 before I set the cooker out in the sun. I turned the box every two hours or so to keep it aimed at the sun, and brought it in at 4:30 when the sun went behind the mountain (a disadvantage to living in a canyon - late sunrises and early sunsets). It smelled so good and it looked done, just like in the crock-pot. The taste test confirmed success, all was cooked and the beef was fairly tender. On my second try a few weeks later I set the box out in the sun to preheat while I was cutting up the veggies, and then browned the meat in a fry pan like the crock-pot recipe book says, to give it a head start. Again it was good, but not falling apart tender like eight hours in the crock-pot. Looks like I will have to get up earlier next time and have it ready by 9:00 when the sun hits my cooking area.

Besides making a larger, parabolic cooker, I plan on experimenting with more efficient wood burning stoves as well.

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