What's In a Pie?

whipcream anyone?
Originally uploaded by podso.

Strawberry pie has a rich history in our family. When it's strawberry season, the pie begs to be made, and usually is. At least once every spring. Going back about 30 years now.

Favorite recipes are like family heirlooms, in a way. I love it when I have a recipe from a friend or from my mother. Making the recipe brings them to mind. Sometimes I remember the meal we had at a friend's house when I asked for the recipe and then made it a favorite of my own.

I always think of Betty when I make strawberry pie. The recipe is in her handwriting. Thinking of Betty then makes me remember the morning I baby-sat her little girl, and later realized it was the exact time number one son was being born. But more than that, strawberry pie takes us right back to northern Ghana.

We had left our southern city and gone up to the "bush" to visit a good friend. While there we piled into the pickup truck and went across the border to shop. In Burkina Faso the markets were plentiful (compared to practically empty stalls in Ghana, at that particular time). I always enjoyed visiting Ghana's neighboring French countries...there were potatoes for one thing. They had become a rare treat for us. They also sold apples...another thing we never saw in Ghana in those days. I remember coming up to a market stall where there were fresh strawberries! A wonder to the eye! We had to have some. So we bought them, put them in the cooler, and never thought about the trip home over bumpy roads and what damage might come to them.

We got back to the mission station. No electricity and an outdoor shower and toilet. No other houses around for many kilometers. It was a "Little House on the Prairie" experience for us. On the way there from B.F. we talked excitedly about making this strawberry pie. Our host thought he had a package of strawberry jello.

Sure enough he did. It was in a sad state of affairs, rather old, brought from the states a few years ago. When I opened the package it was no longer red, and rather a big lump. But we crushed it into granules, found some sugar, margarine, and flour (though the flavor was distorted by weevils). I went to open the strawberries and was dismayed to find the bumps on the road had turned them to mush. Never mind, it would work. And it did. Maybe not to the standard of taste we might expect today, but it was delicious to us and a work of art.

When I saw strawberries at the grocery store this week it seemed the time to make one again. So at our Easter dinner today, as we celebrate the resurrection, we will enjoy the pie ... and the memories.