What's In A Pie?

Strawberry pie has a big 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, an old friend from years ago, when I make this strawberry pie. The recipe is in her handwriting. But more than that, strawberry pie takes us right back to living in 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 Burkina Faso to shop. There the markets were plentiful (compared to practically empty stalls in Ghana, at that particular time). I always liked visiting the French-speaking countries that bordered Ghana...you could buy potatoes in them for one thing. Potatoes had become a rare treat for us. We could also buy apples...another thing we never could buy in Ghana. I remember coming up to a market stall that particular day and finding fresh strawberries! A wonder to the eye! We had to have some. So we bargained for them, put them in the cooler, and never thought about the trip back home across the border, over bumpy roads, and what damage might come to them.

We got back to our friend's house. No electricity. 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 back from our day in Burkina, we had talked excitedly about making this strawberry pie. Our bachelor 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 before. 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 old flour (the flavor was distorted by weevils, but we had learned to just going with the flow). I went to open the strawberries and was dismayed to find that 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 looked so beautiful.

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

Reposted from three years ago this month. And yes, we're having this pie again today!


Please visit Chari's Happy to Design for other Sunday reposts. She's having a great give-away!