Assorted Pies

Today is Sunday, November 30, 2008. It is very late. I usually write in the morning but not today. It is Vicki's birthday. And the day has been sunny and warm.
A while ago I ate the last piece of mincemeat pie from our Thanksgiving day feast. It looked so beautiful. At Thanksgiving time we have two kinds of pie - pumpkin and mincemeat. As Vicki said "I like pumpkin pie at Thanksgiving and then I am through with it for the rest of the year." That is my sentiment, too. And the same with mincemeat pie.
Only a few people in our family like mincemeat pie. My mother-in-law taught me how to make mock mincemeat using green tomatoes. When we had a big garden with lots of tomatoes, I would use the green ones left on the vine just before the first frost of the winter. The green tomatoes are chopped up, mixed with apples and raisins and lots of yummy spices. I would put the cooked mixture in bottles and cold pack them to use at Thanksgiving time.
Here in California I don't have so many green tomatoes and don't make it. At Thanksgiving time I haunt the stores to buy Borden's None Such Mincemeat which you can only find around Thanksgiving time. Fewer and fewer stores carry it. Mincemeat pie is definitely going out of fashion. Borden's makes two kinds - one with brandy and one without brandy. Well, we are a family of non-alcohol users and the brandy kind is not for me. Oh, I know. "It all cooks out." Well, I am sorry I don't use rum flavoring, or ccoking wine, or even wine vinegar. You can laugh if you want but I don't intend to change my plan. Anyway last year at Thanksgiving time I could find only Borden's with brandy. I scared up enough green tomatoes from friends to make a batch of mincemeat - enough for two pies. This year I was elated when I went to Raley's and found two brands of mincemeat - no brandy. I really wanted Borden's because I know just how it tastes. But I picked the brand in a bottle over the brand in a can. Neither one had brandy - YEAH!
I mentioned to the clerk at the check out counter how happy I was to find mincemeat without brandy. "I really wanted Borden's None Such but you don't have it. I want the kind without the brandy." He said, "Well, when they send it to us they send one small case of non-brandy and several cases with brandy. If you get here first you can get the non-brandy kind."
The pie making went well. The crust for both the pumpkin pie and the mincemeat ones were picture perfect. And they smelled so good baking. Wouldn't you know that this was the year our almost 11 year old granddaughter followed her mother's advice to try something new for Thanksgiving dinner and she choose to try mincemeat pie. Those of us who like it were excited. Maybe we would have another devotee.
And then we tasted the beautiful picture perfect mincemeat pie. Oh, my gosh! I wanted to cry. Emma dutifully carried out her trial. Of course, she didn't like it! Neither did any of us. Then I read the label - all the usual stuff but added to it were hard currants and citrus peel. Yuk! Who ruined the recipe for mincemeat with hard currants and citrus peel? We don't have another mincemeat pie lover. The rest of us couldn't pass up the beautiful pie crust so we cut a piece - scraped out the filling, took out the currants and the citrus peel, and kept a little of the raisins and spice mixture and devoured the crust with a big glass of milk.
Well, I certainly won't buy that kind again. Janet said next year I should take the first batch of green tomatoes in the summer and can enough for our two Thanksgiving pies. I think that is what I will do.
I'll talk about the yummy pumpkin pies another day and also about my reasons for having only two kinds of pie on Thanksgiving Day.
There are many wonderful kinds of pie we all like and we have pie on various occasions. But the pie for Thanksgiving remains - pumpkin and mincemeat.
That's all for tonight. I am going off to bed.