Pie Talk #32: Pecan Pie

Good morning! Yes those are my pies, pecan on the left; I cannot frankly recall what’s on the right - the shot is from several years ago - but based on the lattice I am going to say cherry. Gosh I love cherry pie, despite canned sour cherries becoming harder to find, with shortages in both Oregon and Michigan, two big sour-cherry producing states.

But we are here today for pecans, and if you are a paying subscriber - and today is a good day to become one as besides a bumper crop of recipes (four!), next week I will be telling you about my very favorite food and how to make it…

… please note that in the audio I say “whole pecans,” which of course means pecan halves, not the whole nut, and a little story about that:

“Nanny, I want to make a pecan pie,” Tim (my daughter’s dad) said, back in maybe 2017. “Do I just put the pecans in a crust and bake it?”

When I asked where he thought the magic goo came from, he said, “The oven?”

Tim was always an appreciative eater…

… and later in life, between his first and second cancers, decided he wanted to learn to cook, an endeavor I was so happy to encourage, buying him a cookbook and a little cookware and then, for Christmas, a set of good knives.

“Wow, these are better than what I have,” he said, meaning what he’d bought at K-Mart or some such. When I moved from Portland to New York, after Tim died in 2019, I gave away or sold nearly everything I owned, but kept the knives, the only ones I use.

I mention several media and events in the audio, including Jeff Tweedy’s new book, World Within a Song, which I am listening to on audio, and “Bearing Witness to the October 7th Massacre,” which I wrote about.

This is Terror

Also, my contentions that green bean casserole is just wrong (and an invitation for listeners to tell me otherwise) and would go on at length here but am hustling for a train to DC. Before we get to the recipes (after the break), here’s a photo of my beloved friend Josh (on left, my husband Din on right), whom I mention in the audio and for whom I will always make the bourbon-caramel sauce, as well as a reminder that the pie is baked when there’s just a little jiggle at the center, like when you smack a baby’s butt xx

The porch in Portland, many many good days