Baking Pies with Mimi....

Thanksgiving Eve 2010 

Mimi with Lily and Maggie

Pie baking is a big deal in our family.  It goes all the way back to the original Mimi, Leonie Lemery LeGault, my mother's maternal grandmother.  She was a French-Canadian immigrant who raised 12 children as a young widow during the Great Depression years in Glens Falls, New York. I remember her sitting on a rocking chair by the window at Aunt Jackie and Uncle Bob's house, knitting a sweater and speaking in a heavy French accent.  She was known for her pies, and as I've mentioned in a previous post, my husband will not allow me to publish her pie dough recipe, believing that it is so good it could make us a fortune.  I'm not so sure about that...

But today, on this Eve of Thanksgiving, my mom sat at my counter peeling apples while my two daughters, Lily and Maggie, played with the scraps of pie dough that I made from Mimi the First's recipe.  They had a grand time, and made a fabulous mess which spilled out over the counter and onto the floor.  There was flour everywhere, and before long, their were little girl's footprints in that flour. They tracked it all over the house and up the stairs, and it took me, Mom and Dad with mops and brooms and vacuums to clean it all up.

It was worth the mess, however, to be in my kitchen baking my great-grandmothers pies with my mother and my daughters for Thanksgiving! 

My mom's favorite pie is her Mimi's pineapple pie.  Mimi used to call it "poor man's pie" because she could make it with a 10 cent can of crushed pineapple, which was cheaper even than apples back in the day.  People are always surprised when I speak of our pineapple pie, but it's a staple in our family, and it's especially good the day after Thanksgiving or Christmas, cold out of the frig with a hot cup of coffee.  I can't give you the dough recipe, Rob's orders, but I can share the pineapple pie with you to make with your own dough.  The price of a can of pineapple is not quite 10 cents now a days, but it is still cheaper than apples and it's just as good...

Mimi LeGault's Pineapple Pie
1 can of crushed pinapple
1 heaping tablespoon of corn starch
1/3 cup of sugar
2 pieces of homemade or store bought pie dough
1 egg

Mix the pineapple (do not drain) with the cornstarch and sugar.  Press dough into a pie dish. Pour in the pineapple mix.  Top with the second pie dough.  Press dough around the edges.  Brush top with beaten egg. Sprinkle with more sugar. Make slits in the top with a knife.  Bake at 350 degrees until browned and bubbly, 30-45 minutes.


For the record, we made 1 pineapple, 1 blueberry (Dad's favorite!), 1 pumpkin, and 2 apple...Dessert for the 24 Pifer-Metzger-Poulos-Rhatigans that will share Thanksgiving dinner at our house tomorrow.

Happy Thanksgiving!

So much to be thankful for...

Hey everyone! So sorry for the silence of late. I just wanted to give you a little update and share with you our holiday plans.  As you know, Mom's levels of heavy metals, such as mercury, lead, and cadmium, were found to be outrageously high back in April following her diagnosis and subsequent testing done by a holistic doctor in North Carolina.  She has been since undergoing treatments called "chelation" where a substance is given intravenously which binds to those metals and helps flush them from the body. Along with chelation, she has been receiving IV nutrition and glutathione, taking a ridiculous number of supplements, and using an infer-red sauna, all in the hopes of ridding her body of these toxins and slowing the degenerative nature of this disease.  It has been costly and exhausting, but we learned on Friday that it has not been in vain, I'm happy to report!  Dr. Cohn repeated the metals testing that he first did in April, and the results showed a dramatic decrease in her levels.  Her lead was at 47, it is now at 20. Mercury was 21, it is now at 3.2.  Aluminum was at 44, it is now at 18.  You get the idea. Most of her metals showed a 50% or more decrease, which was more than Dr. Cohn had expected or even hoped for.  It was really great news and a big boost to Mom and Dad.  The only metal that did not show a substantial decrease was the cadmium, and sadly, that's the most toxic. Dr. Karam weighed in on this, and explained that cadmium is just trickier to get out, and he is looking into other treatments for this.  This was really good news, and just in time for Thanksgiving!

Speaking of the holidays...Mom and Dad are currently in Raleigh visiting the Metzger family there before heading south.  They are coming here for Thanksgiving, along with a dozen or so other Metzger/Poulos's and I'm so excited to have them all here!  Mom will be staying south for the winter, sharing time between my house in Tallahassee and Jamie's in Miami,  soaking in the Florida sunshine and avoiding the Boone snow and ice which would be difficult and dangerous for her to walk on.  Dad will be back and forth between Florida and Boone for the winter, keeping up with business and the house in Boone and spending as much time down here as he can.  Casey and the girls are coming to Miami for Christmas, and Jamie and Brian are expecting a baby boy in early March, so this will be a really special winter for our family.

Well, that's it from Tallahassee!  We're busy getting ready for Mom and Dad to get her tomorrow, and the rest of the crowd on Wednesday.  We're cooking 2 turkeys, 5 pies, and a load of other goodies.  I'll try to post a recipe in the next day or two, but for now...

A Thanksgiving Proclamation
"It has seemed to me fit and proper that God should be solemnly, reverently, and gratefully acknowledged, as with one heart and one voice, by the whole American people.  I do, therefore, invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday in November as a day of Thanksgiving and praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the heavens."     
Abraham Lincoln, 1863