"That's how my mother always did it"

    This fall I discovered a Facebook group called For the Love of Pie.  It's been quite interesting to learn from this group that there are about 897 million ways to make a pie crust, an obsession with this group during apple pie season in knowing how to get a flaky crust. And, of course, everyone had an opinion and the veteran bakers all decreed theirs was the best.  Foolproof.   Novice bakers were panic stricken. It was kind of fun to watch. 

     As apple season morphed into pumpkin pie season the advice changed remarkably.  Most everyone, and I mean MOST, use the recipe from the can of Libby's pumpkin but NOT the can of "easy" pumpkin pie mix.  Just the can of straight up pumpkin and their recipe on the label. 

    The one constant refrain, the one thing 99% of the people said, the one bit repeated over and over and over:  "that's how my mother always did it."

    My mother never made a pie.  She had opinions and decreed making a pie was more trouble than it was worth.  She enjoyed EATING pie but would not make one. So when it was time to learn how to make a pie I watched my grandma.  

     I volunteered to make the pumpkin and pecan pies for Thanksgiving this year but I've only ever made one of each in my whole long life.  I didn't have to go far for advice, that FB site was full of it. But I did call Friend Marge for her take on pumpkin pie because she makes them for HER family.  She went through the check list, it matched the thousands of people on the FB site and even said a few times, " that's how my mother always did it."  

      

I volunteered to make the pies but really, it was going to be the girls learning to make a pie. They are with us for the two days before Thanksgiving every year so I put them to the learning task.  

One thing one of the women on the FB site said made ALL the difference to her Libby label pies was to add an extra egg. That meant for one pie cutting one egg in half.  Hmmm.  Elizabeth came up with the solution.  Scramble the egg and then using the kitchen scale, weigh it and measure out half of it.  Voila! 

It. Was. Perfect.  

 

So was the pecan!  Even though I told the girls "Thanksgiving is not the time to experiment.  Thanksgiving wants tradition"  I didn't have dark corn syrup, just light. I didn't have dark brown sugar, just light.  We used what I had and I added some pure maple syrup.  Maple syrup can't hurt anything!