Snow Day Follies
Nature freeing us from the world.
(Above, Spring Will Come, a video by the author.)
Note: It’s extremely important to read the note at the end of this story before attempting the pie recipe!
It’s snowing, just as promised. No one expects anything of you on such a blizzardly, freezing day. The heavenly silence of a battened world. The luxury of not having to fall out of bed. Nothing to do but plump up the pillows and invite in memories of your childhood’s cold attic bedroom and the disappointment in your mom’s voice bellowing up from the second floor that school is cancelled. “Now what am I going to do with you,” she says, since it’s no snow day for her. But you already know what you will do: first, burrowing down under the many blankets and reading your book all morning, then going down to the kitchen to boil up a bowl of Danish Dessert. There’s no one to yell at you when you eat it all of it straight out of the pan for lunch.
Nor will anyone laugh when you moon over the glamourous actresses in the old movies shown on TV in the afternoon and determined that your future self will flounce about as they do in liquity silk gowns and hoop skirts. As the sky begins to gray, you layer on clothes and meet your friends on the golf course’s most perilous hill where you cheat death at least 11 times. Daredevil boys barrel down the hill around you, a breathless, tingling sight for you and your girlfriends, all hopeless at flirting. Finally, it is time to drag your sled home, drink a cup of hot chocolate, and remember to put the evening meal’s baked potatoes into the oven before your mom comes home from work.
This latest snow day presents similar delights and you devise a list of what you will do:
Luxuriate in the world’s silence.
Swear you won’t look at the news.
Make a huge pot of your mom’s famous meatball and sausage sauce for you and your sons.
Race outside to fill the bird feeder and check on your stray cat shelter.
Rearrange the muddled spice shelf.
Make a bowl of Danish pudding and bake a Hoosier pie.
Read.
Take a nap.
Don’t fret over the many story drafts on your computer.
Remind your husband not to strain his back as he trudges out the door to break in his shiny new yellow shovel.
Find the bottle of Motrin when he returns with an aching back.
Put together a stew from odd pieces of meat unearthed in the freezer.
Believe there’s a strong possibility you may pull it together to bake a batch of buttermilk biscuits for the stew.
Cocoon under blankets with a snoring cat stretched across your stomach while watching an old movie until it’s time for bed.
Pull back the bedroom’s curtains and watch the last of the snow filter through the street lights as you fall asleep.
By the day’s end, you have accomplished almost everything. You didn’t bake biscuits and you didn’t stop fretting. It is impossible to ignore the news. You have to watch to see if the government’s troops will be sent to your immigrant neighborhood.
The snow is turning to ice by the time you pull the bedroom quilt up to your chin. Lying on your side, with your snoring husband at your back, you watch the final snow flakes filter through the street lights as you fall asleep.
A Hoosier Cream Pie Recipe
My favorite pie recipe bible is the Farm Journal’s Complete Pie Cookbook (Doubleday & Company, 1965). Nine tenth of what I know about pies comes from the Farm Journal. It was founded in 1877 and continues to be our farmers’ main source for information about crops and husbandry. Recipes now appear on their website, AgWeb. One of my favorite sections is called Take it to the Field, which harkens back to a time when the women got up early and prepared a lunch for all the farm hands to carry into the fields. This would include a hefty slice of the kind of sturdy pie that stays together when wrapped up in a piece of wax paper. A recent Take It to the Field recipe goes like this:
“Roll pulled apart roast, a few pieces of pineapple and a few slices of bell pepper in a tortilla. Wrap with foil and place in a tin warming dish. Serve with potato chips.”
Hoosier pie is the first one listed in the section, “Heirloom American Pie.” The introduction bears reprinting in its entirty here:
Most people today prefer updated cream pies, in which cooked filling is put in already baked pie shells—pies certain to have a crisp, flaky crusts. Here’s a pioneer pie, however, created in farm kitchens along the Wabash River during covered-wagon days. This baked cream pie enjoyed great prestige in the prairie states.
It’s an heirloom recipe used today almost entirely by homemakers who learned to like it at their grandmothers’ table. We include the recipe primarily for its historic interest, a reminder of what pies were like a century ago. . . .Also for women who’ve searched for the recipe for a rich, cream pie their grandmothers use to make by mixing the filling in an unbaked pastry shell. (Their way of cutting down on dishwashing!)
Hoosier Cream Pie (Please be certain to read the note at the end of the recipe.)
Unbaked 8" pie shell 1/2 cup brown sugar 1/2 cup granulated sugar 1 tablespoon flour 2 cups light cream 1/2 teaspoon vanilla
Preheat over at 400 degrees.
Combine sugars and flour, mixing well. Stir in cream and vanilla. Pour into thoroughly chilled pie shell.
Bake until silver knife inserted halfway between center and edge of pie comes out clean, about 25 to 30 minutes. Cool on rack and refrigerate until serving.
IMPORTAND NOTE BEFORE ATTEMPTING TO BAKE A HOOSIER PIE
The pie filling is very liquity which makes carrying the pie into the oven treacherous. Many a Hoosier pie baker has spilled the filling when placing it in the oven. Consider my attempt. I walked very carefully and braced myself when slowly lowering it into the oven. Still at least a quarter of the filling sloshed over the side, onto the oven’s bottom, and down into the slots over the gas pipes.
And it’s not just me. I watched several YouTube videos before attempting the pie and a few cautioned that it may burn down your kitchen.
So two remedies: The best—put the empty crust into the oven on a baking sheet then pour the filling into it. Or use a deep dish crust. It won’t be filled to the top but that’s okay. It’ll still be a damn good pie.
One more thing before you go, Substack won’t promote Stories unless you show your love. So press that little heart abover and below to tell the powers that be that you care!
Thank you!!
The progression from childhood snow days to adult ones captures something real. Loved the Danish Dessert detail and that warning about the liquity pie filling had me laughing. There's something about those vintage Farm Journal recipes that assumes you know the tricks already, like everyone back then just understood pies would slosh everywhere.
There is something about a snow that seems to alter reality. It can either make you feel like you are on vacation, or ready to tackle some novel project.