Granny’s Fried Apricot Pies by Tom Motley
My Granny Wilson made the best fried pies in the world. A gardener, Granny always prepared her dishes with fresh herbs, produce or fruit. Everyone in the little farming town of Irene, Texas, admired Granny’s fruit trees. Her delicious pastries, pies and cakes began with pampered trees: peach, pear, plum, quince, apricot, persimmon and pomegranate.
Depending on the season, the luscious products from Granny’s orchard would arrive on the table having come direct from fresh, daily sources, or from one of the magic canned items out of her vast larder, the pantry, or from the dark root cellar outside (which served double-duty as a storm cellar).
Granny’s canned goods were legendary. Mason jars filled with her concoctions lined the shelves of the pantry like a well-stocked candy store, in my child-mind eyes. Early on, I learned the treasures that resided inside those glass jars, filled with color, texture, aroma, and taste. My cousins and I, with tiny hands, had picked many buckets full of local blackberries, wild plum, paw-paws and ground-cherries, all of which found their way to fame through Granny’s canning and pickling alchemy.
Over the years, I’ve experimented with variations of the fried fruit pie. I’ve wrapped the fruit filling with wonton, phyllo, even ravioli-type containers. But my favorite fried-pie package is simply a not-too-thinly rolled version of my Mom Doris’ basic (perfect) pie-crust. A taboo topic of discussion at the family table was the simple fact that Doris actually made better pie-crust than her Mother. Good cooks can be jealous creatures.
With all of that in mind, here’s an offering for your Christmas stocking. The following article, Winters in Irene, was first published when I wrote The Motley Farm Report for C&S Media. In the article, you’ll meet my Granny, a bunch of my farmer and rodeo uncles, and possibly smell the warm sweetness emanating from Granny’s apricot fried pies.
Winters in Irene by Tom Motley
(Previously published in The Farmersville Times and other C&S Media papers – Jan. 3, 2008)
Trees at the farm these winter days look like penciled line drawings on blue or gray paper, depending on the sky and weather. You can see a neighbor’s house through the leafless limbs of trees that, for most of the year, completely obscure the structure. Livestock and pens that normally go unnoticed are slowly revealed to roadside travelers, as winter advances.
Wild residents, like our local fox, go deeper into the woods for adequate cover, and are more easily spotted at the edges of their hunting grounds.
I recall one cold, black night at Granny Wilson’s house (my maternal grandmother) when I was a boy. It was a hard winter in Irene, Texas. There was lots of snow and sleet that year. There were also lots of wolves that winter; hungry wolves. On that late night, a semi-circle of men stood in granny’s parlor.
The men included my uncles Buck, Wink, and Audie, my dad, Dub, and various friends from town and neighboring farms. They stood awkwardly, yet respectfully, in the presence of Granny and her doily-covered parlor furniture. Men and boys alike in my family knew not to sit on the parlor furniture, except on rare occasions like Christmas Day. The men shifted their weight, uncomfortably shuffling their boots forward and back in a kind of contrapposto dance, as if they were live, classical sculptures.
Each man said “Thank you, ma’am” (even her own sons), as Granny served them hot coffee in china cups and a fried apricot pie apiece. I stayed out of the way, standing in the dining room doorway, watching quietly. This was about men’s business, and kids needed to be invisible.
Each man juggled his china coffee cup, a hot pie, and a gun. The assorted arsenal of hunting weapons around the room included small and large rifles and shotguns. One neighbor wore an old family pistol, holstered at his hip. I recognized a 22 and a 410 that I had hunted with. I was too small for the others.
The men were bundled up for serious business outside, and were anxious to leave the heat of the big pot-bellied stove. The men were going out into the cold and dark to hunt marauding wolves.
This was the same group of men who stood in Granny’s parlor on another occasion, another cold winter’s night. Snow stood tall outside that night.
On this particular night, the circle of friends and family juggled the same china coffee cups, more fried pies and shovels. Granny seemed happy, and I couldn’t believe my eyes at the sight of shovels in the parlor! I stood in the room with the men on this occasion, enjoying a fried pie myself, and good-natured teasing from my uncles. The men laughed loudly. Granny was amused at them and kept shaking her head, in a fun way, at their boyish enthusiasm.
At one end of the parlor, the pot-bellied stove cheerily warmed the room. At the other end, the room was warmed by the presence of a huge Christmas tree, gaily festooned with countless family decorations, generations old.
The joyous gathering was prelude to the men going sledding, in their fashion. I was sure that my Dad and Uncle Buck had been ‘tipping a few’ drinks outside the house and must have mischievously talked the others into bringing the shovels indoors with them, hoping to get a rise out of Granny.
A steep ravine of a long-since dried out creek bed bordered the edge of Granny’s front pasture. Each reveler had brought a wide barn shovel or snow shovel on which to traverse the slope. They would soon plop down on the shovels, ostensibly steering with the handles before them and speed down the snow-covered ravine. Injuries were likely.
During this holiday season, I fondly remember the men of my family on those two frigid nights. On one night, they were, of necessity, deadly serious, with a mission. On the other, they were just a group of big boys having a party in front of a glittering Christmas tree. “Cheers.”