The Infamous Lemon Meringue Pie

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It was 1986, the second  full summer my husband and I were dating, and I’d recently learned that one of his favorite pies was lemon meringue. My mother always made a wonderful lemon meringue, with flaky, tender crust, tangy-sweet lemon filling, and a shiny, billowy and perfectly-browned meringue heaped on top. I’d watched her bake all sorts of creations from scratch many times and thought how difficult could it be?

My mother was busy with other cooking and going up and down the cellar stairs with the laundry, so I just went ahead and read her recipe card of instructions as I completed the process of mixing and rolling the pie crust dough. After the first roll-out, it didn’t look right, so I scooped it all into a ball and rolled it out again. Then a third time. I wanted this pie to be perfect for my new boyfriend!

The rest of the pie-making went splendidly. The filling looked good and the meringue top turned out fluffy and pretty. I hovered over the oven as it browned, pulling it out when just the right shade of caramel touched the tips. Into the fridge went the pie, to await the moment of glory after supper at the Homestead that night with my boyfriend in attendance.

When the time came, I was wreathed in smiles, seeing how happy my boyfriend was at the effort I’d gone through to make one of his favorite desserts. We gave him the honors of cutting the first piece of pie. I felt a tingle of apprehension as he cut into the center…and then had to push down pretty hard to cut through (and he was a college football player with plenty of arm muscle to spare). He was still smiling, though, and I tried to keep a brave face – but it all came to a screeching halt when he put the piece of pie on his plate and tried to use his fork to get a bite.

His fork wouldn’t cut through the bottom of the crust.

He paused, a little flustered, and my heart fell. My mother looked at me and whispered, “Did you have any trouble when you were making the crust?”

I shrugged. “Well, I had to roll it out three times to get it just right.”

She started to chuckle. Anyone who has worked with pastry knows that it has to be handled lightly and as little as possible to be tender and flaky. The more it’s handled the tougher it gets. My boyfriend, who had a good sense of humor said, “Well, I can just eat it like this…” and he picked up the slice of pie by the fluted edge, lifting it from the plate and intending to take a bite that way.

Except the pie didn’t shift. The crust was like a rock, preventing the filling or meringue from moving even a fraction. If he’d tried to bite it, he’d probably have broken a tooth.

Everyone burst out laughing at that point, including me. In my quest for perfection, I’d created an inedible crust. But as my boyfriend reassured me, the lemon filling and the meringue tasted good!

Some of Life’s Little Pleasures

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As summer winds down here in upstate New York, I’m trying to continue to cultivate a sense of connection and gratitude to my life: it’s so easy, in the hustle and bustle of daily living (which for me, as a HS teacher, has already been busy with meetings and planning all summer long but is about to increase exponentially with the arrival of students in less than a week), to forget to slow down, take a breath, and recognize some of the many little pleasures that can make up a day.

Although this is by no means a complete listing, I’ve just randomly chosen some pictures that represent some of those pleasures for me during this season. Then I’ll gear up for autumn (and probably do a similar post about it in the coming months!)

Ok, so here goes:

coffe and kindle on the deck

 

Having my coffee and a few minutes to read my kindle out on the deck in the not-as-hot-as-it’s-been sunlight this morning.

 

 

 

Full moon

 

 

A late July full moon, visible through the trees around my house.

 

 

 

 

flowers in the garden

 

Early summer flowers in my little “backdoor garden”.

 

 

 

 

 

pets

 

 

Pets who actually get along. 🙂

 

 

finished book

 

A finished book, after five years of work. I guess this one isn’t so much a “little pleasure” as it is the very satisfying culmination of a huge undertaking, but it’s a pleasure to have written “The End” nonetheless. Information about it’s release – how, when, and by whom – will be forthcoming in the next month or so.

 

 

So that’s it for this post. How about you? What are some simple pleasures you relish at this season of the year (whatever it’s like for you, depending on where you live) or at any time?

 

 

Great-Grandma O’Halleran’s Hot Water Pie Crust

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Hot water pie crust recipe

Great-Grandma O’Halleran’s Hot Water Pie crust recipe

As you can see from this old recipe index card, I’ve made this pie crust quite a few times. The card is stained with use but only a little worse for wear. The handwriting on it is my dear mother’s, and she copied out this recipe for me from her files, back when I was newly married more than two decades ago.

It’s a different kind of pie crust because unlike most, which use ice water and sometimes butter, this one uses lard (or Crisco, which is what I and my mother have always used) and boiling water. My great-grandmother who was born in Ireland in the 1860’s, Katherine O’Halleran, favored this recipe, and since she lived in my mother’s childhood household and was the primary cook when my mother was a girl in the 1930’s and 1940’s (since her own mother – my Grandma – was away all day working in the cotton mill in Utica, NY), my mother picked it up along the way.

It’s surprisingly easy, adapts to just about any pie, and I never fail to get compliments on the light flakiness of this crust. Except for the very first time I attempted to make it on my own…but that’s a story for another day. 🙂

Here’s the recipe, with instructions for a single or a double crust pie:

Place in a Bowl:

Single Recipe                                                  Double Recipe

1/2 cup lard or Crisco                                     1 1/4 cups lard or Crisco

Pour over it:

1/4 cup boiling water                                      1/2 – 3/4 cups boiling water

Mix the following ingredients together, sifting before measuring (Note: I admit I always skip the sifting part and it doesn’t seem to hurt anything!)

1 1/2 cups flour                                              about 3 1/2 cups flour

1/2 tsps baking powder                                1 1/4 + a little more tsps baking powder

1/2 tsps salt                                                    1 1/4 + a little more tsps salt

Combine the liquid and the sifted ingredients quickly and form into a smooth ball. Roll out.

A few helpful hints: Don’t overwork the dough. Roll out once, on a well-floured surface, with a well-floured rolling pin. I like to gently fold the crust in half to transfer it to the pie dish, but if you’re using waxed paper under the dough when you roll out, you can just carefully flip it over into the pie dish. Cut off excess before crimping the edged with your thumbs. A finished double-crust should look like these two pies:

pies

Two double-crust pies sprinkled with sugar

 

Rituals: The Lady in the Red Dress

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When I was little, I was like most kids: I didn’t like to go to bed. However, I was unlike other kids, perhaps, in that I was almost always happy: Singing, playing, occasionally getting into mischief, and just general loving life. Like really loving it, from the moment I woke up, smiling and raring to go every morning, according to my parents (yes, I agree, that might be supremely annoying in an adult, but don’t worry; although I’m generally an optimist, I outgrew the constant sunniness by my 20’s for the most part. The way I see it, Giselle in Enchanted could only get away with it because she was…well, a princess).

Anyway, as a child, I never wanted to waste precious time sleeping.

If I wasn’t running around having fun inside our little house, I was playing outside in the yard or in the woods with the two sisters closest in age to me, often while at least one of my other, older sisters watched over us. Pa was at work during the day of course. Ma was never far away, but she was busy doing two loads of laundry a day (timing it so the well wouldn’t run dry), cleaning, and cooking for nine – or 11 when we had two “Fresh Air” sisters living with us each summer.

You’d think I would be tired out by the time 7:30pm rolled around.

I suppose I was, but I just didn’t want to give up and hit the sack.

Pa, who ruled the roost with a wonderful combination of military-style strictness and indulgent soft-heartedness (in my eyes anyway), liked to invent games of all kinds, sometimes as a way of connecting playfully with his kids but often also teaching us something important in the process, too (like logical reasoning, persuasion, or sharing etc). In this case, he invented a game by which I could feel I had some control over my bedtime (and therefore never need to dissolve into a tantrum, which would need to be dealt with sternly), but through which I was still following the rules. It was the “Goodnight” game….made popular in our family long before any of us ever knew there was a book called “Goodnight Moon”.

It went like this: when it was time for me to go to bed, Pa would let me say goodnight to everyone in the house (which meant at least eight other people, so that took a while), plus the dog (Lassie), the cats (Dominique, Gigi, and Marmalade), any other pets we might have at the time (there were birds and fish and even turtles at one point or another) and various objects around the house. When I got to the “Lady in the Red Dress” I knew time for bed was really near. I said goodnight to her and then with a big sigh, I let my Mama walk me (and my younger sister) upstairs to bed.

Several years ago, I inherited our family’s (very inexpensive) print of the Lady  – the official name of which I later learned is “Sonata” by M. Ditlef –  and I will always treasure it for the happy memories of times gone by. “Goodnight Lady in the Red Dress!” Anyone have any bedtime rituals you did as children (or do now with your own kids) to share?

Sonata M-DITLEF

“Sonata” by M. Ditlef

Seasons Change and So Do We…

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The author and her father at a river fishing spot in the late 1980's

The author and her father at a river fishing spot in the late 1980’s

So, although I’ve done some guest blogging in the past, I’ve never really ventured into the blogging world on a regular basis myself. But as my mother always told all seven of her girls when we faced something challenging – there’s no time like the present! So here I am, ready to share some of my ponderings, anecdotes, book-related “behind-the scenes”, and various other kinds of musings.

As the inaugural post, it seems only fitting that I should write about the shift from my historical roots, leading to almost six years spent writing a quirky, poignant, comical and from-the-heart contemporary novel. I hesitate to call it Women’s Fiction, even though it showcases the emotional journey of a late-30’s female protagonist, because the story engages far more universal issues of life, death, and the afterlife.

The idea took root long before I actually started writing the book, but once my final contract for the third and last of my Templar Knights books was complete, it kept percolating in the back of my mind. I dabbled with more historical fiction, but I kept coming back to the idea and the characters, who are loosely based in some factual aspects of my own life, growing up as one of seven daughters in an old-fashioned family (living in a little house with only two “kid” bedrooms and one bathroom!) at the foothills of the Adirondack Mountains. My father’s death in 2011 served as a watershed moment, allowing me to see the book with new eyes and undertake the task of finally completing it.

So there you have it. A new direction that like my romances sprang from the heart, only in a much more personal way. Where this path will lead, only time will tell, but in the meantime, I’m delighted to share my tales with you. Stay tuned for more updates as the publishing schedule is established.

Something my Mama always said

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“You can catch more flies with honey than you can with vinegar.”

 

I’ve always loved this saying, maybe because it gave me a tactile metaphor for the idea of trying to be nice, rather than being pouty and mean…the difference between Charlie in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, and snooty Veruca Salt.  I’ve heard variations on this saying, at least one from an Irish nun, so I have a feeling it has Celtic roots (since my mother’s grandmother, who is the one that taught this saying to my mother, was from the Emerald Isle herself). Anyone else have any variations or connections to this saying and/or cultural connections to it?

Mexican Bean Salad with Blue Corn Tortilla Chips

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Mexican food

 

This is a very heart healthy dish, based on Mediterranean eating principles.  It’s good for you and tastes good, too, especially on hot days when you want something light but nourishing. Here’s what you need for approximately two servings:

  • 1 can of mixed beans for bean salad (mine was a can of organic kidney, black, and cannellini beans)
  • 1/2 cup chopped green pepper
  • 1/4 cup finely chopped sweet onion
  • 1 teaspoon chopped garlic (I use jarred organic chopped garlic – roasted or plain – it’s so easy! But if you don’t have fresh, you can sprinkle a 1/2 teaspoon of garlic powder)
  • 1/2 cup finely chopped romaine lettuce
  • 1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
  • 1/4 cup of white balsamic vinegar
  • A sprinkle (to taste…add more if you like heat) of ground red pepper
  • about a half teaspoon of ground cumin (or substitute chili powder if you don’t like the taste of cumin)
  • salt and black pepper to taste

Optional: add chopped fresh cilantro at the very end

Toss all of the ingredients gently together and enjoy with some blue corn chips! The mixture gets more tasty the longer it sits and marinates, so you can have one serving when you make it and the second for lunch the next day. This recipe doubles or triples easily for a crowd (or if you want enough to last you several days) 🙂

Welcome from M. Reed McCall

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“Humorous, quirky, poignant, and inspiring, with a touch of something magical.”

Welcome to my official website and blog, combining my two different monikers (M. Reed McCall for *contemporary fiction and Mary Reed McCall for historical fiction). I was traditionally published for more than a decade with HarperCollins under their Avon imprint and recently ventured into independent publishing. There are other sites out there connected to my books and even other authors who write under similar names, but this is the one and only authorized version. I invite you to stay awhile and browse: here you can find information about my books, learn a little more about me…or maybe you’d rather click around some of the quirkier elements, like photos, recipes, or some of the old-fashioned sayings and stories that help to shape who I am and what I write. Feel free to comment or contact me. I hope you enjoy your visit!

Actual Final copy with endorsement*Most recent published work: Moose Tracks on the Road to Heaven: NOW AVAILABLE for purchase in eBook OR print from amazon  and Barnes &Noble and in eBook only from iBook, Google Play, All Romance, and Kobo.

Some recent quotes on Moose Tracks on the Road to Heaven:

“A woman discovers her rich relationships in this exquisite exploration into themes of time and connections, love and loss.” Foreword Reviews, Maya Fleischmann

“An engaging and entertaining exploration of a large family’s life in a small town. Telescoping through time, McCall focuses on significant life events—joys and sorrows—within the Wright family. Protagonist Elena’s experiences are charted from childhood through adolescence, to her years as wife, mother, and adult daughter of aging parents. McCall’s fluid writing, eye for detail, appreciation of rural life, and her ability to stir the reader’s empathy guarantee an absorbing and moving read.” ~ Margaret Porter, bestselling author of A Pledge of Better Times

“Intensely moving and beautifully written, Moose Tracks on the Road to Heaven will open your heart and stay with you long after the last page is turned.” ~ USA Today bestselling author Julianne MacLean