growing up

so pleased with how my tomatoes and sweet potato slips are growing . . . up, up, up! and look at those ducks; they are huge!

over the years i've been blessed to work with a wide range of people from different ethnicities, countries and walks of life. it's always interesting to hear about their lives as children, their traditions and how those backgrounds have shaped their lives as adults. i had a happy, blessed childhood. my 5 siblings and i were loved, well-tended and nurtured. we were expected to be polite, respectful and obedient. (some were more obedient than others. smile! ) growing up, we had a huge yard to play in and an equally large responsibility to weed the garden, harvest the vegetables, paint the fence posts, rake the leaves and do the dishes. to this day, i'm transported back to my childhood every time i hang clothes on the line or mix up a batch of pie dough. summer twilight found us playing kick the can or hide and seek. sunday mornings we often joined our numerous farmer family cousins in a rousing chorus of "brighten the corner where you are" front and center in church. life was wholesome and healthy and safe. blessed. and i thank god for every moment of it every day of my life.

grandma johnson's butterscotch pie!!

fred and martha johnson
kopper kettle restaurant
economy, indiana
circa 1950

some of you may be wondering how i came up with the name of my farm -- butterscotch farm!my inspiration came from helping my grandma j cook. she and my grandpa ran a small restaurant called the kopper kettle. it was just a few hundred yards away from the house where i grew up so i spent a great deal of time there. they made pretty much everything from scratch – salisbury steak, ham with raisin sauce, giant tenderloins and old-fashioned ham and beans with cornbread. (think “hey, pa, what’s for dinner?” and you’ll get the picture of this small town country cooking). i pretty much started going to the kettle to hang out with grandma when i was 5 or 6. she let me stir things and taught me how to measure ingredients. eventually i went to work there as a real paying job, washing dishes, waiting tables, peeling potatoes, every odd job that i could do to help them out. they each worked 12 plus hours a day to keep that little gem of a diner going. and believe me, they packed people in after church on sundays.

one of the most popular things on the menu (and my personal favorite) was grandma’s famous homemade pie. she excelled at a flaky crust made with lard; granted it wasn’t healthy for you, but it tasted superb! she made several varieties every day such as lemon meringue, strawberry, black raspberry, apricot, coconut, sugar crème, pecan and peach. but in my opinion the most unique pie she made was butterscotch. to this day, i’ve never tasted a better butterscotch pie well except for my mom's which is darn close to grandma j's! so, as a tribute to my grandma j, here’s the recipe.

ingredients:

1 firmly packed, heaping cup of light brown sugar
2 T butter
2 T flour
2 eggs
2 cups of milk (at least 2%)
1 baked pie shell (store bought is fine, that’s how I make it)
2 T of water
handful of granulated sugar

separate 2 eggs by putting the whites into a medium mixing bowl. place the yolks into a 2 cup glass measuring cup. fill the glass measuring cup up with milk (slightly less than 2 cups) and beat the yolks into the milk with a fork. set aside.

in a medium saucepan or preferably an iron skillet***, melt the 2 T of butter. add the brown sugar and cook on medium/high until the mixture begins to bubble and caramelize. the color will turn to a darker brown. take off the heat and stir in the 2 T of flour. slowly, a little bit at a time, add the milk/egg yolk mixture. immediately put back on the stove and cook on medium until the mixture thickens to a pudding-like consistency. pour into the pre-baked pie crust.

add 2 T of water to the egg whites in the medium mixing bowl. with an electric mixer, beat the egg whites on medium/high until peaks form. add a handful of sugar and beat until well mixed. use a plastic spatula to spoon the meringue onto the top of the pudding in the pie crust. make peaks on top of the pie so it looks nice. bake at 350 degrees until the top of the meringue is a nice golden brown.

let this cool for a bit before cutting so the pudding has a chance to set up. enjoy and please let me know what you think!

*** i've tried making this in a regular saucepan before but the only way to get the true grandma j butterscotch flavor is to make it in an iron skillet.