Stocking up on cranberries for fall pie-making workshops.
Art of the Pie‘s Kate McDermott has returned to CurvyMama Pies’ kitchen in the Washington, D.C., environs to teach more pie workshops. You probably recall that I lured Kate here from Seattle for her first East Coast workshops last June. (If you missed my posts about that, you can catch up here, here, and here.) A Washington Post story about the workshops generated demand for more, so Kate flew back into town last night for back-to-back sessions this weekend.
Some things have changed with the seasons: summer’s apricot and raspberry pies are being replaced with cranberry (Kate bought piles, as you can see from the photo). Some things, however, remain the same: my refrigerator is packed with 10
Lots of leaf lard.
pounds of Kerrygold butter and 15 pounds of leaf lard from Dietrich’s Meats & Country Store in Pennsylvania.
Before the workshops begin, Kate got to reunite with Cathy Grossman, a veteran reporter from USA Today who participated in one of her multi-day “pie camps” in Washington state and lived to write about it for that newspaper.
Over a scrumptious Indian dinner, we talked about the wondrous powers of pie and shared stories about how it’s reshaped our lives. Cathy has become quite the pie baker now; her husband can’t find high enough praise for her apple pie. And folks at her newspaper kept her busy with pie orders once she came back from Kate’s “pie cottage” as an accomplished pie wrangler.
I told tales from my amazing pie trip to Iowa to judge pies at the state fair and bake with the Pitchfork Pie Stand‘s Beth Howard at the American Gothic House, and I brainstormed with them about how to get into teaching a few pie-making classes myself. Kate shared exciting plans taking shape for upcoming pie camps (details to come).
Three gals who didn’t know one another until a few months ago, brought together by the Power of Pie, as brand new–and very loyal–members of Pie Nation.
Awesome!
CurvyMama, Kate McDermott, Cathy Grossman.
