Nonfiction by Marilyn Paolino
What was Lazy Man’s Pie?
Just the other day, I was skimming the Beechwell cookbook, whose thirty-eight yellowed pages easily fit in my palm, when I spotted this pie with a friendly name. Lazy Man’s Pie shared the page with the French cherry and old-fashioned lemon pies.
The recipe looked familiar—except for the name and the stick of oleo. Oleo margarine was popular in the 1950s when Cooking Favorites of the Beechwell Community was probably published. The cookbook came from Aunt Judy’s attic. Before moving, she sent me several boxes packed with family photos, records, and journals dating back to the early 1900s.
Of course! Lazy Man’s Pie was our family’s famous fruit cobbler, I thought.
Dessert first. (Then back to my family project.)
I had a habit of reading cookbooks from back to front, starting with basic bars, cakes, and cookies. Eager to experiment in the kitchen, I began baking when I was nine or ten years old. Dad and I baked together on Sunday afternoons. Nothing fancy. I chose a cake box mix from lemon, white, and orange flavors that Dad liked best.
But we made cobbler from scratch. The recipe was forgiving, unlike pies that required practice to produce crusts with a delectable duo of texture and taste.
My parents were forgiving, loving people. During lunch celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary, my brother and I asked them what the secret was to a happy marriage.
“There is no secret. It’s hard work,” Mom said, without hesitation.
Her answer left us to reflect on our own relationships. My brother married his high-school sweetheart, and I wed my soul mate decades later. My parents were strong role models who during their sixty-two years together treated one another with respect. They made married life look easy.
Yet, family relationships were often fraught. I heard the hurt in Mom’s voice, some thirty years ago, when she told me my aunt and uncle opposed their marriage. They did so under a loving guise because they served as my father’s guardian, raising him as a son after both his parents died.
Dad’s childhood lacked sweetness because he was orphaned at eight years old. Maybe that’s why as an adult, he craved sweets like fudge, pudding, cakes, and ice cream.
During the holidays, we made a rich chocolate fudge. We relied on the Fannie Farmer recipe, which called for a can of sweetened condensed milk (large) and four and a half cups of sugar.
However, ice cream was an every day treat for Dad. He heaped a generous glob of vanilla ice cream in his oatmeal and a tablespoon in his morning coffee. Usually, he ate a healthy diet, but kept a tub of “cheap” ice cream in the freezer. He lived for 89 years.
Mom grew up during World War II, an era of waste not, want not. She abided by the rule, making sure she ate food before it spoiled. In our house the running after-supper joke was, “Can this leftover be saved?” Yes, and the dish returned to the fridge. Anyone who raised doubts took a spoon and ate the last bites. Either way, we saved the food.
Before the family cookbook arrived, Mom and I had made cobbler after receiving more peaches than we could eat. Mom recited the recipe with ease: one stick of butter, one cup each of flour and sugar, a tablespoon of baking powder, a pinch of salt, and one cup of milk. We preheated the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit and melted the butter in the 9 x 13 glass baking dish.
Eager to get baking, we lined up the blemished to bruised fruit on the counter. We washed the fruit and removed the pits. I sucked off the flesh from the pits and thought, waste not, want not. We didn’t bother to blanch and peel the soft peaches whose sticky ripeness covered the counter and dripped from our hands.
In a large bowl, I measured and mixed the ingredients, and poured the cake-like batter over the butter. I plopped the cinnamon-sprinkled peaches in the middle of the pan. Do not stir, that was the secret. I confess, I’m tempted to swirl the fruit around, but learned to trust what I’ve lovingly prepared. Cobbler always tasted better when I used fresh fruit from the farmer’s market. But I have used store-bought canned fruit to satisfy my craving.
In my kitchen, I chose the modest cobbler over pie because it’s welcome at every meal and won’t let me down.
People who claim it’s “as easy as pie” probably haven’t made one. In my hands, crust turned tough and chewy or soggy as if the fruit itself sobbed into the dough. My lattice came out lopsided. And my fruit slicing, layering, and arranging skills lacked pie-filling appeal.
As we cleaned the kitchen, I tried to recall the last time dad and I made cobbler. We used canned cherries swimming in thick syrup.
I checked on the cobbler in the oven as the scent of cinnamon filled the house. About forty minutes later, we had a bubbling, burbling celebration of fresh fruit. I cut a fresh-from-the-oven-corner chunk for each of us and added vanilla ice cream. The Lazy Man’s Pie, with its golden brown, bumpy crust and juicy peach filling, was easy to make, true to its name. We saved the jammy middle for the next day.
Warm cobbler topped with a dollop of ice cream takes me back to my childhood baking days those Sunday afternoons, savoring unmeasured lazy time—simple, sweet, and easy. Dad couldn’t have any cobbler with us that day, but he passed down his recipe for a joyful life: work hard, share love, and forgive all.
Marilyn Paolino is a writer who collects family stories and cookbooks. She had a career in public relations before leaving to write full time. Early in her career, she was a newspaper reporter who accepted all the leftover assignments. She lives in the Philadelphia area.
