I have never acquired the skill it takes to make a pie crust. Grandma could whip up a dozen crusts in no time at all, and they were always flaky and. tender. Obviously, I did not inherit that special gene. Grandma always looked forward to getting yellow transparent apples from the Raisls’ in Missoula as she said they were the very best for pie. The peelings were dumped in her flower garden for compost and now, in the back yard of her house in Clancy, there is an apple tree that must have sprouted from a seed. Don’t know if it’s a yellow transparent, but the apples are large and do make good pie when I make them with Pillsbury pie crusts from the deli case at the grocery store.

The Zimmerman kids will remember their dad suggesting that I rinse out my pie crusts and use them over again. So, I did. When the empty crust came home in his lunch box, I refilled it with pudding and sent it in his lunch the next day. That day the pie crust came home filled with wild flowers. I appreciated his sense of humor, but, from then on – no more pie in lunch box.
I took a cherry pie out to Ted and Karen’s house for Easter one year, and one of the other guests said it was the best cherry pie he had ever eaten. I told him it was a secret old family recipe but I would gladly share it with his wife.