The Reindeer Keeper

When you think about it, the possibility of something so sweet mixed with something so tart tasting so very good seems impossible. But it happens most every year about this time when I make strawberry-rhubarb pies using my grandmother's recipe. I don't know how it happens but the unlikely combination of the two makes for one very delicious experience. I live in northern New York where fresh rhubarb abounds. From a friend's amazing rhubarb patch to Amish stands stocked with just picked rhubarb for sale, the rhubarb I use is the freshest available. The strawberries are just as fresh, picked from Amish strawberry patches, and sold at those roadside stands. After you've cleaned and sliced those two main ingredients, all you have to do is add a little flour, some sugar and a "sprinkle of salt" as my grandmother would say, and you are ready to add your ingredients to the bottom pie crust in your pie plate; then cover them with the top pie crust and bake at 350 degre...

Besides the flour, another constant when my Grandmother made her pie crusts was a can of Crisco. She never had to reference a recipe or use a measuring cup when making her crusts which always ended up heavenly flaky and the perfect texture. Every time I buy those prepackaged pie crusts in the store I think of how methodically she'd fold her ingredients in to the yellow mixing bowl until she had it all where she wanted it. After gathering the dough into a ball; then kneading it and working it, she'd divide the dough, flatten it out with her wooden rolling pin and then spread it out in her glass pie plates, fluting the edges of the crust in lightning speed. While prepackaged crusts cut down the preparation time to nearly nothing, their flavor and consistency lack what my Grandmother created every time she made one of her pies which included-apple, pumpkin, mince meat, berry. Of all the varieties she made, my favorite was her Lemon Meringue! Those pies were masterpieces of creati...