My game of Jeopardy! (and a California recipe)

March 24, 2014 by 1 Comment

Answer: It was broadcast on April 2, 2004.

Question: What was Bobbie Lewis’s national television debut?

It’s hard to believe that was almost 10 years ago! As I mentioned in my February 17 Feed the Spirit, I was a contestant on Jeopardy!, which is marking its 50th anniversary this week. My show was taped in mid-January, 2004 and aired on April 2.

That was so long ago that I have the recording on VHS, not on DVD.

So how did this come about? In the fall of 2003, Jeopardy! held auditions in Detroit.

My friends and family kept telling me I was good at trivia – indeed, I could often answer the Jeopardy! questions quickly – so I registered and a few weeks later found myself with 100 or so other hopefuls in the ballroom of a Detroit-area hotel. It was one of at least five such sessions in Detroit; there are a lot of people who dream of being on Jeopardy!

Answer: You ace a test with 50 short-answer trivia questions.

Question: How do you get invited to be on Jeopardy!?

They gave us a 50-question quiz, reading and projecting the questions on a screen, while we scribbled the short answers on an answer sheet. The questions seemed to come every five seconds or so. There was no way to say to yourself, “Ooh, ooh, I know that, let me come back to it,” because by then they were on to the next question – and there was nothing on the answer sheet to help you remember the question.

I missed at least five, and probably got at least a few more wrong. Dejected, I started to pack up my things when I heard my name called as one of the half-dozen from that session who had made the cut.

Answer: You’ll never know.

Question: What’s a passing score on the Jeopardy! quiz?

They never tell applicants what the “passing” score is or what their personal score was; you either make the cut or you don’t.  In some sessions there were a dozen who passed, in others, three or four. “Tell your family and friends you missed it by one,”  was their not-so-helpful suggestion for the losers.

We chosen few were asked to participate in a short mock game and then do a short taped interview. They wanted to make sure the prospects wouldn’t freeze at the sight of a camera.

Then they told us we’d be in a “pool” of contestants for a year, and they could call us any time. “Well, that’s that,” I thought, never expecting to hear anything more. Imagine my surprise when the producers called just a month later, inviting me to be on the show!

Now the process is a little different. They do an initial weed-out of applicants with an online quiz a few times a year. Those who pass can move on to an in-person audition – another 50-question quiz plus the mock game and interview – either at the Sony studio in Los Angeles or at one of the other cities the team visits throughout the year. Learn more about the process here.

Answer: A lot!

Question: What do most viewers not know about Jeopardy!?

  • They tape five shows a day, one after the other, with an hour’s break for lunch. The week’s worth of contestants – 11 hopefuls  plus a few alternates – start out together in the morning. Except for the previous game’s winner, all contestants are chosen by lottery from the day’s pool.
  • Only the winner gets the money. The person who finishes second gets $2,000 and the person who finishes last gets $1,000.
  • Jeopardy! doesn’t pay for airfare, hotel or any other expenses – but the winnings should cover it, even if you come in last. (If you win the last game of the day and live out of town, they do pay for you to come back the following week.)
  • There isn’t a huge amount of swag for contestants either. I got a Jeopardy! tote bag, a travel mug, a cheap ballpoint pen – and a very nice glass frame with a photo of me and host Alex Trebek.
  • All the contestants are instructed to bring two changes of clothing, so if you win and come back, it looks like it’s another day. I guess they figure out that if you win three games and there’s still more taping to be done that day, no one will notice if you’re wearing the same clothes you wore a few games earlier.
  • Around the game board is a row of lights, which you can’t see on your TV. Contestants are not supposed to buzz in until the lights go off when Alex finishes reading the question. Those who buzz in too early are penalized a tenth of a second. That’s why you see contestants hitting their buzzers repeatedly – if they’re too early, and no one else buzzes in, they might still have a chance to answer.

It was my luck to be in the last game taped that day, so I had to sit through four previous games with my palms sweaty and stomach churning.

Before the first game of the day, one of the producers goes over the personal stories for Alex’s chat after the first commercial break. The producer gives Alex two stories per contestant to choose from.

Here’s my favorite, which for some reason Alex chose not to use:

The contestant was an attorney in Washington, D.C. and was at a fancy government dinner where someone introduced her to King Somebody. She had an Uncle King, and was interested to meet someone with the same name. “So, King,” she said, “what is it that you do?” He looked at her for a long moment and then said, “I’m the king.”

Answer: By being the only contestant to get the correct answer to Final Jeopardy.

Question: How did Bobbie Lewis redeem her terrible performance in Jeopardy! and end up in second place?

As I told you in my earlier post, I did not perform very well in my one and only game. I don’t know whether I was buzzing in too early or too late, but I didn’t have an opportunity to answer many questions at all, and when I did, I made a few stupid mistakes. But I was the only one who had the correct answer to Final Jeopardy and so I came in second. My $2,000 winnings paid for a swell four-day vacation in Los Angeles. My husband and I toured the Sony studio, visited the fabulous Getty Museum and the fascinating LaBrea tar pits, enjoyed looking at the gorgeous houses in Venice and the weirdos at Venice Beach, and had a terrific meal at a Persian kosher restaurant.

Would I do it again? You betcha – although 10 years later the synapses are firing a little more slowly. I don’t get as many answers as I used to, and there are a lot more “ooh, ooh, I know that!”  moments. I seriously doubt that I’d make the cut. Luckily I don’t have to worry about it  –  no one who’s already been on the show can audition.

Answer: Nothing, but it’s made with artichokes and wine which makes me think of California.

Question: What does this week’s recipe have to do with Jeopardy!?

This is a nice recipe that’s great for weight watchers because it’s made with skinless, boneless chicken breasts and has no added fat, and it’s elegant enough to serve for a fancy company meal.

Mark the Spring Equinox by destroying Le Nain Rouge (and eating baked French Toast)

March 17, 2014 by Leave a Comment

Let New Orleans have its Mardi Gras!  Detroit has the Marche du Nain Rouge, a unique parade designed to force the Red Dwarf (Le Nain Rouge) from the city.

This isn’t necessarily a story about food, but I wanted to do something related to the Spring Equinox and I found the legend of Le Nain Rouge intriguing. Supposedly whenever Le Nain has been sighted, a great tragedy has happened in the city.

First sighted in 1701

Le Nain Rouge was first seen by Detroit’s founder, Antione de la Mothe Cadillac, in 1701. He was strolling just outside the walls of Fort Ponchartrain, site of the original settlement, when Le Nain crossed his path. Cadillac drove it off, but it cursed him as it retreated.

Cadillac’s life was never the same. He was indicted by the French government on charges of illegal trafficking, removed from power and imprisoned. Although he was eventually cleared, he never regained his fortune or land in Detroit.

A portent of disaster

Later, Le Nain was spotted before a disastrous clash between the British and Chief Pontiac’s tribe; 58 British soldiers were killed. People claim to have seen Le Nain Rouge in 1805, just before a fire destroyed much of the City of Detroit.

During the War of 1812, General William Hull surrendered Fort Detroit without firing a shot after he reported seeing a dwarf dancing nearby. He became the only American officer sentenced to death for military incompetence (he was reprieved by President James Madison).

More recently, Le Nain was spotted in 1967, just before a week of civil disturbances erupted in Detroit, and in 1976, just before one of the worst ice storms the city ever experienced.

How will you recognize Le Nain Rouge if you see him? He’s not a very attractive character. He’s supposed to be child-sized and wear brown clothing with red or black fur boots. He has blazing red eyes and rotten teeth.

Drive him out!

La Marche du Nain Rouge drives the red dwarf out of Detroit, preventing him from plaguing the city and its residents for another year. It’s held on the Sunday closest to the Spring Equinox, which is appropriate timing, since the Spring Equinox symbolizes rebirth and new beginnings in numerous cultures.

La Marche du Nain Rouge is a parade and street carnival, similar to Mardi Gras and other Carnival celebrations.

A local dresses up as Le Nain Rouge, with a mask to conceal his (or her) identity. Le Nain leads the parade, followed by 12 Detroiters called La Bande du Nains. The band consists of a man, woman and child from each of four continents: Africa, the Americas (North and South), Asia and Europe. They dress in 18th century costumes, like the Detroiters who first drove Le Nain from the city, and carry pots and pans, sticks and canes.

Le Nain and La Bande are followed by musicians, floats and individual marchers. Costumes run the gamut from supernatural creatures and historical and political figures to just wild and crazy.

Originally La Marche du Nain Rouge followed one of Detroit’s oldest streets south to the Detroit River, where Le Nain was thrown. More recently, the march has ended at a city park where an effigy of Le Nain is burned.

If you’re anywhere near Detroit next Sunday, come join the fun! The march starts at 1 p.m. in the parking lot of the Traffic Jam and Snug, Canfield and Second, and moves down Cass to Temple, ending in Cass Park.

A not-really-French recipe

What does all this have to do with food? Not much, as I’ve already admitted, but I thought this was a cool story. In looking for a recipe to conclude this column, I remembered a great recipe for baked French toast. OK, so that’s not really French–but it’s a wonderful dish! It comes from a bed & breakfast we once stayed in called the Music Box Inn in Whitehall, Michigan.

You can use low-fat milk instead of the half & half if you want to reduce the fat, and it will still taste good – just not as good! With the half & half, it’s very rich and extremely delicious.

Be sure to use real maple syrup, not any of that god-awful fake stuff, and note that you need to start preparing it the night before you plan to eat it.

(The photo with the recipe is by Baking Junkie, via Flickr Creative Commons.)

Celebrate Purim with hamentaschen

March 9, 2014 by Leave a Comment

Purim is coming! This is one of the most festive days of the Jewish calendar, even though it’s not a “holy” day mentioned in the Torah, like Rosh Hashanah or Passover. If you want to know what Purim is all about, read the Book of Esther in the Bible (a post-Torah piece of writing). It’s a wonderful story, with a hero (Mordechai), a heroine (Esther), a villain (Haman) and a fool (King Ahasuerus). It has drama, tension, irony, even humor. At the end, after the Jews of Persia are saved from the dastardly plot to annihilate them, we read, “The Jews ordained, and took upon them, and upon their seed, and upon all such as joined themselves unto them, so as it should not fail, that they would keep these two days according to their writing, and according to their appointed time every year; and that these days should be remembered and kept throughout every generation, every family, every province, and every city; and that these days of Purim should not fail from among the Jews, nor the memorial of them perish from their seed.”

Drown out his name!

Jews all over the world will hear the Book of Esther chanted on Purim, which starts at sundown on Saturday, March 15. Whenever the name of Haman is read, they’ll try to drown it out, using noisemakers called greggers, stamping their feet or just yelling “Boooo!”

Understandably enough, children – who often dress in costumes for the event – love this holiday, so the service where the Book of Esther is read can be rather chaotic. To control things a bit, my synagogue has a big traffic light on the bimah at the front of the sanctuary. Whenever Haman’s name is read it turns green and pandemonium breaks out. When it’s time to stop the noise, the light turns red and things settle down so we can hear the reader again.

Israelis celebrate by taking to the streets for parades, musical performances and general carousing. It’s known as ad lo yada – meaning “until he didn’t know.” The idea is that adults are supposed to get so drunk that they can’t distinguish between “blessed be Mordechai” and “cursed be Haman.”  In many communities, they take this commandment seriously.

But eat the cookies named for him

The main food associated with Purim is hamentaschen,  fruit-filled cookies. Their three-cornered shape is supposed to represent Haman’s hat, though the word actually means “Haman’s pockets” in Yiddish. A sensible explanation (thanks, Wikipedia!) is that the word came from German-Yiddish “mohn taschen,” meaning poppyseed-filled pockets.

How odd that the one food associated with the holiday bears the name of the man who was so evil we can’t stand to hear his name!

In Israel, the confection is called “oznei Haman” – Haman’s ears. This doesn’t make any more sense than “Haman’s pockets.”

A family recipe

My mother wasn’t much of a cook, but she baked  hamentaschen every year. She got the recipe from our neighbor in Northeast Philadelphia, Ida Silver. In 2007, I read a Hadassah magazine article by one Judith Davis about her mother’s hamentaschen, and I realized Judith Davis was the married name of Judy Silver,  Ida’s oldest child, a few years older than me. But the recipe in the magazine was not my mother’s recipe!

I hadn’t seen Judy in at least 40 years but I tracked her down – she worked at the University of Massaschusetts – and emailed her. In her response she admitted that the recipe in the magazine was not her mother’s, which she either never had or lost.

“I must have had a copy at some time, though I have no memory of it,” she wrote. “I love the idea of your mother having used her recipe (it means my mother must have shared some of them with her), and I love that it is being handed down to the next generation.”

Indeed it is! My children always enjoyed my hamentaschen – at some point, each of them served as my baking assistant. Now they are making the same recipe. And in all humility, I must say that I know only one friend whose hamentaschen are as good as these. The cookies are tender, and the honey and lemon give them a nice flavor.

Make a lot!

I usually double the recipe and many years have made several double batches. Now that we are empty nesters and retired (with no office colleagues to share goodies with), I will probably go back to making a single batch. I don’t use a board to roll out the dough. I do what my mother did: cover the kitchen table with an old sheet, work some flour into it and use that as my workspace.

Use Solo brand pastry filling or similar; regular canned pie filling is too runny and will make the hamentaschen soggy. Prune and poppyseed are the most traditional fillings, but children tend to prefer cherry or apricot.

An apple cake from the heartland

March 3, 2014 by Leave a Comment

 

I met Mary Hooper Nelson many moons ago when I went to Cleveland for my first co-op job as a student at Antioch College. Along with a dozen or so other young adults, we were copyboys at the late, lamented Cleveland Press (yes, the girls were called copyboys–when an editor bellowed “Boy!” we had to jump!) Mary, a Cleveland-born journalist, now lives in Kinsley, Kansas, not far from Garfield, where folks consider themselves lucky to have a grocery store.

Garfield, Kansas, is a sleepy, drive-by hamlet in Pawnee County on the U.S. 56 highway, built on part of the legendary Santa Fe Trail. Passing through, a few tourists may stop and rest for a bit in the city park and perhaps peek into the Wayside Chapel, but there is not much in the town to detain a visitor.

Garfield was never a metropolis, but in the late 19th century and first half of the 20th, it was a robust agricultural community with a thriving small-town economy. It was typical of the many towns that sprang up throughout the Great Plains as settlers poured in to break up the hard prairie sod and plant wheat.

Supplying the railroad builders

Garfield started out in 1872 as Camp Criley, a supply station for workers building the Santa Fe Railroad.

In 1873 the “first” settlers arrived (the actual first inhabitants were, of course, the Pawnee and Kiowa peoples) and turned the rough sutler’s post into a recognizable town. They were from Lake County in Northeast Ohio and must have thought a great deal of their congressman, for they named the town after him. He was James A. Garfield, later elected U.S. president.

In appreciation, Garfield pledged a bell to the first church to be built in his namesake town. That was the Congregational church, built in 1875. Soon to follow were a Methodist church in 1878, and, as the town’s population swelled with Swedish immigrants, a Lutheran church in 1879.

My husband, Bryce Nelson, grew up in Garfield in the 1950s. He had numerous aunts, uncles and cousins in and around Garfield; his Nelson grandparents had eight children.

There were plenty of kids to play with and lots of old-timers to spin yarns. They’d tell of seeing covered wagons – also called prairie schooners – lumbering along the Santa Fe Trail, and recall examples of frontier justice. One townsman told of seeing a horse thief hanged in the now-vanished settlement of Nettleton in the early 20th century.

Still thriving in the ’50s

In the 1950s Garfield was still a pretty lively place. Although the population was only 300, it provided goods and services not just to the townspeople but also to ranchers and farmers throughout the county. It had two grocery stores, a bank, a lumberyard, two grain cooperatives, a large brick school for grades 1 through 12, a hotel and a restaurant.

Bryce’s great-uncle on his mother’s side, Sherman “Pete” Rains and his wife, Velma, operated one of the grocery stores. It was an old-fashioned place, Bryce recalls, where you could buy groceries on credit.

The old Swedish farmers would sit around in the morning in their bib overalls and feed caps and quaff cup after cup of strong black coffee. Velma would have slices of her raw apple cake on hand. “Coffee and apple cake draws Swedes,” says Bryce – and other folks too!

Bryce’s mother, Dorothy Nelson, collected family recipes, including Velma’s recipe for raw apple cake. It’s delicious, kind of crunchy on top and moist and dense inside.

Nearly a ghost town

Today, Garfield’s population is about 190. The businesses are gone, all of them. The last place in town to buy anything was a convenience store at the co-op, but that closed years ago. The Congregational church was torn down in the late ‘50s, although the Lutheran and Methodist churches remain and hold regular services.

James Garfield’s bell today hangs in the Wayside Chapel in the town park. The school was torn down a few years ago. School children now are bused to Larned, 10 miles away.

It was the automobile that did in Garfield’s business district, and those of innumerable towns throughout America. Once people in those villages could afford cars, they started driving to the cities where there were more stores and a greater variety of goods.

At least Garfield still has a post office.

For now.

Sabbath cholent is heaven-sent

February 23, 2014 by Leave a Comment

Brrr…as I write the snow is bucketing down once again, joining the several feet of white stuff already piled around my house. It’s perfect weather for cholent.

Cholent (rhymes with “DULL lent”) is a stew prepared for the mid-day meal on the Sabbath. In traditional Jewish practice, lighting a fire and cooking are prohibited on the Sabbath, which starts at sundown on Friday and lasts until dark on Saturday night.

Slow cooking before slow cookers

In deepest winter it’s hard to go a whole day without hot food. What to do? Creative housewives developed a way to cook a hot-pot type dish at slow temperatures for a long time. That way they could have a hot dish without lighting a fire or putting food on the flame during the Sabbath. In Europe, they called the resulting dish cholent. The first references to it were in the 12th century.

No one really knows where the word came from. The best derivation I’ve seen is that it comes from the French chaud and lent – hot and slow. It could possibly come from shul ende – Yiddish for the end of synagogue services.

In Hebrew they call it hamin, which means hot. North African Jews prepare a similar Sabbath dish called dafina.

In the old days, women would put all their cholent ingedients into a heavy pot and put into a large communal oven, along with everyone else’s cholent pots, to simmer until the next day.

A heavenly scent

With the possible exception of baking bread, there’s no homier smell than cholent! It usually starts to be fragrant in the wee hours of the morning. By the time you wake up, you’ll start salivating in anticipation of a delicious mid-day dinner.

Cholent – called schalet in German – inspired poet Heinrich Heine. In the middle of his long poem Princess Sabbath are several verses extolling the dish, including these:

“But at noon, as compensation,
There shall steam for thee a dish
That in very truth divine is—Thou shalt eat to-day of schalet!

“Schalet, ray of light immortal!
Schalet, daughter of Elysium!”
So had Schiller’s song resounded,
Had he ever tasted schalet,

For this schalet is the very
Food of heaven, which, on Sinai,
God Himself instructed Moses
In the secret of preparing…

If you want to make a cholent, you don’t have to follow the recipe below. Feel free to improvise with ingredients. If you don’t want to use beef, use a turkey thigh or skinless, boneless chicken thighs – you can even make it vegetarian! Use sweet potatoes along with or instead of white potatoes. Use rice instead of barley. I would say the essentials are onions and garlic, some sort of starch (potatoes, beans, barley) and some root vegetables that won’t turn to mush with long cooking. For a vegetarian cholent, substitute vegetable broth for the water to give it some extra flavor.

Some people cook eggs in the cholent. The eggshell turns brown, and the eggs absorb some of the meaty flavor. You can also cook dumplings with the stew.

Plan ahead

For Sabbath (Saturday) lunch, start on Thursday night or early Friday morning by soaking a cup or two of dried beans in a bowl of water. They should double in volume. 

On Friday afternoon, before dinner, assemble the cholent and set it to cook in a slow cooker or in an oven set at 200 degrees.

If your Sabbath is another day, adjust these directions. Cholent would make a great after-church Sunday dinner! Start by soaking the beans on Friday night or Saturday morning.

You might want to check it in the morning to be sure it isn’t too dried out, but don’t add too much water; you don’t want it to be soupy. It should be moist, not wet, and have a nice, brown crust on top.

If you have leftover cholent, it’s good reheated for a lunch or supper. If you eat up all the meat but still have lots of vegetables and gravy left, turn it into soup! Just mash everything up, add a little more water and heat for lunches during the week.

(A confession: the last two times I made cholent I forgot to take photos! So I snagged these photos from the Web — what a wonderful resource!)

A Cherry Apple Pie for Presidents Day

February 17, 2014 by 1 Comment

 

I am a Scrooge when it comes to Presidents Day: Bah, humbug!

When I was in school we got two—count ‘em, two—days off in February, one for Lincoln’s Birthday on February 12 and the other for Washington’s on February 22. Their actual birthdays were the actual holidays.

Then in 1971, our federal government decreed that most federal holidays would be celebrated on a Monday. A three-day weekend was nice enough for those of us in school or working in traditional office jobs – but it kind of took the wind out of the birthdays of two of our greatest presidents. I think the holidays had more meaning when they were celebrated separately.

What a relief that they didn’t change the date of Independence Day. Imagine celebrating the Fourth of July on July 2 or July 6! (Want to learn more? Stephanie Fenton’s Holidays column explores the strange history of Presidents Day.)

It’s still Washington’s Birthday

When I was doing research for this piece, I was astonished to learn that the official name of the holiday is still Washington’s Birthday. How would old George feel to know that his birthday is now always on a Monday? And how would old Abe feel knowing that he is officially ignored altogether?

I think Lincoln has always been my favorite president. He preserved the Union through a disastrous civil war. He was responsible for the passage of the crucial 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery, even though it wasn’t ratified until after his death.

When I was younger I didn’t see nearly as much to admire in Washington. A great general, yes. Our first president? Big deal. Then in 1984 (was it really 30 years ago?) there was a wonderful TV mini-series about Washington starring Barry Bostwick. And I realized just how hard a task he faced as our first president.

George kept us together

We may have been “a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal” as Lincoln would put it fourscore and seven years later. But in 1776, and even in 1789 when Washington was elected (by the Congress, not We the People), who knew what that meant? Some of the early Americans actually wanted to make Washington our king! Luckily he would have none of that! The new nation could have easily fallen apart in its early years; indeed there were a number of rebellions against the infant federal government. It was Washington’s leadership that kept us from foundering.

Plus I’ve had a soft spot in my heart ever since George Washington helped me win second place on Jeopardy! 10 years ago. (My one and only game was broadcast on April 2, 2004.)

I was getting creamed by the guy who won that game by a wide margin and who went on to win about eight more. And due to a couple of stupid mistakes, I was in third place going into Final Jeopardy, which was in the category George Washington. The “answer” was this: “In 1798, George wrote to John Greenwood, a man in this profession, ‘I am …ready to pay what ever you may charge me.’”

I was no expert on GW. But I did know that George was famous for his ill-fitting wooden false teeth. So I guessed, “What is a dentist?” I was right! And I was the only one of the three contestants who got it right, salvaging a little bit of the ego that had been bruised by how poorly I’d performed in the game and moving me ahead of the third person.

A pie for two presidents

I promised you another pie recipe this week from Sweetie-licious Pies by Michigan pie-meistress Linda Hundt. This cherry apple pie is appropriate for both Lincoln’s and Washington’s birthdays because it’s an apple and cherry pie. Apparently Abraham Lincoln loved pies, especially apple. And of course we all know the myth about George Washington copping to chopping down his father’s cherry tree (first recorded in a book about Washington by Mason Locke Weems). What better excuse can there be to eat cherry pie every February?

Eat Pie, Love Life

February 10, 2014 by Leave a Comment

Right after Christmas I read a wonderful story in the Detroit Free Press about a woman who loves to make pies.

Linda Hundt, a Michigan State grad, spent the 1990s and more working full-time as an aide to former Michigan governor John Engler. She liked her job–but her passion wasn’t in politics, it was in pies.

While still working for the governor, Linda found the time to bake 60 pies a week in her church’s kitchen. She sold them from a refurbished food case on the front porch of her farmhouse.

She finally left politics in 2002 and a few years later, with the help of a home equity loan, Linda opened the Sweetie-Licious Bakery Cafe, an almost-too-cute pink-drenched shop in DeWitt, a small mid-Michigan town. There’s another branch in Grand Rapids and one coming soon in the Detroit area.

A national pie champ

Over the years Linda managed to win 16 first-place ribbons and one Best of Show in the Crisco National Pie Baking Contest, a 100-Year Anniversary Innovation award from Crisco and the Food Network Pie Challenge. She’s been written up in dozens of local and national publications.

I smelled a good Feed the Spirit topic, but it got even better when I went to Linda’s website. There I learned that she had also published a cookbook called–surprise!–Sweetie-licious Pies: Eat Pie, Love Life. I had to have it. And I love it!

A Valentine of a book

I decided to write about Sweetie-Licious this week because Valentine’s Day is upon us. Linda’s book is like a hardback Valentine, all pink and frothy, full of super-saturated color photos and gushing with love. If the recipes don’t make you yearn to sink your teeth into one of those pies, Clarissa Westmeyer’s gorgous photos will.

My daughter took one look at the book and burst out laughing, saying it looks like something from the 1950s. It’s true: just look at this photo of Linda and her mom, Joan McComb, opposite the book’s foreward. In the book at least, Linda always wears shirtwaist dresses (usually pink or red) with poufy crinolines and a June Cleaver-style apron. But that’s part of the fun of the book.

In her introduction, Linda, 50, describes how she got her start in baking with a Kenner Easy-Bake Oven. It was her favorite Christmas gift when she was 6.

The Easy-Bake was destroyed in a house fire when Linda was a young adult. Years later, Linda’s husband bought her another one for Christmas. When she opened the package, she said, “all the joy and love I’d felt from cooking and baking throughout my life came rushing back. I realized that my mission in life, my dream of changing the world one pie at a time and loving people through my food, all started from that little oven.”

While in high school, Linda made her first pie, coconut cream, for her boyfriend, John Hundt, who is now her husband.

Recipes and values to live by

After telling her personal story, Linda launches into the recipes. First there are recipes for crusts and toppings. One surprising detail: Linda recommends freezing the pie crust before filling and baking it. Another surprise: Linda doesn’t make double-crust pies. Many of her recipes call for a crumb topping. Other pies are topped with caramel, whipped cream or meringue or simple garnishes.

Then come more than 50 recipes for pies, each with a beautiful photo, and each with a story – about a person who made that particular pie or a person who really loved it.

The recipes are divided into chapters – not divided by the type of pie but by values Linda holds dear, qualities like Character, Faith, Gratitude and Joy.

All about love

In honor of Valentine’s Day, I’ll tell you what Linda has to say about Love, in her final chapter:

Finding love in all things in life is, I believe, truly life’s purpose. A heart bursting with love brings happiness to all who encounter it. Love fuels us, and when we find the “loveliness” in everyone, the world is simply sweeter. Hugs, deeds words, and kind gestures are all expressions of this most powerful virtue.

But baking a pie for someone may be the ultimate testament to love, as the love you bake in it will be crimped into every corner of the crust and suffused in every bite of filling!

So if you haven’t already bought that overpriced heart-shaped box of chocolates or ordered a dozen red roses, consider baking a pie for your sweetie this week. He or she will taste the love.

A true honey pie

I chose Linda’s West Virginia Honey Pie for this week’s recipe because the title is so appropriate for Valentine’s Day and because I’d never seen a honey pie before.

She created this recipe in memory of pleasant summer days spent with her grandparents at their farm in West Virginia. Her grandfather, a retired coal miner, enjoyed hunting, vegetable gardening and caring for bees.

Her grandmother would make pans of cornbread that Linda would drown with Grandpa’s golden wildflower honey. “My daddy always claimed that we all should work as hard as honeybees, as he too kept bees as a teenager during World War II,” Linda said.

(Come back next week for another Sweetie-Licious recipe in honor of President’s Day.)