Menage à Trois Bingo

Three fabulous women among our framily have birthdays in March: tempesttea, reannon, and lavendargrrl. To celebrate, Tammie put together the Triple Birthday Pie and Cider Crawl. First stop was to be PieTown Stompin Grounds in Alton IL, as seen on Feasting on Asphalt. Sadly, we had just reached my favorite bridge when we got a call from sungazing. "Um, we're standing outside the PieTown and it's closed. People inside doing renovation."

So we went directly to the second stop, Cane Bottom My Just Desserts, a mile or so down the road. This in itself was already a modification from the original plan, as we had intended to visit the Elsah location but it had closed. However, Cane Bottom, or My Just Desserts, or whatever you call it, turned out to be a lovely little place in the first floor of what appeared to be a converted old house. They were a little taken aback to be descended upon by a group of fourteen people, but were quite friendly and accommodating all the same.

The menu is a chalkboard. The left side lists all the currently-available pies, and the righthand side lists sandwiches and soups and such. Our waitress warned us that we should order our pie at the same time as our food, as they erase items from the board willy-nilly.

The day's special soup was "Springtime Asparagus", and as big asparagus fans Tammie and I had to have that. Choosing a pie was a bit more difficult, involving much negotiation. We ended up ordering the "Mrs. Ledbetter": a baked chocolate pie with coconut and pecans, akin in some ways to a German Chocolate cake and in others to a pecan pie.

The soup was a delightful surprise: it was not creamy in any way, but instead had asparagus and rice in a light broth. And the pie was also wonderful: thick chocolate filling laced with coconut and pecan topping. My only quibble might be with the crust: a touch on the hard side and not as flaky as I might like.

Many items disappeared from the board while we ate and even while we ordered, but toward the end a new item jumped on: Radically Cherry. So tempesttea, lavendargrrl and I shared a piece of that as well. It had the most delicate lattice top I've ever seen on a pie, and the filling was lusciously tart.

Next we went sightseeing. At Jamie's suggestion, we visited the Robert Wadlow statue and took lots of pictures there.

Then we drove up the Great River Road to Pere Marquette State Park, stopping here and there for more pictures; none of mine are worth sharing. I did get a few decent shots at the park, though. The Mississippi is a couple feet above flood stage right now.

After hanging out at the park and its lodge for a couple hours, we headed back down the river to the Rotten Apple for dinner and the aforementioned cider. Between the eight of us who remained (various people having left earlier in the day), we tried several of the available ciders. The universal favorites were Woodchuck Dark and Dry and Wyder's Raspberry Cider.

Food was quite the tasty. I ordered us an appetizer of Pig Wings (barbecued pork shanks) and they were very quickly made to disappear. Hush puppies were almost as big a hit, though Tammie complained that hers was underdone; everyone else seemed to have no such issue. Tammie and I ordered the crab cake appetizer as a meal, and she supplemented hers with Cream Cheese Grits with Tasso Gravy (none for me, thanks, I am not a grits fan) and I supplemented mine with a cup of the thickest gumbo I may have ever seen. Chicken and andouille, this one, with nary a sea critter to be found, but it was quite zingy and tasty and I ate every speck.

We all agree that the Rotten Apple should be added to the go-again restaurant list, though it may not be a common destination given the distance.

I said in my last post that I would be making a pie this weekend, and so I did. It wasn't blackberry, though. Tammie and I went to the Tower Grove Farmers' Market with Lenora, and I bought a bag of the season's first local peaches. I thought I might invent a blackberry-peach pie (and I may yet do that), but Tammie said I'd been talking up Mom's Peach-a-berry (peach, bing cherry, blueberry) pie for so long and would I please make one of those first. The blackberries could remain in the freezer a little longer.

So between blueberries from Aldi, cherries from Schnucks, the farm peaches, and the freezer vodka, I made this, Saturday night:



That's the last remaining piece.

Thursday night, we went to Left Bank Books to hear Tristan Taormino read from her new book, Opening Up: a guide to creating and sustaining open relationships. I don't quite know what I expected her to be like, but whatever it was, she was unlike it. The book, which I have now already read, is a very good and basic guide to different kinds of polyamorous relationships. Of the three poly guidebooks we have so far, it is the one I'd feel most comfortable giving to a poly newbie or a curious non-poly person. There were not too many things in it that were new to me, but there are some good resources all-in-one-place for legal and practical issues. We've already had one request to borrow it.

After the reading, we went across the street to Llywellyn's for dinner. The chicken salad sandwich was excellent, and after dinner Tammie looked at me and asked, "Shall we see whether they have some pie-like substance?" Sure enough, while they didn't have pie per se, they had cherry cobbler.

Now, Tammie and I have a long-running but amicable dispute over what the word "cobbler" means. In her family and her traditions, it's a one-crust pie: pie filling in a pan with a standard pie crust sealed over the top and baked. Like this:

In mine, it's different: the pie filling in a pan is the same, but instead of pie crust it is topped with biscuity globs of dough that are usually (in my own baking) flavored with a bit of cinnamon. Like this:

Apparently the "cobbler" dispute goes beyond House Rivendell, because both of those images show up on the first page of results in the Google image search "cobbler".

In any case, Llywellyn's cobbler was of the second sort, and a very good example of it indeed. The biscuity globs were spicy and flavorful (nutmeg and cloves) and contained chunks of pecans. The cherry filling was just the right blend of tart and sweet, and if it had ever known the inside of a can I'll eat my lime-green sparkly fedora.

Verdict: delicious, and a welcome entry in the pie and near-pie realm.

In emulation of beckyzoole's ReubenQuest, I bring you PieQuest.

I have mentioned here before that I am a big fan of pie. All of us here at Rivendell are, to tell the truth. But after the lamentable demise of Tippin's and the continued absence of Poppin' Fresh aka Baker's Square, a good pie is hard to find. (A hard pie is NOT good to find, in case you were wondering.)

We've tried a few places; diners and family restaurants seem to have pie available more often than more formal (or more expensive) locations. Tonight, lavendargrrl and I went to Uncle Bill's in the hopes that they might serve pie. And indeed, they do. "Pie of the day" it says on the menu.

Today, at least, that translated into two varieties: apple and cherry. We each ordered cherry. They looked storebought, but were served hot, mine with a scoop of vanilla ice cream. The cherries were nice and tart, but there was more glaze than cherries. I continue to struggle to describe the crust. "Bready" is the best I could do. It wasn't doughy, it was cooked quite done, but did not have that characteristic flaky goodness that true pie pastry must have.

I can't even imagine how to achieve the consistency their crust had. Perhaps by melting the butter/shortening into the flour or creaming it as for cookies, rather than cutting it in and leaving small shortening pellets in the flour mixture.

Rating: Adequate.

I think we'll keep trying, but honestly, it would really serve us all better if I'd just bake more pies myself. More varieties available. Better crust. Fresher. I was reminiscing to Tammie about the lovely peach-blueberry-bing cherry pie my mother used to make, and the Hawaiian Strawberry, and and and...And I can do just as well at pie making as she does, but I--as we have previously established--am a lazy ass.