Many years ago, way down south in LA (Lower Alabama), I acquired a deep appreciation for the delightful cultural practice of “Dinner on the Grounds.”
Now days, churches hold pristine “covered dish dinners” in an air-conditioned fellowship hall with store bought potato salad and KFC chicken. But back in the day, Dinner on the Grounds was literally on the grounds and nothing was store bought. Many churches had permanent outdoor tables and shelters—they were serious about Dinner on the Grounds.
It seems that we only have our “covered dish dinners” once or twice a year for a church picnic or other special event. Back in the day they didn’t need a special occasion to hold a Dinner on the Grounds, they held them frequently. But when Revival time rolled around or the annual Homecoming, that was when Dinner on the Grounds escalated from “good” to “Glorious!”
It was enough just to attend these fine outdoor feasts.
Most of the funeral directors were invited to every church for such occasions, and they never missed. But when you were the guest preacher; well, then you were treated like royalty.
Every church has their legendary cooks and each one has a special dish that is mandatory for the visiting preacher to sample. Whether it be chicken and dumplings, deviled eggs, squash casserole, fried chicken, banana pudding, chocolate pie, pecan pie or pound cake, I quickly learned that all I needed to do was step back and the ladies would bring the food to me.
You don’t see that as much anymore, but there are still a few legendary cooks who will bring their special dishes to the church picnic. And one of those was my wife, Joyce, who would always bring a pecan pie to every church meal.
Everyone knew about Joyce’s pecan pie. A few years ago, when the youth were raising money for a mission trip, Joyce’s pecan pie sold for several hundred dollars. She enjoyed telling that story.
We were eating out in Greensboro one night. The lady at the table next to ours was bragging about the fact that her cake brought $50 at her church auction. Joyce couldn’t wait. She interrupted them, looked at me and said, “Tell them how much my pecan pie brought at our church!”
The truth is that it was not Joyce’s pecan pie. It was my Aunt Ruth’s, my mother’s older sister.
Years ago, we traveled to Alabama for a family funeral.
Aunt Ruth brought a pecan pie to the house. When Joyce tasted the pie, she immediately asked Aunt Ruth for the recipe. Aunt Ruth said that she did not give out her recipe.
Joyce pleaded with her, telling her that she had never tasted a pecan pie so good. Finally, Aunt Ruth relented. She told Joyce that she would give her the recipe on one condition: that she never give the recipe to anyone else.
Joyce agreed and she was true to her promise. Through the years people have tried to get the recipe from Joyce, but she would never tell them.
“Aunt Ruth made me promise,” she would say. I would sometimes remind Joyce that Aunt Ruth had been dead for years, but it did not matter. A promise is a promise and Joyce always kept the promise.
Aunt Ruth sat down at a table in my mother’s house with an 8 ½ by 11 sheet of white paper and wrote the recipe from memory. Joyce kept the original manuscript in Aunt Ruth’s handwriting. She placed it in a plastic cover and always used it when making a pie. You could tell Aunt Ruth never used a recipe for the pecan pie. There were several ingredients that she was not sure how much she used. She wrote “2 or 3 tablespoons.” “1 or 1 ½ cups”.
One word that really dated my aunt was “Oleo.” Joyce knew that Oleo meant butter. Oleo was often used in older cookbooks. It was a substitute for butter made from vegetable oil that was less expensive. Oleo comes from the Latin word, oleum (oil).
Joyce had tweaked the recipe and added her own notes to clarify the inconsistencies, the largest one was the amount of time you baked the pie in a 350-degree oven. Aunt Ruth put 35 to 50 minutes. Joyce wrote 40 Mins. But she always checked it after 40 minutes and then cooked it another 2 to 3 minutes.
Anyone who knew Joyce quickly learned that if you asked for a piece of pi-KAHN pie, she would correct you and make you ask for PEE-can pie. The irony was that for Aunt Ruth and my mother, it was always pi-KAHN pie.
It did not take long for Joyce’s pecan pie to reach the legendary status of Minnie Banks’ chocolate pie. People would go to the dessert table first, to make sure they would get a piece of the rare delicacies.
As time went on, Joyce would bring her pie and place it on the dessert table. Then she would make her rounds to make sure certain people knew to go get a piece of the pie right now . . . they did . . . and the pie would be gone before the blessing.
But then Joyce started to do something that concerned me. She would bring her pecan pie to the church and hide it in the kitchen. Then she would tell certain people to meet her in the kitchen for a piece of the pie.
I told Joyce that she could not do that. “Everyone should have an equal chance to get a piece of the pie,” I said. But she didn’t pay any attention to me. It was not until later that I realized what was going on.
Part of dementia is paranoia. Joyce was afraid that something would happen to her pie, so she hid it in the kitchen. Her pecan pie was special. She wanted to protect it. It makes perfect sense now.
In her later years, Joyce started having trouble making the pie. One time she didn’t add salt. Another time she left out the vanilla. I started being in the kitchen with her, holding Aunt Ruth’s original recipe, to make sure all of the ingredients were added.
Gradually, she depended on me more and more; to measure the syrup, to beat the eggs, to add the sugar and flour. Soon, I was making the pie while Joyce watched with a blank stare.
We have a church picnic, “a covered dish,” the last Sunday of July. I plan to make one of Joyce’s pecan pies. I will carefully follow Aunt Ruth’s handwritten recipe, along with Joyce’s edits. I will use butter, not Oleo. I will bake it for 42 minutes. I promise not to hide it in the kitchen. But I will insist on one thing, that you pronounce it correctly---PEE-can, not pi-KAHN. Joyce never made a pi-KAHN pie.
