Grandma's Pot Pie

No Place Like Home genealogymatters.substack.com Storyteller Tuesday Challenge: HAPPY HOME #6 in My Family History Series

© Grandma’s house with her kitchen inside the bay window

When I was a little girl in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, my Grandma Longenecker made pot-pie and I helped make the dough, which reminded me of how much fun it felt to play with soft clay at school.

“Marian, bring me some milk now.” I opened the door of her Frigidaire and pulled out a two-quart jar of farm-fresh milk. My job was to measure and pour out a cup of milk, which she blended in her gray granite bowl with an uncooked scrambled egg with a pinch of salt.

© Grandma Fannie Martin Longenecker

I balled my hand into a fist and made a well in the flour as Grandma added the egg and milk mixture and worked it until it felt just like pie dough. The rolling pin came out next, and I got to dust it with more flour. Raising my flour-filled hand high over the cutting board, I made the flour fall like snow onto the rolling pin so the dough wouldn’t stick. The most fun part was cutting the shapeless doughy blob into blocks that looked like matching quilt pieces, like the ones she made at sewing circle.

Grandma had already cooked a small plucked hen in salt water to which she had added some dried tendrils of spicy saffron. These long curls imprinted deep yellow-orange lines into the chicken pieces, adding tang to the dish. Instantly, the anemic chicken looked more zesty with orange striations coloring its flesh. Now it was time to add the dough. Soon I’d be standing on a stool beside the stove with Grandma helping me place the square bits one by one with my thumb and forefinger into the boiling liquid. I loved to find a little space of bubbling chicken broth in the kettle and cover it over with a doughy square. I couldn’t wait until Grandma put the chicken potpie with fresh cabbage slaw on the dinner table - wunderbar.

She never used a recipe to make her magic. One day long after I left home, she wrote it out in pencil for me on an index card with her treasured handwriting. To this day it sits snugly in a hinged box along with Mother’s recipes.

© Marian’s News

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