Cora Stoppert has been having a bit of trouble with carpal tunnel syndrome, and went off to the surgeon for some repairs. The first hand is done. “I can knit again,” she announced cheerfully, “but I don’t have the strength to cut up rutabagas for pasties.”
Well, Cora, I told her, I can cut up rutabagas all day if you’ll teach me how to make pasties. Yesterday I presented myself at the appointed time, bearing soup and bread for our lunch. Cora had already been to the market for supplies. She had already chopped five pounds of potatoes and quantities of onions, layered those with four pounds of ground beef, sprinkled salt and pepper on each layer and mixed it all together in a special bowl she keeps for this very purpose. It’s a good thing I came over to help her out, eh?
Having put in a full morning’s work, Cora was glad to sit down for a moment to eat lunch. We discussed the merits of various purveyors of fresh vegetables and sides of beef, the shockingly low level of the Bay, and other news of the day. (There are two sets of new year-round neighbors, one at her end of the circle and one at mine. This is very encouraging.) But we didn’t dilly-dally. The rutabagas lay in wait.
Now I do not know if you have ever undertaken to chop rutabagas, but I can tell you that it is not a job for the fainthearted. They are huge things, and hard as maple. It’s good to have the right equipment. Cora has the right equipment.
The job got done, and no bloggers were injured in the making of this post. It wasn’t pretty, but the result was a satisfactory quantity of chopped rutabaga that got mixed into the big bowl and ended up looking pretty much like that first photo up there except that there was more stuff in the bowl. Take my word for it.
As we chopped and mixed Cora told me about growing up in a coal-mining town on Cape Breton Island in Nova Scotia. She loves the ocean—the sound of it, the scent of it, the buoyant lift of salt water. She claims she fell into the freshwater reservoir one time and nearly drowned when she sank instead of bobbing along at the surface. She remembers running down to meet the lobster boats. She and her brother could fill a net bag with lobsters for a dollar. The fishermen were kind, she muses.
I paid close attention as she made the dough for the first four pasties. Four cups of flour, one cup of Crisco, a dab of salt and the right amount of water to make it hold together. Cora kept up a running commentary on the proper consistency of dough and the importance of adding water a bit at a time. (She made me roll out the next batch. “You know how to do this,” she said, and oddly enough she was right.)
We talked about the stuff we loved to do when we were kids growing up in the outdoors, where the best toys were toboggans and skates and hills and trees and water. We swapped stories about raising sons and the things our fathers and mothers knew how to do. We remembered hard decisions made as a loved one lay dying. The choices we do not know we will have to make until they confront us. The ways that families—and communities—come together and fly apart. We made pasties.
We’re not making piecrust here, you know. Pasties are sturdier fare, and the crust has to hold up. Roll it out, make a good pile of filling on the front part, bring the back part over it and tuck it in tenderly. Trim off the extra dough. Nobody will eat that anyway. Ease the bottom edge up over the top bit, rolling it as you go, so that it looks like a little braid. Do not forget to grease the crust with Crisco. Be sure to make vents in the top. (When you reheat the pasty you must put a little hot water in each vent. It will make the pasty just right.) Bake the pasties until they’re done.
While the first batch is baking, make more. Tell stories about learning to be a grownup by watching what the grownups did, about dealing with sorrows and joys and the way they can come all mixed together. Wash the big metal bowl and the blue mixing bowl and the knives and the chopping blocks and the counter.
We made sixteen pasties, and wrapped them up for the freezer. We sang a little chorus of “Sixteen pasties” to the tune of “Sixteen Candles.” Everything was clean and tidy and the whole house smelled good. It was after 8:00 pm, time to go home. Off I went with three enormous pasties and a whole new skill.
Cora’s son Steve is coming out next week when she will have surgery on the second hand. He’ll make her laugh and sharpen all those knives and cook dinner and fix a hundred things around the house. He’ll eat some of the pasties, and take some home with him, too. He will reheat them, not forgetting to put a little hot water in each vent, and they will taste really good. They are full of stories.
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Now before you send me your recipe for pasties—and I know you will, nothing engenders more opinions in Michigan than pasty preferences—I want you to know that this is the way Cora Stoppert makes pasties, and we’re stickin’ to it. Her late husband Paul, who grew up in the Upper Peninsula, was a big fan of these very pasties. I am a big fan of these very pasties. We have had other pasties and found them perfectly delicious, too. It is astonishing how delicious a hot pasty can be on a cold rainy day. Any time you want me to chop rutabagas for your version of pasties just give me a call. I will borrow Cora’s knives and be right over.
wendiwoot
October 4, 2012
I have missed your stories Gerry. And OMG…those pasties look soooo good! Will you teach me how to make them someday?
Gerry
October 4, 2012
Me?? Teach the maker of chicken pot pie to make something in the food category? Life is full of the most astonishing surprises. I will be happy to make my best effort.
Martha
October 4, 2012
I’m sitting here listening to my neighbor’s chainsaw working on some downed timber. I’m eating Mexican food. Yes, AT the computer. The jewel-like leaves are raining down through the wind. And your baking smells good in my house. I’m a cabbage roll person myself (must be the German) and your pasties make me think of rolling up some warm fragrant things for the next meal.
Thanks for inviting me into your friend’s kitchen. Wish I was there.
Oh, and check my blog to see how low Green Bay is.
Gerry
October 4, 2012
I’m glad you enjoyed the visit to Cora’s kitchen. I am fond of going there myself.
I am also fond of cabbage rolls. They are a lot of trouble to make, though, especially for just one person. I went looking for the recipe I used to use and can’t find it. I remember the stuffing had rice and nutmeg in it, and there was a pretty tomato sauce to spoon over the finished rolls.
I also eat supper at the computer every now and then. There are lots of nows and thens in my life. Tonight it’s red pepper cream soup with crackers. I ate dessert first – cranberry walnut bread. This does not bode well for my winter figure.
I went and looked at Green Bay. GACK. It’s just as if someone pulled the plug, isn’t it.
Claire
October 4, 2012
Glad you’re back! Those pasties look delicious.
Gerry
October 4, 2012
Thank you. They are an excellent treat.
Dawn
October 4, 2012
This is such a good story. A story about stories. And you made us all wish we had been there to help (and to eat and to share our own stories.) I think it’s rare these days when two people can take that kind of time and care and share so much. We were lucky that you shared it with us.
Gerry
October 4, 2012
Thank you very much, Dawn. I think cooking together – and probably things like quilting and threshing and barnraising together, too – are activities that lend themselves to storytelling. There’s something useful to do, something to think about besides the inside of our own heads. It seems to clear the static.
shoreacres
October 4, 2012
Many of the Welsh miners in Iowa carried pasties into the coal mines. We never ate them, being a Swedish family, but I had a Welsh uncle whose dad mined, and he always was nagging my aunt for pasties!
It’s amazing how many cultures have a similar food. Argentinian and Mexican empanadas, fried fruit pies from the Texas panhandle, Natchitoches meat pies from Louisiana. I’m convinced they all sprang from a deep, human desire to have More Crust!
Gerry
October 4, 2012
Cornish miners brought the pasty to the U.P., where everyone else was quick to adopt it. The Finns, in particular, have made it their own, but “it’s a Michigan thing” as surely as euchre and fish fries. We are a crusty bunch.
WOL
October 4, 2012
Gad! what a wonderful post to just rip right off, and without a net, too! Would I have liked to have been there, help chop and wash dishes? Not only ‘yes,’ but ‘heck, yes!’ You have put your figurative finger on an aspect of life that is fast vanishing from the world, and the world is a much poorer place because of it. “Modern” folks recoil in horror at something so time consuming and labor intensive as making your own pasties when you could just go to the store and buy something almost as good (NOT!) and cook them in the microwave in minutes. They are missing the whole point of the exercise. Your hands were making pastries, but your brains were engaged in examining issues and ideas as intense and profound as anything Frost ever wrote about in his beautiful Andrew Wyeth way. This is how kids used to learn about life. Now they learn about it from a television. No wonder the world is in such sad shape. As anybody with any sense knows, having friends over to help with making pastries, or quilting a quilt, or some other group activity is just a cover story for the real agenda: chewing the fat. Exchanging information, ideas, coping strategies and moral support for those having to deal with life in the real world. Brava!
Gerry
October 4, 2012
Thank you for the very nice comment. You’ll be glad to hear that all over Antrim County I see children growing up watching their parents do useful things, and learning as they watch. Not all the time of course–and I wouldn’t want to make pasties every day, either–but often enough that I am full of hope.
WOL
October 5, 2012
You know, this post would make a great short story — — like a sketch for a painting — it would practically write itself. All you’d have to do is tell it like it was — set it in that kitchen, among those articles of everyday life, with the task at hand, fictionalize those involved a tad, root the conversation in their (fictional) reality and let it trickle through the story. Has the potential to be a real sockdollager.
Gerry
October 5, 2012
I will take this under advisement. I must tell you, though, that for me nothing writes itself any more than the dishes wash themselves. I remember being fluent in my native tongue – but now the words fly away like autumn leaves swirling from the trees.
tootlepedal
October 5, 2012
When you have a moment, pop over here and do some pasties for me too please.
Gerry
October 5, 2012
I will indeed. I will even make enough that we can inveigle Dropscone to come over and make treacle scones. But there must be stories.
tootlepedal
October 5, 2012
There should be no shortage of those.
P.j. grath
October 5, 2012
So far in my life (still time to take more samples, I trust), Lehto’s pasties are my favorite, but I am more than willing to try Cora’s. MORE than willing! Would I have to make them? Well, you’ve given such a thorough account here, Gerry, including pictures, that it’s better than a cookbook, and maybe this winter I’ll try. Funny, I just looked at a map the other day and noticed Cape Breton Island. Isn’t that a strange coincidence? You and Cora did great work! I’d take one of those pasties over a lobster any day, too.
Gerry
October 5, 2012
I think we must start a movement toward communal pasty-making and cookie-baking and such. I’ve been giving a lot of thought to Martha’s cabbage rolls, too. And I have a friend who makes bagels at home.
Maryanne Jorgensen
October 5, 2012
I’d like to know the bagel maker. It seems I need one every day at least for a few more weeks. I’m happy to see your amazing stories again too.
Gerry
October 5, 2012
Hello Maryanne! Your name came up during the pasty-making. Cora was telling me Waswagin/Riccardi’s stories and I told her about your wedding reception being there, and that led to more stories and . . . so it goes.
The bagel maker is Margaret Learner over in Rapid City. She learned to make them at a workshop at the Alden Community Library if memory serves. They are excellent.
Dawn
October 5, 2012
You know, having a running partner is a lot like this…we talk nonstop about all sorts of things…for miles on end. But at the end we don’t have anything good to eat. Hmmm…have to rethink priorities.
Gerry
October 6, 2012
There are many kinds of nourishment.
Joss
October 6, 2012
They look like Cornish pasties to me. I think that would make a lovely supper for Saturday night. The boys are out karting all day and will come back cold, tired and hungry. They’re already tired and they’ve only just left. I could serve the home-made pasties with the last of last year’s green tomato chutney, and if there’s enough time I’ll make this year’s green tomato chutney too. That’s the rest of my day planned. Now to it!
Gerry
October 6, 2012
I am tickled that they look like Cornish pasties to you. I must take up the question of green tomato chutney with Cora – and with the farmers of Verdant Ground, too. That’s the sort of thing they’d do well. Your day sounds pretty well-planned.
flandrumhill
October 7, 2012
There’s no such thing as a bad recipe coming out of a Caper. Though I’ve made salmon pasties in the past, I’ll have to give Cora’s recipe a try once we’re over the ground beef e-coli scare north of the border.
Gerry
October 7, 2012
Salmon pasties! Now that is a shock to a Michiganian – but one that I would sample. (I gather that e-coli outbreak was traced to a single packing plant in Alberta – what a misery for everyone. The bacteria are winning.)
Louan Lechler
October 7, 2012
Gerry, On the day, you teach Wendy Woot, to make pasties, may I join you? I have my own knives and baking tools. I would love that.
Gerry
October 7, 2012
Of course. I think we must persuade Wendi Woot to have this shindig in her kitchen. It is a much better place than mine. For one thing, they do not keep spaniels over there.
Louan Lechler
October 7, 2012
It looks like cooking is a favorite blog subject, judging by the number of responding comments. What else do you know how to cook?
Gerry
October 7, 2012
Not much. Meat loaf. Roast chicken. Chocolate chip cookies. Pot roast. Salads. Sandwiches. Noodle kugel. That sinful pineapple casserole. Fortunately I also know how to steam vegetables and broil fish.
chris
October 9, 2012
I love U.P. pasties, L.P. pasties but have never made them…I have clipped recipes too.
might be a project i try in my leisure times this winter.
next time i see you, i will pick your brain.
Gerry
October 9, 2012
Slim pickin’s in there, but feel free to rummage around my attic any time.
I think pasty-making would be an outstanding winter project.