Everything Moon Pie
Mom with Salisbury Cathedral behind her. Mom and Dad rented a flat in Salisbury for something like 5 summers. Great town!
Mom next to some English looking body of water. If I were to guess I’d say the River Cam near Grantchester?
Mom and Dad shared a love choral music with their British friends the Clares.. Here they are with their dear friend Geoff at the Three Choirs Festival in 2016. The photo was taken by Sue Clare.
One of my favorites. Mom and Dad in England. I love her skirt. Lady had style!
Dad and Mom with Margaret Thatcher.
Me on our balcony in Italy. Summer 1988.
Me at The Winding Stair, my favorite restaurant in Dublin. 2018.
Me being chased by a bear at The Liquor Rooms, a circus themed basement bar in Dublin. 2018.
Elisabeth sent us this selfie when she finally got to Newfoundland to see Mom after she was airlifted off the QM2. I think they both look EXUBERANT but I bet my sister would like for me to state that she had been traveling for 24 hours. I love this photo.
There’s a lunar eclipse tonight. My daughter just told me that she plans to wake up at 4am to check it out. Not wanting her to be alone, I told her to wake me up. [With sleep as my top commodity, I secretly hope she sleeps through it.] I remember my Mom waking me and my sister for some sort of eclipse when we were little. She bundled us up in our polyester bathrobes and hustled us out to sit on top of the Chevy Citation, all three of us gazing up at the sky. I don’t actually remember seeing the eclipse or whatever we were looking for, I just remember feeling cozy and like I was doing something special with my Mom. Dad was nowhere to be found. He, like me, digs sleeping. [After writing this I think I may have convinced myself to wake my daughter up at 4am.]
My daughter is in the process of applying to colleges. It’s becoming really apparent that time is fleeting. This could be our last eclipse. We just had our last ACL fest and our last Halloween …. we’re running through the traditions one by one in this final year.
I was just in Maine winterizing our house and I got to talking with my new friend, Marc, about Newfoundland. A few summers ago he took road trip there. Marc said that if I multiplied everything I liked about Maine times ten I would have Newfoundland. Funny, I never thought one way or another about Newfoundland until 4 years ago when my mother was life-flighted there from the Queen Mary 2 when her heart went bananas. I wasn’t able to get to Newfoundland to see Mom, I had to wait to connect with her in North Carolina. Fortunately, my sister booked herself on a flight to St. John’s and was able to beat my father there (he had to finish the trans-Atlantic crossing and fly there from New York). So, my Newfoundland stories are really theirs. Mom was flown to the Health Science Centre in St. John’s and was booked into an old fashioned hospital ward with three other women. These women and their families became Mom’s surrogate families while she was waiting in the hospital alone, recently informed of her terminal diagnosis. When Elisabeth and Dad arrived, they were absorbed into this welcoming community as well. My sister keeps in touch with some of these Newfoundlanders via Facebook. She describes them as ‘salt of the earth’ good people. Since 2018 some have passed on, like Mom. Others still check in from time to time. I find myself wanting to go to Newfoundland just to walk in the footsteps where the rest of my family have been. It’s strange to be the only one not privy to that experience, NOT that it was all roses. It, in fact, sounded really hard: lots of red tape, lots of waiting, and also everyone trying to wrap their heads around the fact that Mom was dying. By the time Elisabeth and Dad made it to Carolina Meadows after a long day of traveling on the air ambulance with Mom, they basically said, “tag, you’re it” to me and went to the pub for some much needed drinks and dinner. Fair enough.
So, I hope to get to Newfoundland soon. Marc tells me that he just kept going further and further in and at some point the people basically were Irish. Now, that’s speaking MY language. I did an artists residency in Ireland in September 2018, just weeks before Mom’s decline. Ireland is my happy place. Partially, I think it’s just a knee jerk reaction to my parents being such Anglophiles. My sister still jokes that my reaction to her suggesting that I move near her in Seattle was for me to say “I need my own region”. OUCH. So, when your parents have a large road map of England with everywhere they have been meticulously marked in ballpoint pen, it feels pretty punk rock to be Team Ireland.
However, beyond that, I really jibe with the Irish. First of all, I have red hair. (Thanks, L’Oreal!) And, second, I actually am a good bit Irish. My paternal grandmother, Alice Greene’s family were the “Dennys” from Cork. I actually brought this up when I was in Ireland, hoping to get some sort of shortcut to citizenship. (That did not work.) But, this statement did illicit a lot of, “The Dennys from Cork?! They are the Sausage Kings of Ireland!!”. (Apparently the Dennys are the Jimmy Deans of the place.) Who knew?! Being a long time vegetarian this doesn’t do much for me, but it does feed into my theory that the “Reeds need smoke”. What are the odds that my Dad, a descendant of the sausage kings, would end up writing about Barbecue?
The summer after Mom died my daughter and I accompanied my father on the QM2 for his first visit to England without Mom. We didn’t want him to travel alone. Upon landing Dad went to London and Luca and I broke off to do our own thing. We hit up Hamburg and Copenhagen before landing in Ireland for a week. We connected with several of my friends from my residency (because Irish people are warm and amazing!), one of whom was my friend Sarah who had recently relocated to the West. We visited her in County Clare. Sarah took us for a walk to the local St. Brigid’s Well. I didn’t know much about St. Brigid. But, apparently, in Irish folklore, Brigid is the goddess of higher ground, higher learning, and higher consciousness. (Sounds like Mom.) What was super special about this place were the thousands of photographs, mementos, pieces of clothing, and rosaries sprinkled around the well in honor of the departed. At that time I was so disassociated from my grief that I thought, “well, this place is cool but I wonder why Sarah brought me here?”. Duh. I realized later that - of course - my mother had just died and here was a shrine to grief in Sarah’s small town. What a good friend. I recently read a Saul Bellow quote, “Losing a parent is something like driving through a plate-glass window. You didn’t know it was there until it shattered, and then for years to come you’re picking up the pieces.” It took me years to feel the full loss of Mom and I still feel like I’m picking up the pieces.
This St. Brigid’s well in rural Ireland reminded me of an experience at a different European body of water. Many, many years before that 2019 trip to Ireland, my family spent about a month in the summer of 1988 in a little Italian village about an hour outside of Venice. We did a lot of driving around in an uncomfortable Fiat. One day, we happened to see a waterfall cascading down some rocks just next to the highway. We pulled over to marvel at it. An older Italian lady was there as well and we took her photo. When we got home to North Carolina and developed our film we were charmed to find a cute photo of this beaming, unknown lady. Well, she wasn’t going to be unknown for long! Mom got to work looking at her map, trying to identify the town closest to the waterfall. She printed the photo postcard sized, wrote something in clunky Italian on the back, slapped on a bunch of stamps and sent it to the town’s post office.. And, you know what? I’ll be damned if they didn’t find the lady in the photo and give her the picture. She wrote us a thank you note! You see, things did happen pre-internet, they were just REALLY HARD.
In honor of tonight’s moon, I’m giving you multiple Moon Pie recipes. (To the uninitiated, Moon Pies are a Southern treat. Very stale thin cake layer with marshmallow topping covered in cheap chocolate. Barf.). I was shocked to find so many configurations of this disgusting Southern treat in Mom’s files. Sounds like you may need to order Moon Pies in bulk to try them all – good luck regulating your blood sugar!
(On a side note, when we used to go to the lake when I was a kid we would always stop at the same convenience store. Dad would tell us that we could either get a Moon Pie or a Little Debbie Oatmeal Creme Pie. That was it. In a whole store full of goodies, those were the only two choices because Dad was paying. Welcome to my childhood. ha ha.)
MOON PIE BROWNIES
3 Moon pies; (any flavor)
Brownie mix
Spray the bottom of a 13" x 9" glass baking dish with a non-stick cooking spray. Line the bottom of the dish with chopped Moon Pie®s Pour your brownie mix on top of the Moon Pie®s Bake according to brownie mix directions.
BANANA SPLIT MOON PIE
1 Chilled banana moon pie.
1 Banana
Chocolate syrup
Ice cream
Split your chilled Moon Pie. Place thin slices of bananas on both sides.. Place them on a plate and cover with a thin coat of chocolate. Sprinkle with nuts and add a cherry to each half.
MOON PIE HOMEMADE ICE CREAM
1 quart Whipping cream
1 quart + 3 cups whole milk
12 Egg yolks
4 tablespoon Vanilla
3 cup Sugar
2 teaspoon Salt
4 Moon pies; up to 8
Scald milk in a large 6 quart saucepan. In a large bowl, beat together egg yolks and salt. Add about 3 cups of the hot milk to the egg yolks slowly while stirring constantly. Then return this mixture to the milk in the pan. Add sugar and keep stirring while cooking at medium heat. When mixture coats the spoon or just starts to boil, remove from heat. In most cases, the mix will be lumpy. Don't worry. Just remember to strain out the lumps when you pour it into the canister. Add chopped Moon Pie®s and freeze.
STRAWBERRY MOON PIE SHORTCAKE
1 vanilla Moon Pie
Strawberries with juice
Whipped cream
Place Moon Pie in a bowl. Use a fork to poke some holes in the Moon Pie to let the juice soak in. Cover with Moon Pie with the strawberries and juice, then add some whipped cream. Let sit for five minutes, then eat!
PEANUT BUTTER MOON PIE
1 Moon Pie (any flavor desired)
3 tablespoons peanut butter (smooth or crunchy)
Chill the Moon Pie for several hours in the refrigerator.
Slice through the marshmallow and spread peanut butter between layers. Put the top back on the Moon Pie and enjoy.
HOT FUDGE MOON PIE
1 Chocolate Moon Pie
2 Scoops of Vanilla Ice Cream
3 Tablespoons of Chocolate Syrup
Place Moon Pie in Microwave safe bowl. Microwave on high for 15 seconds or until ...
Top with Ice Cream and Chocolate Syrup
TURTLE MOON PIE
1 Chilled moon pie; (any flavor)
Caramel sauce
Hot fudge sauce
Chopped nuts
Split your chilled Moon Pie®. Pour hot caramel sauce on the top of pie. Also, pour hot fudge sauce on the top of pie. Sprinkle with nuts (preferably pecans)
MOON PIE BIENVILLE
12 moon pies, crumbled (chocolate, vanilla or banana)
1 large box vanilla instant pudding
1 1/2 cups milk
1 8-ounce package cream cheese, softened
1 12-ounce whipped cream or French vanilla Cool Whip
1 cup nuts, chopped
2 bananas, chopped (optional)
Place crumbled moon pies on bottom of large casserole or trifle bowl. Mix pudding mix made to directions but using 1 1//2 cups milk instead of 1 as recommended on pudding package. Fold in cream cheese and whipped cream and spread on top of moon pie mixture. Sprinkle nuts over the cream. Layer the remaining ingredients, adding sliced bananas, if desired. Melted chocolate may be drizzled over top of finished dish for extra flavoring. Refrigerate until time to serve. Serves 12.
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