Pumpkin Chiffon Pie & Pecan Pie — Dale Knows How To Host

Mom always set a gorgeous table with her Wedgwood Florentine. (I’ve always coveted that china!)

This was Christmas dinner judging by the beads, but Christmas and Thanksgiving menus and traditions were very similar at my house. Elisabeth and her former boyfriend, Kim, on the left. Me and my Nonnie on the right. Mom looking glorious in the center! This was taken at the Mallette St. house in Chapel Hill, NC. 1994.

Another year / another celebration. Xmas 1993. I like how it looks like Dad he’s balancing a candle on his head. Parlor trick! (I can light a cigarette lighter with my toes.)

Me DIGGING IN to a holiday dinner. Xmas 1997. Note, Dad in the mirror reflection.

Me and Mom at my Aunt Jane’s house in Charlottesville, VA. Thanksgiving 1995. I came down from NYC to meet my parents.

Me and Mom with my cousins Reed & Mariah. Charlottesville, VA 1995.

THE MOST HILLBILLY PHOTO YOU ARE GONNA SEE OF THE REED FAMILY.
We had a beautiful piece of land, something like 17 acres on a point jutting out into Lake Hyco in NC that we PLOPPED a mobile home up on cinder blocks onto. Ha ha. We never slept there, it was just for changing clothes, using the bathroom, and making lunch. This was early on before we built a big screen porch. I’m in the door leaning on a part of the boat hoist. Dad with his omnipresent pipe, Elisabeth as a teen, and Mom looking adorable.

Mom being a goofball in our inner tube on our trashy boat on Lake Hyco in NC.

The Reed family semi-naked classing it up at some park in England. 1978.

Dad wasn’t mean to ALL animals. Here is our cat, Rosie. She had a nice life.

What happens when you don’t go home to your Mom’s classy Thanksgiving dinner? Thanksgiving with some sweaty dudes at Oberlin, 1990. This was the living room of my sister’s boyfriend’s house. That carpet! ha ha.

“Hillbilly bone ba ba ba ba bone!” Dad used to play this for me every time I came home. “Have you heard Hillbilly Bone?!” “Yes I have, Dad.” “Well, let’s hear it AGAIN!”

And if you haven’t seen Blake Shelton try eating sushi with Jimmy Fallon do yourself a favor and watch this. “Can we have some more riiiiice wiiiiiine?!”

I was at brunch with some girlfriends the other day and our hipster waitress had these very odd, obvious freckles tattooed on her face. Apparently, this is trending. I remarked that the tattooed freckles looked like the ones that we used to draw on our faces with a marker for our Elementary School’s “Hillbilly Day” and my friends were like, “Um, excuse me, WHAT?!!” You see, growing up in California and Nebraska, they missed out on Hillbilly Day at school.

Hillbilly Day, to those not from the Carolinas, was celebrated once a year. We would wear overalls or the best redneck costume we could find to school. Extra points for blacked out teeth or drawn on freckles. (Thank God this was before the internet.) In the afternoon, we would all gather on the school’s black top to square dance. Each grade learned a dance, for instance the 4th graders might do the Virginia Reel while the 2nd graders might Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round an Old Oak Tree. All I know is that it got me out of being in that antiseptic green cinder block classroom for a whole afternoon so I would do whatever they asked of me.

When my daughter was one I got the opportunity to visit my friend Catherine in Mexico for a long weekend. Surprisingly, Catherine’s family is from East Tennessee as well. And, EVEN MORE SURPRISINGLY, her grandparents rented their first apartment from my grandparents. (We discovered this when I met Catherine’s grandmother in East Texas and we started chatting.) What are the odds that I would have find this connection with my Houston drinking buddy? Anyway, Catherine had been in Mexico for a while when I visited. She started a tourism magazine in the Ixtapa / Zihuatanejo area. One night we took her young local graphic designer and his girlfriend out to dinner and Catherine and I started talking about East Tennessee. The term “hillbilly” came up. This word was received by the young Mexicans with blank stares. They hadn’t heard it before. So, I sat back and enjoyed the show watching Catherine trying to communicate in Spanish, English, and mime what she thought would convey the hillbilly message! (Weird teeth, jugs of moonshine, she tried it all….). Catherine and I were reduced to tears. The designer still didn’t really get it but I think he just desperately wanted her to stop so he pretended that he did.

Speaking of redneck, I just gave my dad a hard time when I saw him in California about his treatment of the beaver community on Lake Hyco in the 80s. The beavers were binge eating the trees on our property and Dad took offense to this. His solution? He painted the trees (well, at least as far up as the beavers could reach) with tar. Yup, tar. Not good for the trees and looked like crap, but that showed those beavers who was boss! Dad had a similar stand off with some pesky geese while he hunkered down at the Reed family farm in East Tennessee in early Covid. I can’t remember his solution to that problem but it probably involved something about as high rent as tar. ha ha.

I’m realizing this post is incredibly un-PC with all of this talk of hillbillies and environmental distress. But, to be clear, there actually is a pro-hillbilly movement (as evidenced by Blake Shelton’s “Hillbilly Bone” song featured above). And, as for the beavers and geese? Well they’re still alive, just maybe gnawing on something a bit softer these days.

This post isn’t much about Mom per se. She certainly studied hillbillies and could cook like the best of them, but she was always pretty classy. The first recipe I’m sharing with you today is for her Pumpkin Chiffon Pie, a staple at our holiday gatherings. With its whipped egg whites it is lighter and fluffier than your average dense pumpkin pie. Heaven. And, I’m also sharing a standard pecan pie recipe as well. I will be making both for Thursday. Mom always served her pies with REAL whipped cream. The recipe was simple: a small carton of heavy whipping cream, 1 Tbsp sugar, 1 tsp vanilla. Put all 3 ingredients in the food processor and whip til firm. Do not over-whip, as there is no coming back from that. Enjoy and happy Thanksgiving!

PUMPKIN CHIFFON PIE

Makes one 9” pie.
(If you’re worried about salmonella from the raw egg white buy pasteurized eggs in the shell. The yolks get cooked anyway.)

Prepare a baked pie shell.
Soak 1 tbsp gelatine in ¼ c. cold water
In top pan of double boiler, beat slightly: 3 egg yolks

Add:
½ c. sugar
1 ¼ c. canned pumpkin
½ c. milk
¼ tsp. salt
½ tsp. cinnamon
½ tsp nutmeg

Cook and stir these ingredients over hot water until they are thick. Stir in the gelatine until it is dissolved.
Cool the mixture in the refrigerator.
Whip until stiff: 3 egg whites
¼ tsp salt
While beating, gradually add: ½ c. sugar.
When the pumpkin begins to set, fold in the egg whites.
Fill the pie shell.
Chill for several hours.
Best with whipped cream.

CLASSIC PECAN PIE
(text lifted from one of Mom & Dad’s books, I think)

Here’s the recipe, straight from the back of a bottle of Karo Syrup, which is probably where most folks get their recipes too. They say to use margarine, which is heresy, so we’ve changed it. Some folks use brown sugar and dark Karo, some use white sugar and light Karo, some folks only use 2 eggs, some use 4. You can mix and match and still come up with something pretty good. We add a tablespoon of cornmeal, for the crunch.

3 eggs, slightly beaten
1 cup light or dark corn syrup
1 cup sugar
2 Tbsp. butter, melted
1 tsp. vanilla
1 ½ cups pecans
1 unbaked 9” pie crust

In a large bowl combine the first 5 ingredients until well blended. Stir in pecans. Pour into pie crust. Bake in a 350° F oven 50 to 60 minutes or until knife inserted halfway between center and edge comes out clean. Cool. Serves 8.