Last weekend W. brought home the first oyster mushroom of the year. A little one with a thick stem, a little soggy from spring rain but still promising. We ate it in an omelet, and it spurs us to find more. But today we woke up to snow. O. Alas.
Consolation: We go to Pie Town—in spirit, at least. That’s Pie Town, New Mexico, on the Continental Divide.
I was coming from Show Low, Arizona, one day on my motorcycle trip in November. I peered at the map to see my route; I was planning to cut south, because there was snow on the ground where I was and I just couldn’t get warm. But there in the sparsest part of the map, past the border in New Mexico, there was a dot labeled Pie Town.
Pie Town has two competing pie restaurants, and I chose the Daily Pie Cafe, which is on the right if you’re coming from Arizona, and by far the more famous. I was wearing every layer I had, so it took me a while to peel down. I ate two pieces of pie, the custard and the New Mexico green-chile pine-nut apple pie, a specialty of theirs, which I had learned about at the gas station some miles before by asking which kind of pie was the local favorite. I regretted only that the pieces were not as large as I would have liked.
I offered just such an apple pie for a donation pledge during my radio show at WORT-FM last week, and was delighted to find the recipe online, at the Daily Pie’s website. Technically it doesn’t call for charring fresh jalapenos, but why waste an opportunity to have fun with open flames?
Madison Forager 