No crust.

Yes, a sacrilege, but better than the hot oven! Instead, cook the lovely peaches, and serve over the finest vanilla ice cream you can find! Summer pleasure, ahhhh.

(Cinnamon ice cream is even BETTER with the lovely cooked peaches, but rather harder to find.)

But then again, I am a total bread/starch fiend, so that might be why.

I hope, at some point, you will try a Natchitoches (NACK-uh-tish) [Louisiana] savory, spicy meat pie; with real, giblet-based, dirty rice on the side.

They won’t ever replace a steak - but then, they aren’t meant to, either.

I do encourage Mr. Henry to investigate some of the ancestors of today’s cuisine; there are wonderful recipes to be found amongst many countries. Modern French cooking was first codified in the 17th century, and it is a delicious tribute to the past to prepare the same kind of meal that our forebears might have had on the original Fourth of July*. I have a sentimental fondness for medieval cooking, and it is interesting to see how closely connected it is in many ways to Middle Eastern cooking. Plus there is the great challenge: how to cook meals that are filling and tasty that rely on neither the potato, the tomato, nor the noodle!

*The date is close enough for government work.

Yummy.

Now I just need to decide if it’s too darn hot today to make crust because last night my neighbor sent over some gorgeous fresh peaches just picked from her mother’s tree and I want pie.

Mr. Henry, these are the questions that keep me up at night - very literally. On my bedside table, in my stack of current reading, I have a food history reference book, right next to a history of the English language (next to an art history book). The day I figure out just how all of those stories fit together…well, I just don’t know what I’ll do then. I guess I’ll have to find something else to think about.

Then again, I did most of my early cooking as a youngster out of King Richard’s cookbook, and I find meat pies a perfectly acceptable food form. They won’t ever replace a steak - but then, they aren’t meant too, either.