Read our October writing challenge winners
We're excited to announce the winners of our October writing challenge--and to let you read the winning stories.
Our challenge for October was to write a true essay or fiction short story based on Fall food. (Think: your grandmother's pumpkin pie, a favorite cup of hot chocolate at a local coffee shop, the experience of picking apples at an orchard. As always, we asked you to use your creativity and you came through!)
Our top three winners are:
1st place: Victoria Cole
2nd place: Rose Walker
3rd place: Sara Thornburgh
Congratulations, and enjoy their stories below.
(And now we're hungry for some pie!)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"Easy as Pie"
by Victoria Cole
“How hard could making a pie be?” Emily thought out loud. Emily was 14 years old and while she had helped her dad in the kitchen, she had never baked anything before. She walked over to the cookbooks her mom kept on the kitchen shelf and chose one titled, “Baking Made Easy.”
Emily sat back at the kitchen table and flipped the cover of the book. Turning to the table of contents, she scanned the list of pies. Since next week was Thanksgiving, she wanted to make a fall pie. She scanned the list of pies and found a recipe for pumpkin pie. She turned the pages to the recipe and scanned the ingredients and instructions. “This doesn’t sound too hard.” Emily jumped up and checked the kitchen to make sure they had all the ingredients.
Emily made a list of the needed ingredients and then hopped on her bike to go to the store. It was just down the road so her parents didn’t mind if she rode her bike there. Emily walked to the baking aisle. Looking at her list,she only needed five items. She knew they would all be in the baking aisle. She quickly grabbed the needed items, checked out, and headed home to start making the pie. She was so excited to be making this pie for her grandma. Her parents were picking her up from the airport right now.
Emily arrived home, and pulled out the recipe book to assemble all the needed ingredients. Once she had everything ready she started on the crust. Following the recipe she put all the dry ingredients into a bowl. “Next cut the butter and shortening into the flour mixture.”
She grabbed two forks and got to work. After what felt like forever, the mixture finally resembled pea sized shapes like the recipe indicated it should. “Next add the water.” Emily decided it would be best to add this in small doses so that the dough didn’t get too sticky.
Once the dough had formed a ball, she plopped it out of the bowl and onto a floored service. She rolled it out and made it the size of her pie plate, poked holes in it and set it aside until the filling was ready.
Emily scanned the cookbook and noticed how easy the filling would be to make. All she had to do was put everything into a bowl and mix it all up. She quickly got to work combining all the ingredients. She started with the pumpkin pie filling, added the evaporated milk, and eggs.
The recipe said to combine the spices in a small bowl, but Emily decided it would be fine to just add them into the pumpkin filling. And it would have been, except the cinnamon didn’t have a shaker lid on it and Emily added more than she probably needed.
Emily stared at the heap of cinnamon in her pumpkin pie filling. She quickly grabbed a spoon and scooped as much out as she could. “There. All better.” She mixed it all up and poured it into the shell.She carefully moved the full dish to the oven. It had to bake for almost an hour.
Emily cleaned up the kitchen. She put all the dishes in the dishwasher, wiped down the counters, and put all the ingredients back where they belonged. Before she knew it, the pumpkin pie was ready to come out of the oven. She stuck a knife in the center to make sure the pie was done. Seeing the knife came out clean, she removed the pie from the oven, just as she heard the front door open.
Emily ran to the door to greet her parents and grandma. She engulfed her grandma in a huge hug. “Nana, come see what I made you in the kitchen.”
The foursome moved to the kitchen as her grandma commented, “Whatever it is, it sure smells delicious.” Emily presented her pie to her grandma. “Well, it looks wonderful. Shall we have a slice?”
Emily beamed as she cut the pie and dished up a slice for everyone. She watched everyone’s faces as they took the first bite. Her grandma was the first to comment. “It is delicious, but how much cinnamon did you use?”
Emily looked a little sheepish. “Well I dumped the bottle into it. I got out as much as I could. Is it still bad?”
“Not bad...just maybe more of a cinnamon pie than a pumpkin pie.”
All of them laughed. “I am so sorry Nana. I just wanted to impress you since you make such good pies.”
“Well I am impressed that you went through all this trouble just for me. I’m honored.”
Emily smiled at her grandma.
“But how about I show you how to make my pumpkin pie?” Nana asked.
“I’d love that.”
“First things first. You get in the car, and then you go to Costco, and buy one of theirs.”
Emily stared at her grandma in disbelief.
“I never learned to make a pie. So I always buy one and pass it as my own.”
Emily laughed with her Nana, as they headed to the car to buy a pie.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"Sweet Potato Casserole”
by Rose Walker
My sister-in-law of seventeen years had made me a cookbook for my bridal shower. Handwritten and placed in the brackets of a yellow school folder, it contained several recipes I still sometimes use until this day (well, I don’t cook a whole lot) thirty-eight years later. That yellow folder and its contents got knocked around and stained over the years so that I had to copy and re-bind into a purple school folder which is, now, in need of another replacement.
One of my favorite recipes from that little collection is Sweet Potato Casserole. It became a Thanksgiving favorite and staple, most often served with turkey, homemade dressing, stuffed eggs, pistachio salad, green-bean casserole, canned cranberry sauce, and pecan pie or other scrumptious dessert. Some of those other dishes’ recipes came from the same cookbook. My husband has always considered the sweet potato casserole a dessert while the rest of the family enjoyed it with the main meal. Buttery, flavored with chopped pecans and cinnamon, topped with fresh pecan halves in a brown-sugar glaze, it was baked to perfection at 350 degrees.
Holidays were pretty much the only times I’d make it because, frankly, the prep was a lot of work. Pecans often had to be shelled and chopped. And peeling and cooking the potatoes on the stove-top prior to baking always proved to be a chore (though worthwhile) for me.
My daughter grew up and grew to love sweet potato casserole so much that she requested it at her wedding reception; the hostesses graciously obliged. Then she began making her own casserole regularly and, especially, at Thanksgiving. She uses a combination of my recipe and her grandmother-in-law’s, adding her own tweaks. She shared with me what she’d learned from Granny; the trick to lesson the chore of preparations is to boil the potatoes in their skin, and then, the skin easily slides off the ready-to-mash sweet potatoes. So much easier!
Now the Thanksgiving staple legacy has been passed down to my daughter. We all look forward to it every year.
Sweet Potato Casserole
3 cups mashed sweet potatoes
1 cup sugar
½ cup butter/margarine
1 tsp vanilla
2 eggs
Chopped pecans and cinnamon if desired
Mix all and put into casserole dish
Topping:1/3 cup butter/margarine, ½ cup flour, 1 cup brown sugar, pecans
Spread on top and bake at 350 degrees for 20 minutes.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"Fall Foods”
by Sara Thornburgh
During most of our Fall family meals, specifically Thanksgiving and other holidays, we'd gather around the table for an early dinner or late lunch. Our table would be decorated in Fall themes and colors.
This meal always consisted of turkey or sometimes ham, green bean casserole, and all the other "usuals" such as rolls, sweet potatoes, cranberry sauce, pickles, and olives (complete with children and even adults putting them on their fingers). But let's not forget about the delicious, mouthwatering desserts like pumpkin pie, apple pie, lemon meringue pie, cinnamon rolls and more.
During these meals we were always reminded to be thankful for what we'd been given and why it's important to be grateful.
These are memories I'll never forget and over the years I even grew to like and enjoy most of the foods I didn't care for when I was younger; now I like sweet potatoes, yams, and cranberry sauce.
But, now there is a twist to this story.
I found out about a year and a half ago or so that I am allergic to apples and cinnamon. Thankfully not deathly allergic, but allergic enough that I can't be around cinnamon at all; if I am, I’ll have a severe coughing attack until the cinnamon or cinnamon fragrance is removed. The allergy to apples isn't quite so severe unless it is an apple and cinnamon combination.
Having this allergy has definitely helped me be even more compassionate than I already was towards those who have it worse than I do, because now I can truly relate to what they go through.
I didn't know what it was like to have food allergies or anything other than hay fever allergies, when I was a child or earlier in my life; now, however, I can definitely relate. From my experience of being able to eat things like apple pie and other food and drinks with these ingredients your entire life and then having them suddenly taken away from you, I realize that it is not fun or easy.
Fall and Winter are the hardest seasons for the allergy, since food and drinks with these ingredients are found everywhere. This has been a good reminder that you can become allergic to anything at any time, no matter how old you are and not to take anything for granted.
But I'm praying, hoping, and believing that the Lord will heal me and every other person out there who suffers with allergies.
He is Jehovah-Rapha, our God who heals, after all. He is mighty, and also a loving father and my best friend. His name is Jesus and He wants to be your best friend too.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Comments
Post a Comment