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"Poor Man's Pie" is a recipe that's been in my family for generations. It's very special to me for reasons that will be obvious below. I'm very, very proud to share it with you:
Mix the following dry ingredients together in a bowl:
2 heaping tbsp flour
1 c. sugar
1/2 tsp salt
Add in 1 3/4 c. water and stir until blended.
Pour into a pie crust, generously dot with butter, and sprinkle with nutmeg.
Bake at 350 degrees for a good hour at least. It's done when it's cooking at a rapid boil throughout.
I've been hearing a lot of talk lately from folks who fancy themselves to be "rugged individualists" calling for the dismantling of all our social safety nets. I was surprised to learn from these work-calloused, leathery-skinned individuals that Social Security and Medicare are creeping socialism. This delusional cult of "self-starters" says it's high time we rolled back the New Deal so we can all truly know freedom once again. They insist they can manage just fine without any "hand-outs" from Big Government, and anyone who can't is shiftless and lazy. I wonder how long these folks would have lasted during the Great Depression. I'll tell you about a couple of so-called "socialists" who did survive the Great Depression thanks to "government hand-outs," and you can be the judge of who's shiftless and lazy.
My gramps had to quit school in the fifth grade to go to work and help feed his family. He grew up farming his family's land while his father and younger siblings dug wells for folks with their rig and team of horses. He married my granny in his early twenties, and after living with his parents for several years out of necessity, they started their own family and forged out on their own.
My gramps was a hunter. Deer, rabbit, squirrel, pheasant, quail, turkey--you name it, my gramps shot it and his family ate it. He fished, and even brought home a snapping turtle on occasion. He was a gardener, and everything grown in his garden was cooked, canned or stored by Granny: tomatoes, corn, green beans, peas, beets, pickles, potatoes, peppers, radishes, onions and carrots. Gramps was a trapper, and knew how to tan and stretch his animal hides so he could sell them at the end of the season: mink, skunk, muskrat, racoon, and fox. He hunted walnuts. He cut wood for the stove. He picked strawberries, blueberries, apples, rhubarb, and wild plums and grapes for Granny to make into jelly. He kept bees. He was a handy man and carpenter. Gramps always had on hand a couple of hunting dogs, some chickens, and a slaughter animal whenever he could get one. He helped folks at every opportunity, and was so well-regarded by everyone he was appointed the town mayor, a job that paid next-to-nothing and mostly entailed sending home the drunks from the town square every Saturday night. He played the violin and harmonica, rolled his own cigarettes, and always kept a pocketwatch in the breast of his overalls.
My granny made it to the eighth grade in school, but left home at fourteen to escape an abusive and alcoholic father. She became a hired girl for Gramps' folks, and raised all the kids almost singlehandedly since Gramps' mother suffered from migraines and was too sickly to care for her family on her own. After she married Gramps and they started their own family, she spent every hour of her waking days working to ensure her family's survival. I asked my grandma once if Granny ever had any hobbies, and she said, "Honey, she didn't have time for hobbies." When Gramps came home from hunting with fresh game, Granny helped him skin and gut it and then cooked it for dinner. She canned everything Gramps brought in from the garden, made jelly from the berries and fruit they gathered, and cracked the walnuts Gramps brought home, saving the meat for her baking and candy. She made quilts, patched their clothes, and washed all the laundry on a washboard in a basin with water she hauled in from their well. My grandma said Granny always scrubbed her and her two sisters within an inch of their lives. I suspect her obsession with cleanliness was due to the fact that she lost her two sons, one at 18 months old from pneumonia and the other at age ten from kidney disease, as well as my grandma's hearing at age three from recurrent ear infections.
Despite all their industry, my grandma said that they would have all starved to death out there in the middle of the prairie had Gramps not been able to get work through the Works Progress Administration (WPA). He made 50 cents a day, and worked building roads and bridges in the area. After breaking their backs and paying in for their entire working lives, they started collecting their Social Security benefits and were eligible for Medicare when they turned 65. My Granny lost her vision permanently during a cataract surgery that went wrong, and Gramps suffered from emphysema for the last several years of his life. Thanks to Social Security and Medicare, my granny and gramps lived out their remaining days independently in their own tiny home rather than suffering the indignity of being a burden on their children and grandchildren. I will always treasure my memories as a child of visiting their simple 5-room home that always smelled of bacon grease, spinning on the rope swing Gramps hung from a tall tree in their front yard, and basking in their love of laughter, life and family.
As you might expect, it's best that I avoid these self-declared "rugged individualist" ignoramuses who characterize people like my granny and gramps who needed help during tough times as lazy, shiftless socialists. I guarantee you that two weeks of life during the Great Depression would permanently cure them of their smug utopian fantasies about "freedom." These fools would be the first to eat their own young if the electricity went out for a week and the grocery store ran out of food. A couple of weeks ago I visited my socialist grandma. I baked her a Poor Man's Pie, and cried and took a picture of her hand while she was sleeping. I can scarcely express my gratitude for her, my granny and gramps, and all the true rugged individualists in my family who made me the person I am today. I am humbled by and bursting with pride at their genius, fortitude and tenacity in their daily lives, as well as their practical foresight in setting up a social safety net for the tough patches that would surely come for themselves and future generations. Or, at least until the "rugged individualists" among us destroy it and we return to the good old days when people starved and froze to death in their own homes.
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