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January 1, 2008
My mother is a yooper. She hails from Michigan's rugged upper Peninsula, where ice cutting, deer hunting and timber chopping are hobbies. And that's just the women.
Even after 50 years in Indiana, Mom still has a yooper accent (think William H. Macy in "fargo"), a wardrobe of plaid flannel shirts and a deep appreciation for Cornish pasties.
Over the decades, her Hoosier-born children have teased her affectionately about all three. but to be honest, her pasties are to die for.
Pasties (pass-tees) are savory, shortcrust turnovers filled with meat and vegetables. They originated in Cornwall in england as a portable, hand-held meal for tin miners and fishermen in the 18th and 19th centuries. Some ingenious housewives even tucked a savory filling in one end of the pasty and a sweet filling in the other, thereby packing a complete meal in a single pie.
Pasties traveled with immigrants to northern Michigan, where men found work in copper, gold and iron mines. before long, they became a regional favorite among yoopers no matter what their line of work.
My mother has wonderful childhood memories of eating pasties. Mrs. Hibbard took orders for the turnovers as a cottage industry, a respectable way for a housewife to earn pin monwey in the 1930s. every three weeks or so, my mom would ride her bicycle over to Hibbards' house to pick up the family's pasty order.
The meat pies were individually wrapped in newspaper as soon as they were pulled, piping hot, from the oven. The Escanaba Daily Press would keep them warm all the way home, if Mom pedaled furiously and didn't stop to see her favorite uncle at the lumberyard.
On pasty night, though, Mom rarely dawdled. She was as eager as Grandpa to sit down to dinner. The half-moons of golden dough were unbelievably flaky; Mom figures they must have been made with lard. Inside, beneath clouds of steam, were generous mounds of diced steak, potatoes, onions and rutabagas. Grandpa topped his pasty with a pat of butter, which melted over the crust and pooled around the beef and veggies. Mom and Grandma happily ate theirs with nothing but a fork.
As a homesick newlywed in Indiana, Mom tried in vain to find a source for decent pasties. She stockpiled them during visits home and mail-ordered them but she was always disappointed. They just didn't taste the same as pasties hot from Mrs. Hibbard's oven. eventually, she found a good recipe, tweaked it and made her own.
My siblings and I grew up loving pasties, part of Mom's far-away childhood that we felt privileged to share. Oh, yah, Mom and pasties. Dat's two great things that came from da U.P., yah know?
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