What are the foods of Autumn?  Having been raised in a rural-agricultural environment, the most quintessential autumn foods to me will always be pies.  Luscious, juicy pies, bursting with the products of the harvest.  Apples, peaches, plums, pumpkins, butternut squash, quince, walnuts, grapes, pecans; all the bounty of the autumn harvest, wrapped in a flaky, crumbly crust and perhaps accompanied by a bit of thick, rich cream.

And, don’t forget golden custard pies, smooth and creamy with just enough spice to lift them out of the ordinary. 

Cake is good.  Cake is something to get you through the rest of the year, but Autumn is pie time.  Although our major crop was poultry, we also had a productive orchard.  In late summer and autumn the product there of filled the kitchen and back porch/pantry.  It seemed like my mother canned from dawn to dark, and yet the baskets and wheelbarrows filled with apricots, peaches and pears stacked up at the back door.  Sacks of walnuts sat in piles.  And amidst all her canning and drying she made pies and cobblers.  Ours wasn’t a particularly large family by the standards of the day, however my three sibling were teenagers, with typical teenage appetites, particularly when you consider that in those days young people spent almost all of their time outdoors doing thing.  There was no T.V., no video games, no cell phones, no texting, and no shopping malls.  My sibling did their homework, they worked on the farm and in the house and they fished and hiked and hunted and walked along the shores of the lake and “messed about in boats.”  They were always hungry.  What they could do to a pie...

Here are a few of my favorite Autumn pies: