I’d made a giant fruit salad for our church group Memorial Day picnic. The usual recipe, i.e., none. Just buy lots of whatever fruit looked good at the store, cut up stuff that needed to be, throw in handfuls of smaller items whole until the mixture looks right, garnish with some nuts and toasted coconut and mini marshmallows and so forth.
So Wednesday I found myself staring at leftover smallish amounts of a whole lot of different berries and other fruits, and had a long dormant neuron light up: Humbleberry pie!
I hadn’t had it since the last time my grandma visited us, which might have been four decades ago. I had no idea what the ‘classical’ seasonings were, or what proportions might be good, so I just winged it. Some cinnamon? Sure. Nutmeg? Of course. Cardamom? Why not?
And when it turned out I didn’t have enough true berries to fill the pie plate to a satisfying mound, well, hell, who says you can’t have some peaches and pear in there, too?
Made the usual pie crust. Baked it at the usual temperature until it looked good. Let cool until we were too impatient to wait any longer. Dived in.
It was yummy.
(Though next time I’m going to add something to thicken it a bit. Tapioca, maybe?)
(No, I wasn’t silly enough to include any of the left over melons.)
