Eaton's Annual Pie, Bake, & Gift Sale is coming!!

Michele Kelly and Barb Keough Have been workg on the apples for our sale.

The Annual Pie & Bake Good & Gift Sale is set for the Saturday before Thanksgiving…November 18^th from 10 until 2 pm or so and gives the museum an opportunity raise funds to keep it going.

The little museum has been striving for 19 years to preserve the history of this historic town. Eaton has its roots stepped in New England and the Mayflower and so I thought I would include a bit of history in our publicity to try and entice everyone to visit us or to support us on Facebook.

Few people realize The ties between the Stowe family, Harriet Beecher Stowe... and Eaton’s founders.  The museum helps preserve these links with displays and remembrances of the traditions from Natick … “Old Town” and Eaton.  From the book Old Town Folks by Harriet Beecher Stowe….

     On holiday food: “The pie is an English institution, which, planted on American soil, forthwith ran rampant and burst forth into an untold variety of species.  Not merely the old traditional mince pie, but a thousand strictly American seedlings from those main institutions to new uses.  Pumpkin pies, cranberry pies, peach pies, huckleberry pies, cherry pies, green-currant pies, pear pies, plum and custard pies, apple pies, Marlborough-pudding pies, pies of fanciful flutings and architectural strips laid across and around and otherwise varied, assisted the boundless fertility of the mind, when once let loose in a given direction.”

     The piece goes on to describe hundreds of pies put into an open back room that allowed them to freeze an be bought out throughout the holiday season and sometimes up until April.”

Sure enough we have tons of pie recipes here in Eaton and the museum put out a cookbook with tons of pie recipes and pictures from Eaton’s past that will be on sale from our Thanksgiving Pie Sale... along with pies of every variety that you can bring home and freeze today… in a modern freezer.  To give you a sample of old fashioned pies I thought I would include a recipe here….

PORK APPLE PIE

 8 to 10 tart apples, peeled, cored and sliced

 20 pieces of fat salt pork, cut the size of pies

 3/4 cups sugar (maple sugar preferably)

 ½ teaspoon cinnamon

 ¼ teaspoon nutmeg

 ¼ teaspoon salt

     Fill a deep dish with apples.  Mix salt pork, sugar, spices and salt and sprinkle the mixture over the apples.  Cover with pie crust.  Cut slits for steam to escape.  Bake in a hot oven (450 degrees F.) for 10 minutes; then reduce heat to moderate (350 degrees F.) and bake 30 or 35 minutes longer.  If crust becomes brown, cover with foil so that it will remain a golden brown.     While pie is baking blend a package of cream cheese with 1 tablespoon thick cream and allow to become firm in refrigerator.  Serve pie warm with slice of cheese.

Seems Old-time New Englanders used salt pork from soup to dessert.  This recipe is said to have made first by an old fisherman who used dried apples, salt pork and molasses.  His wife improved upon it, using fresh apples and maple sugar.  It became a popular dish, often served in Vermont homes for the Sunday evening meal.  Calvin Coolidge, in the White House, extolled its goodness. Pork pie has a more succulent flavor than ordinary apple pie. So we may not have Pork Apple Pies but we do have local pies made with local apples calling them rightfully... “Heirloom Apple Pies”. So come down and buy one!!!