Easter Pie

There were a lot of different foods that my grandmother was known for during her life.  Some of them were dinners that she would make several times a month.  Some of them are things that most American families have, such as macaroni & cheese, spaghetti, lasagna, and stuffed peppers.  Others are things that I've only ever had at my grandparents house, such as Missouri, which was a ground meat and potato stew with a tomato base, and a casserole that was made from hamburger, croutons and peppers that I'm not sure even had a name.

My grandmother passed away in 2012.  I inherited her boxes of recipe cards, but the majority of the written recipes are for desserts and things that she only made once or twice a year for the holidays.  She didn't write down the recipe for the dinners that she would make throughout the year, so these meals are probably gone forever.  That may come across as overly dramatic, but the way that my grandmother cooked made even the most ordinary-sounding meal into something truly special.  Take her macaroni & cheese, for example.  Macaroni & cheese is kind of thing that even a child can make, but my grandmother made it in a way that was completely unlike any other macaroni & cheese that I've ever had.  It's not slightly different or tweaked in some cute way... it's an entirely separate beast.  Comparing her macaroni & cheese to any other kind that I've ever had is like comparing a Delmonico Steak to a Slim Jim.

Thankfully, one of the recipes that did survive was her Easter Pie.

If you've never heard of Easter Pie before, the first thing you should know is that it's not a dessert.  It's a very thick pie made with eggs, sausage, ham and cheese.  We typically had my grandmother's Easter Pie hot on Easter Sunday, but we almost always ate the leftovers cold.  It's very good either way, but I prefer to have it cold or room temperature.

Below are two of my grandmother's recipe cards for her Easter Pie (click on each to enlarge):

Recipe 1 (front and back)

Recipe 2 (front and back)

They're not the easiest things in the world to read, so my wife re-wrote the recipe in a way that is a lot easier to follow.  She uses a store-bought crust instead of making her own pie crust, but it tastes exactly the same as my memory of my grandmother's Easter Pie.