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PIE

"Comb your hair and sit up to the table, Charles,"
Ma said.

She opened the oven door,
and took out the tin milk pan.
It was full of something covered thickly over with delicately browned biscuit crust.
She set it before Pa and he looked at it amazed.

"Chicken Pie!"
""Sing a song of sixpence -" said Ma.
Laura went on from there, and so did Carrie and Mary and even Grace.

"A pocket full of rye,
Four and twenty blackbirds,
Baked in a pie!
When the pie was opened,
The birds began to sing.
Was not that a dainty dish
To set before the king?"

"Well, I'll be switched!" said Pa.
He cut into the pie's crust with a big spoon,
and turned over a big chunk of it onto a plate.

The underside was steamed and fluffy.
Over it he poured spoonfulls of thin brown gravy,
and beside it he laid half a blackbird, browned,
and so tender that the meat was slipping from the bones.

He handed that first plate across the table to Ma.
The scent of that opened pie was making all their mouths water
so that they had to swallow again and again while they waited for their portions,
and under the table the kitty curved against their legs,
her hungry purring running into anxious miows.

"The pan held twelve birds," said Ma.
"Just two apiece, but one is all that Grace can possibly eat,
so that leaves three for you, Charles."
"It takes you to think up a chicken pie, a year before there's chickens to make it with,"
Pa said.
He ate a mouthful and said,
"This beats a chicken pie all hollow."

They all agreed that blackbird pie was even better than chicken pie.
There were, besides,
new potatoes and peas, and sliced cucumbers, and young boiled carrots
that Ma had thinned from the rows,
and creamy cottage cheese.
And the day was not even Sunday.
As long as the blackbirds lasted, and the garden was green,
they could eat like this every day.

Laura thought,
"Ma is right,
there is always something to be thankful for."

-Little Town-
by foodscene | 2009-08-24 12:27 | アメリカ


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