Ten Best Pies and Cobblers(IMHO)

I can resist most desserts. Ice Cream, even homemade vanilla with peaches doesn't make my knees week. Chocolate, I can do without. I can skip all manner of puddings, parfaits and bon bons. What I cannot pass by however is a well-made pie.

By "well-made" I mean one that has a crisp, flaky crust and some manner of fruit inside it. I'm partial to fruit, although there is one non-fruit entry in my list and only one woman in the world who can make it. The list herewith is personal and by no means exhaustive. I've made no attempt to rank my favorite pies in order of goodness. Instead I have included only pies which would be the best in the world at the time I happen to be in the mood for just that one special pie.

The List:

Marie Callendar Razzleberry Pie - This is one of the few store bought pies I include on this list. I include it because it is so danged good. It's a combination of blackberry, raspberry and apples. I can't always find it down at the grocery store, but when I spot one, I grab it along with a tub of Bluebell Homemade Vanilla Ice Cream - the only proper ice cream for eating with pie (unless you hand crank up my grandmother's special recipe vanilla ice cream).

Sam's/Wal-Mart's giant bakery lattice apple pie - Wal-Mart makes a huge lattice top apple pie that rivals anybody's anywhere. You can get them at Sam's almost any time and for the price you can't beat it. It's not too sweet and the filling is more fruity than most store-bought pies. It can take days to eat one, they're so huge.

Mama's Homemade Peach Cobbler - Okay it's not exactly a pie. It's better. The recipe is superb, it's more peachy. She goes easy on the spices so that great flavor comes through and the pie filling isn't so juicy that you forget there's peaches in there. This is the way a proper cobbler is made in the south.  Just follow that recipe and you'll be unhappy with any other peach pie or cobbler you ever eat again.  I promise. 

Aunt Sheila's Homemade Chocolate Meringue Pie - This pie can only be made from scratch. The recipe starts from cocoa and is all about timing. My Sweet Baboo doesn't like meringue most of the time, but for this pie, she makes an exception. It's also good with Cool Whip or Whip Cream on it, but it's absolutely magnificent with meringue. This thing is hard to resist and I don't even like chocolate pie!

Uncle Tom's Lemon Meringue Pie - This isn't one of those fancy lemon cream pies or icebox lemon pies. Those things are way too sweet.  This lemon pie is a simple Jello Lemon Pudding and Pie filling pie. The secret is Mrs. King's pie crust which I cannot now duplicate and despair of ever being able to reproduce. I'm working on the recipe and will include a link later if you want to give it a try. I love this kind of pie.  I get one of these for my birthday every year instead of a cake (another dessert I can easily resist).

Tart Cherry Pie - Most cherry pies are far too sweet and syrupy. I like mine fruity and with a lot less sugar than most folk use. I like a cherry pie that contrasts with the ice cream, not one that overpowers it. With this one, I like a little evaporated milk instead of ice cream so I can taste the cherries properly. I've never eaten a store-made cherry pie that quite makes the grade.

Wild Blackberry Cobbler -  A proper wild blackberry cobbler is one where you went out and gathered the blackberries yourself. This recipe can also be made as a pie or a nice lattice cobbler. Either way it's tart, not too sweet and a perfect framework for a scoop of homemade vanilla ice cream. It's not nearly as good if you bought the berries. To fully enjoy this you have to be picking thorns out of your fingers as you eat it.

Quick Peach Cobbler - This unique little recipe is one of my guiltier pleasures and, in my opinion, the only thing cake mix is truly useful for. It's made by mixing up cake batter, pouring it into a casserole disk with a thick layer of melted butter in the bottom and then pouring in some peaches. The cake batter crisps on the bottom and side from the hot butter and wraps itself around the peaches to make a nice buttery/peachy cobbler that you can whip up in a few minutes. This recipe offers a from-scratch cake batter, but you can use the kind in the box quite as well. The trick is to make the outside of the crust crispy so you get the nice contrast between the butter and the peaches.

Pumpkin Pie - I love pumpkin pie because it is the only proper pie to serve for breakfast. It's much better after it's spent the night in the fridge and you take it out and eat it chilled with maybe a little whipped cream. It really needs nothing. The kind you make with canned pumpkin is just fine. The only thing is not to overdue the spices. The spices should set off the flavor of the pumpkin, not overwhelm it.  This is a nice recipe. Just adjust the spice to suit your taste.

Southern Pecan Pie -  Pecan pies are rather sweeter than any of the other pies I've included in this list, but, made properly, they absolutely make my favorite pie list. Pecan pie is all about the crust and the nuts. The crust has to be flaky and delicious to offset the sweet filling. I like my pecan pies long on the pecans and short on the filling. I find that 99% of store-bought pecan pie is only faux pecan pie. They put some pecans on top with some cracker filling around them so it looks like more pecans than there are.  In the south, we just drive around till we find a pecan tree hanging over the grader ditch, knock enough off for a couple of pies and take 'em home to shell. There is no excuse for skimping on a pecan pie in the south except that you just don't have any self-respect. If you don't have enough for a proper top coat of pecans on your pie, make brownies instead. I mean really people.....

The secret to a good pie is the crust. Any decent cook will tell you that. Everybody has their own way of doing it.  My wife's recipe is the best I've seen.  I'll add the link as soon as I torture her to get the recipe.

Dang! Now I'm gonna have to go make a pie. And my diet was coming along so well.

Tom King

My Top Ten Purveyors of Middle Class Haute Cuisine

My favorite food critic - Antone from Ratatouille

The hoity-toity make jokes about them. Food critics regularly look down their lengthy noses at them. Sitcoms occasionally remind us that they are not as good as "real" Italian or Mexican or Ethiopian or Thai restaurants where they drizzle some unidentifiable sauce over a bit of meat, two asparagus spears and a slice of some kind of squash.  But restaurants like these so-called "casual dining" restaurants  are essential to the mental health of the middle class.  They help us keep our tuxedos and evening gowns clean for weddings and funerals and deer hunting. There are several good reasons why these places are popular with the less snooty crowd:

1. We know where they are. They have big lighted signs and they put them in places we can find them like next to a mall or Wal-Mart. Middle class people don't have the time or energy left after a hard day of real work to run all over town looking for snobby restaurants.  We want something good, something nice and something we can find.
2. We can afford them.  Most of these cost a few bucks more, but the service and the tastiness of the food makes us feel special.  
3. We know what we're getting.  If you're going our to eat and going a little over budget to boot, you want to know what to expect.  The lack of nasty surprises is part of the charm in going out to a "nice" restaurant in the first place.
4. They give us a safe place to celebrate the special events of our lives. Middle class people like to go out to eat on birthdays, Mother's day, Father's day, anniversaries and the like. We'd rather go someplace nicer than McDonald's or the Sonic Drive-In to mark these occasion.  We'd rather not risk spending a lot of money and then not enjoying it, so we tend to stick to places we know and can trust.

This list is in no particular order and it's my list not yours so if you disagree, please post your own list in the comments section. I always like to know about good restaurants. Also note, I left off places like Hooter's, not only because I've never been there, but because it's not the sort of place you could take your hardshell Baptist grandmother. For most of these you could take her, even those with a bar, so long as you sat at the far end of the dining area and didn't order a beer.

The Olive Garden:  When both my wife and I were working in the same day care center, she as nurse and I as director, we went to the OG the same night every week after we shut down the center. They got to where they expected us, had our drinks ready for us and let us sit in the bar area while we waited. Sometimes, if the place was crowded, they'd bring our meal to the little table in the bar area so we wouldn't have to wait an hour for a regular table.  We had our favorite meals, but eventually settled on Ravioli de Portabello as our favorite. Great place for anniversaries, birthdays and such. Nice relaxing atmosphere. Nice people. Food you can count on even if it is a more expensive than McDonald's. 

Red Robin:  I hadn't tried out RR until a few years ago when I came up to Washington to visit my sister and brother-in-law. RR is a sort of cafe' on steroids - nice atmosphere with all sorts of interesting stuff on the walls like most of these places.  If you're looking for a fancy hamburger, this place has 'em.  They also do some nice dinner kinds of things too. 

IHop:  IHop is middle class breakfast haute cuisine. IHop is where you gather the grownup siblings when you want to talk about "what to do about Dad". They do have some nice dinners, but it's not the sort of place you go to celebrate birthdays and special occasions. They do maintain a booming business on Sundays before and after and during church (You find a lot of heathen Dads in there between 10 and 12 after they've dropped Mom and the kids off at Sunday School. 

Red Lobster:  Red Lobster holds title to probably the most popular semi-uppity seafood place. They rank about third in the nation for restaurant chains so they must be doing something right.  While, I've never been there, but my son loved the place and took his girl there whenever he wanted to part with some money in exchange for looking like one of the swells. If Micah liked the food, I could always trust his good rating. He was a manager at several restaurants while he was going to college and had his mother's eye for cleanliness. If they got past his inspection and he thought the food tasted good, you could count on his recommendation. Since I don't eat crab, shrimp, lobster or other shellfish, their reputation with me would depend on their fish dishes which I have promised myself I would try.

Cheddar's:  Cheddar's is basically a slightly higher priced cafe with atmosphere. The food is consistently good, but the menu can be limited if you don't eat bacon. They do put bacon in a lot of things, so if you're Jewish, Muslim or Seventh-day Adventist, you may have a limited, though tasty selection. The Cheddar's we used to go to tended to be a bit noisy, but they made a good steak and had a nice variety of homey American foods. 

Chili's, Applebee's and TGI Friday's:  Applebees has some really good food and their prices are reasonable.  It is a bar and grill, so expect some noise from the bar area on Friday and Saturday nights. Our favorites are the steak (my wife is a closet carnivore) and the oriental chicken bowl. Very nice. I combined Chili's and Applebee's in one entry because they are a lot alike in atmosphere and menu. One thing Chili's does that I appreciate is offer a vegetarian version of any of their burgers. Just ask for the Swiss Mushroom Burger with the black bean burger.  It's what I always have at Chili's. TGI Fridays has pretty good food of about the same bar/grill style cuisine as the others.  Any one of them are good for after the ball game on the weekend and for miscellaneous celebratory gatherings.

Chuys:  Chuy's only has added some 70 locations, from Texas to Chicago to Virginia since this article was first written. It's well worth a visit. There are other great Mexican places like On the Border, El Chico and such, but Chuy's is special. First, it's distinctly Tex-Mex. It's an odd place, usually in some weird part of town and you often have to park six blocks away because their parking is often very limited. I think they do that to keep the traffic down. There's almost always a line to get in, though it moves pretty quickly. The prices are very very reasonable. The food is amazing and the decor is weird. They have this Elvis/50s thing going that gets a little crazy with hubcaps on the ceiling and such.  They started out in Austin. Lance Armstrong and other Austin celebrities are regulars there, but the management never got snobbish about it or jacked up their prices, just carefully added new locations around Texas. The Dallas restaurant has a statue of Elvis standing in a fountain in the semi-outdoors part of the restaurant.  The food at the one they built in Tyler just before I rashly moved to Washington State was beyond incredible and the service for the big group I went with was unbelievable.  We were swarmed by staff determined to make sure we were happy with everything. They have their own private pepper supply some place in New Mexico and their chefs personally inspect the crop each year I'm told.  I don't know what secret ingredients are in their recipes, but their chefs are geniuses. And you will be pleasantly surprised by the bill and the quality of the guacamole.  

Golden Corral - As family buffet steakhouses go, GC is one of the best. They even do breakfast.  Golden Corral is where you go after church on Sunday or whenever you're really hungry and want to stuff yourself to the eyes. The food is consistently good and the service is quick and efficient.Their salad bar is fantastic and the chocolate waterfall that you can dip fruit into has earned them the undying love of overweight Americans everywhere.

Texas Roadhouse - There are probably a lot of different restaurants with some variant of this name. The one in Tyler where my granddaughter worked is a really good steakhouse with a Texas flavor to it. They have those big barrels of unshelled peanuts sitting around where you sit to wait for a table and bowls of them on the table when you get there. It's fun because everybody throws the shells on the floor, so the place is crunchy when you walk around.  The baked potatoes are lovely and steak is their specialty.  The prices are higher than Golden Corral, but less than The Outback.

Outback Steakhouse - If you know somebody who loves steak and want to make them feel special, The Outback is place.  It will cost you more than most of the places here, but still manages not to break the bank.  My wife loves the place. I don't really see that it's any better than the less expensive places, but she assures me it is.  Being raised almost vegetarian, I don't have a lot of opinion on the value of meat.  Now if we were talking salads.....

I do have to mention a couple of places that didn't make the list because they either aren't chains or aren't semi-uppity enough to qualify for this list.  You'll notice I didn't put any pizza places up there.  Pizza tends to fall into the fast food category. If I were to choose my favorite pizza chain with a dining room it would probably be Pizza Hut or Pizza Inn depending on the quality of the local outlet's salad bar. I lean toward Pizza Hut because my boys worked there while they were in school.

Very honorable mention goes to my favorite Mom and Pop Pizza/Italian place, a place in Tyler, Texas called "Little Italy".  It's in an old KFC location (still has the steeple on top). They make a dish called Chicken Murphy that I've never seen anyone duplicate anywhere. I always say I'm going to try something else, but I seldom do. It's just too hard to resist.  It's spaghetti with chicken breast and this amazing sauce with peppers and onions and mushrooms and a scattering of jalapenos to give it some flair.  Sometimes the chef gives it a little extra flair so if you are sensitive to jalapenos, you can just remove the jalapenos with a fork and enjoy the lingering spicy flavor without burning your tongue if, like me, you like your peppers milder than most East Texans.

If one of your favorite casual dining restaurants is missing from this list, feel free to add it in the comments section. I probably just haven't been there yet or this would be a top 20 or top 50.  Hmmm. I may have to expand my list someday soon. 

Tom King

Top Ten Things to Drink When You are Really Thirsty

Admittedly, this list is not scientific by any means and is the result of a poll of limited scope - me and the missus were really thirsty and we were trying to think of what would really hit the spot.  What follows is THE definitive list of thirst quenchers.....

1.  Water very cold or on ice:   Plain old hydration.  No sugar, no caffeine, no electrolytes.  Useful as a chaser for some other drinks that provide immediate, but not long term relief.

2.  Coca-Cola in the original glass bottle:  There is nothing like it for cutting a dry mouth and getting moisture to your tongue and throat.  It loses it's effect if it's from a plastic bottle. It's not the same over ice, even in a glass tumbler.  It only works in that wonderful curvaceous glass bottle.  Tall or small, it matters not.  Coke does contain caffeine which actually kicks up the kidneys and makes the fluid run on through your body, so you should always follow up Coke with a water chaser to offset the evil effects.  Even with it's drawbacks, Coke is what you want first when you step out of the desert to clear your palate.  It's the real thing!

3.  Iced Tea in a tall glass with lemon, sweetened or unsweetened, no straw: Ice Tea was invented in the South because it is so danged hot down here. You can't drink hot tea when it's 105 degrees with 100% humidity.  It's just not civilized.  You'll sweat right through your white seersucker suit and you don't want to see a bunch of dowdy old white guys and their wives running around with those white outfits plastered to their skin. It's just not decent.  Sit down in the shade and pour up a big old glass of tea and sip it slowly to let the effects of the cooling liquid restore your spirits. It's civilized!

4. Beer, very cold:  I am told that a cold beer on a hot day is restorative.  As a confirmed teetotaler, I do not know this for a fact and having actually tasted beer cannot imagine how this could be so, but I take the word of others more experienced than I.  Beer does contain a lot of nutrients, sugars and carbohydrates in it. Originally, beer was invented by the Egyptians as a cheap way to keep the pyramid builders happy and hydrated.  It's like liquid bread! 

5. Gator-Aid: The original scientific thirst quencher, Gator-Aid and it's innumerable immitators do a really good job of replacing lost electrolytes, allowing athletes and 15 year old boys to keep going long after they should have fallen down in a heap panting for iced tea. 

6. Lemonade on ice with a little umbrella:  Developed by the British Navy and assorted pirates and merchant sea captains to prevent scurvy and disguise the taste of unflitered, unchlorinated water left too long in the cask, lemonade became fashionable in the South for when we weren't drinking iced tea or mint juleps.  Good stuff if it's not too sweet and you're really thirsty. 

7.  Orange Soda: Nehi or Mission Orange or Orange Crush in a glass bottle that's been buried in a cooler full of ice.  Must be drunk quickly while every ounce is freezing cold. 

8. Orange Juice on ice:  For sheer restorative power, a huge glass of orange juice on ice cannot be beat. I've been told that drinking that much orange juice can be harmful, but I do not see how and refuse to believe it.  A big glass of iced OJ with a pimento cheese sandwich, potato chips and a pickle can bring a man back from the dead. I've seen it. 

9. Diet Dr. Pepper on ice:  I love Diet Dr. Pepper.  It's what older East Texans use instead of Coke.  Pour it over a big glass of ice and it quenches the thirst admirably, without the carbonated creosote taste of Coca-Cola. I actually choose theaters by whether or not they serve Diet Dr. Pepper.  Diet Coke and Pepsi are absolutely uncivilized. 

10.  Dr Pepper in the small bottle:  Bottled in Dublin Texas using Imperial Pure Cane sugar instead of that horrible old corn syrup, Dr. Pepper in the small bottle is the last vestige of the age of enlightenment. Dr. Pepper any other way is just wrong.  This is the way my grandmother served Dr. Pepper when I was a boy. We Texans make pilgrimages to Dublin to buy case lots of Dr. Pepper made properly.

That's the lot.  If you disagree, you may comment.  You'll be wrong, but go ahead.....

(Okay, this one got left out and should be included )

11. Diet A&W Root Beer in a big frosty mug. I bought a big glass mug just for my restorative rootbeers. I go with diet because (a) I'm diabetic and (b) it's not as sweet as original A&W and I like my soft drinks a bit less sugary anyway.

I'm going to leave room here at the bottom if anyone thinks of another restorative fluid which should go here.

© 2017 by Tom King