Fall is harvest time, so we think of this as a great time for food. Everywhere I look there are pumpkins and squash. And the bushes of apples are beside them. There must be thousands of apple dishes and here's one I have never heard of - Apple Pan Dowdy.
What is an Apple Pandowdy? I had to look it up to find out that it is a kind of spiced apple pie baked in a deep dish. There's a popular song from 1945 named Shoo-Fly Pie and Apple Pan Dowdy. It is about Pennsylvania Dutch cooking. It was a hit for Dinah Shore.
I find out from Wikipedia that the song is frequently mentioned in John Updike's 1988 novel Rabbit at Rest as a favourite childhood song of the protagonist, Pennsylvania native Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom. The 'Two Fat Ladies' refer to this song in their cookbook Obsessions, as well as singing the song and cooking apple pan dowdy on an episode of their television show.
I seem to have only a minor connection to Pennsylvania Dutch cuisines, even though it reflects the influences of the German heritage and agrarian society. My Mennonite/Lutheran past doesn't seem to have a sense that the Amish and the Mennonites shared their cuisine. Except for Cabbage Borscht.
Things like Amish macaroni salad, whoopee pies, custard cottage cheese pie, Dutch corn pie - these are American dishes to me. Mind you, a lot of these look delicious. I expect they have lots of calories, as in between every recipe and picture is an ad for getting a new body in 20 days. I guess it is just as well that we didn't get both Mennonite and Amish cooking.
So back to Apple Pan Dowdy. The picture looks like an apple pie in a square pan with the pie crust thrown on top in little squares.
Lilycrest Gardens lily season is completed this year - here's a colourful interpretation of a lily stem from the field.
