By Susan Shanklin

Thanksgiving was the best ever! Lots of love. Lots of grandchildren and lots of food.

Truly Thanksgiving Day is my favorite holiday of the whole year! It’s the one time my WHOLE family is at our house.

I must say I dream about it the whole year. I plan. I clean. I cook. Pretty much in that order. It is pretty much standard fare but to shake it up a bit this year I added a few more desserts and a different pie besides the squash pie.

I added Shoofly pie.

Shoofly pie is a pie my mother baked more frequently than not, coming from her Mennonite background. It’s a simple bottom-crust-only pie with a molasses filling with a thick, rich crumb topping piled high.

I have very fond memories of Shoofly pie as a child and I baked it frequently when my children were growing up. But I haven’t baked a shoofly pie more than twice in about 35 years!

Thirty-five years of a wounded spirit. Thirty-five years of letting someone else’s opinion poison my well.

Thirty-five years ago, maybe a year or two into my NEW baby Christian journey, I prepared a good sized pan/pie of Shoofly pie for a deacons meeting at another NEW baby Christian’s home.

Merrily and lovingly, I baked my favorite pie to share with others.

I baked it and wrapped it in a kitchen towel and gave it to my husband to share with eager palates.

No empty pan came home, but that was okay. Someone is enjoying it, I thought.

When the pan was returned by the hostess of the deacons meeting, along came the most harsh, skathing, bitter words of the universe.

“What on earth did you send? I didn’t serve it. It was so bad my dogs wouldn’t even eat it!” she said.

Whoa! Pierced my very soul. Her dogs wouldn’t even eat it!

Gone was a lost love. Gone were happy memories of sweet pie. Gone were the joys of baking Shoofly pie.

How sad to have let someone’s stupid, ill-thought-out spew take root in my soul. Oh, hey, I’m a big girl now and bygones are bygone and all is forgiven—but a wounded baker’s spirit I had.

I longed for my favorite pie, and Nathan our son had mentioned his desire to taste a Shoofly pie once again.

I pushed back on the ill fated “dog” words and proclaimed this year for Thanksgiving MOTHER was going to make Shoofly pie AGAIN!

I was a little rusty at my Shooflying but beautiful they were … and made in my mother’s Pennsbury Pottery pie plates.

I served with glee. Broken are harsh words. They are no longer growing. I have uprooted them. Shoofly pie rules again!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

WHYYYYYYYYYYY did I let these words blacken my love of this joy? Beats me … but I conquered and I’m am once again a Shoofly pie baker.

Happy slicing!

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Shoofly Pie II (Lehigh County) Dry 

Bottom Filling  

• 1 cup molasses
• 1 Heaping teaspoon soda
• 1 cup boiling water
• 2/3 cup of crumb mixture
• Crumbs
• 3 heaping cups of sifted flour
• 1 cup sugar
• 1/2 cup butter
• pinch of salt

Line 2 pie plates with rich pastry. Dissolve soda in molasses, stir until it foams. Add the boiling water. Mix crumbs . Add 2/3 cup of crumbs to filling mixture, blend and spead on bottoms of pie plates.  Heap remaining crumbs on top of pies. 375 oven for about 1/2 hour until nice golden color. Mrs. W.H. Anewalt