Childhood Memories: The Sweetest Strawberry Pie

Perhaps at one time or another you think about a favorite food you enjoyed as a child, or you associate a particular meal or dessert with a special family event. As summer nears its end, I was thinking about how very soon fresh strawberries will be out of season where I live. When I think of strawberries, I think of my mother and the time she made the best Strawberry Chiffon pie I had ever tasted. It was the summer of 1977. My dad’s sister, who was a nun in Texas, came home to for a party in her honor. Our cousins from Canada came down for the event and brought with them several large vats of strawberries grown on their friend’s farm. They were the plumpest and juiciest strawberries you could imagine and my mom and Aunt Betty went to work cleaning, hulling, and slicing them for strawberry shortcake and pies. My mother made traditional strawberry pie and strawberry chiffon pie.

Today, I tried my hand at making a strawberry chiffon pie–in memory of my mother. I’ll admit that it wasn’t quite up to her standard, and I did cheat a little using a store-bought pie crust (to save time), but it was good enough to help celebrate this fond memory from my childhood.