"... was fried shrimp and peppermint chiffon pie.... Every morning started with Catholic Mass followed by cornflakes and a thermos of coffee in her spinster bedroom while she wrote for three hours. The writing time, she said, was her 'filet mignon.'... [O'Connor's biographer] told me that 'you wouldn’t want to eat what O’Connor ate' and described the cuisine she ate at home with her mother as a 'curdled, dry, dyspeptic kind of fare.' At home, O’Connor and her mother rarely had their meals in the dining room. Left to her own devices, O’Connor might eat a tin of sardines for lunch. Once, during the brief time in which O’Connor lived alone in New York City, she served her friend Lyman Fulton nothing but 'goat’s milk cheese and faucet water'—which later became a running joke between them.... [T]he restaurant’s recipe for the peppermint chiffon pie... looked unappetizingly dour. It called for evaporated milk, gelatin, and a premade Keebler’s Chocolate Ready Crust crust. The peppermint flavor and pink color came from melted peppermint hard candy...."
The recipe refers to the candy as "Starlight," and they are still sold under that name.
Here's an Amazon Associates link to the product, in case you're yearning to relive old-timey hard-candydom. And
here's the Keebler chocolate crust. Now all you need is a can of evaporated milk and some packaged gelatin and you can figure out how the restaurant did it. Stivers makes a posher version of the antiquated treat. She makes the crust from scratch... if you consider Oreos scratch.
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Peppermint chiffon pie sounds okay to me.
Flannery O'Connor set aside two house to write, every day. I have read everything she wrote including her letters. She was hilarious.
The world cannot handle Flannery O'Connor anymore.
Ditto. My mother made plenty of quick pies that way, though I do come from the Upper Midwest where the four food groups are meat, potatoes, cream of mushroom soup, and Cool Whip.
Nabisco (or whatever company that bought them) sells chocolate wafer cookies that you can use for your crusts. (They come in a yellow box) No need to use Oreos. The cocoa that goes into both is slightly charred which gives them the characteristic dark brown color.
The recipe refers to the candy as "Starlight,"...
I would expect that refers to Brach's Starlight peppermints. Based on the timeframe and the location, those would have been the most common.
My mother-in-law makes a "cake" with those chocolate wafer cookies (and whipped cream - I'm sure the original recipe in the box was for Cool Whip but she would never deign to use that) - it seems to me they stopped selling them like last year. I had to find a recipe for them.
You forgot cream cheese!
I will make this and serve it to my Democrat guests this Thanksgiving. I won’t tell them but in my mind I’ll call it humble pie. It will be my own private joke - as most of my jokes, alas, are.
They don’t make the chocolate wafer cookies any more. The closest substitute that I’ve found are Oreo Thins. They don't have as much filling (which keeps your recipe from being too greasy the way full size Oreos can result in).
I occasionally make Key Lime Pie. The first time I did so I made the pie crust from scratch. You crush Graham Crackers and combine them with butter. I find its a lot easier to use the pre-made crusts.
I was going to say that O'Connor did alright with that diet and lived a long life, then I googled her. Damn. Lupus, dead at 39. If you're surviving through that, eat as much Starlight pie as you like.
Well, you cant beat fried shrimp. My mother used to make those cake mixes that came in a box. Doesn't anyone do that anymore? We also had "baked apples" where you scooped out the core and put brown sugar in it. She made lemon mariagne (sic) pie from scatch. And some others.
As for us today, we get all our pies and sweets from the store. Why make it, when you can buy it? Looks like O'Connor thought the same.
My mother used to make those cake mixes that came in a box. Doesn't anyone do that anymore?
My mother-in-law, who is a terrific cook but not a baker, considers it "scratch baking" when she combines a cake mix and a box of pudding mix. I love her very much but I secretly scorn this.
I had to go on a gluten-free, lactose-free diet and it was not easy till I found a company that made donuts, donut holes and little fruit pies that taste just like the stuff that used to be in cake stands on soda fountain counters. At least dessert tastes good. Now if I could just get a chair that would let me spin while I eat ...
Actually I learned other recipes so that after awhile I was enjoying my meals again. But it's a bit like being in a foreign country whose food you like.
The fried shrimp were breaded in crushed saltines.
Ah peppermint pie with a chocolate wafer crust! My wife made a better version--which sure as heck didn't involve evaporated milk and gelatin. Been a long time since I had one, but they were great.
"The fried shrimp were breaded in crushed saltines."
Of course they were. She lived in the deep south.
https://www.southernliving.com/recipes-with-saltine-crackers-8399108
Have an apple orchard hereabouts that makes the Red Hots Cinnamon Hearts applesauce. They can't keep it in their inventory, it sells so fast. I broke down and decided to make my own. I was wandering the candy aisle at Kroger when an older employee asked to help. She found the "Imperials" in two shakes.
I stocked up!
Too many vegetarians in the family. I cannot cook with gelatin. (boo)
I had no idea how much i loved peppermint dessert until the local handmade ice-cream shop created "Hammond's peppermint ice cream". oh. my. goodness. It's now a traditional Christmas dessert with home-made hot chocolate fudge sauce on top. It makes everyone happy.
Old Timers know such things.
Milledgeville, Georgia (our state capital during the War Between the States) has never been considered a Mecca for seafood. It is the site of the Georgia College for Women (now coed and just Georgia College) and the state's mental hospital before in that late 70's wave of enlightenment called something like community mental healthcare, the mentally ill were turned out onto the streets and our homeless problem really got its start. Sometimes I just natter on.
Harris-Teeter puts out their house brand Peppermint Candy ice cream in October only. I bought 6 cartons and left one in the store. Mom's party punch was that with ginger ale. The pumpkin spice ice cream didn't sell.
Aldi had their house brand peppermint oreos out last week. I ate too many of those last year.
Millidgeville has been known for many things, but not cuisine. Oddly, the university library holds the largest Southern cookbook library in the world. The library, old mental institution, and O’Connor home make a fine tourist stop. If you want to sample non-southern cuisine driving south on I-75, you have to stop a bit farther in Vienna Georgia, cross two train tracks, and arrive at the miraculous and inexplicable Fruits of Vienna restaurant. But food was fraught for O'Connor, whose lupus gave her severe kidney disease, a very limited diet, and a horrible early death. She treated her physical limitations with her disciplined, un-self pitying, Catholic humor. At a time when lesser “gothic”writers such as Harper Lee and Carson McCullers were dining out in New York City on the South’s undeniable faults (while ignoring faults elsewhere), O’Connor’s writing rendered the South numinous.
Best of all, she knew her power.
Sure they do. You can find them anywhere.
As with writing, it's not the food that goes in but the poo that comes out.
While the company didn’t respond to our request for comment, Mondelez—Nabisco’s parent company—has confirmed the Famous Chocolate Wafer Cookies have been discontinued to make room for “new innovations” after nearly a century on the market.
https://www.thespruceeats.com/nabisco-famous-wafer-cookie-discontinued-7483114
This was 2023 so maybe they brought them back?
The term, "faucet water" is fantastic. It sounds more bleak than "tap water" or just "water". It's like the hostess is filling a Mason jar from a spigot in the laundry room.
You can substitute agar (a seaweed extract) for the gelatin. Just be aware that agar must be boiled in order to activate it. It some ways it is better than gelatin as it sets at room temperature.
Didn't she die of lupus in 1964? We all ate a lot of crazy shit made out of jello and crackers, etc, in the 1950s and 60s.
The Life You Save May Be Your Own: An American Pilgrimage by Paul Elie is a excellent biography of 4 great 20th century catholic writers, Dorothy Day, Walker Percy, Thomas Merton, and of course Flannery O'Connor. Gets deep into their journeys in an honest but sympathetic way as Catholics who were driven in their work in distinct ways
You can buy them in Kroger and any of this largest chain of grocery stores. They’re usually at the ends of the ice cream section.
Victorian era to mid-20th-century "Ladies Home Journal" and commercial advertising cuisine? It was rather expensive to execute by the standards of the day, as it relied on already pricey packaged good. Yes, today it often seems heavily processed and unsophisticated. But progress. But canned food. But frozen food. But American cheese. But cream cheese. These new products needed to be sold.
Think of these recipes as the vegan-chai-oatmilk-avocado-kale smoothies of the day.
I never used a box cake mix; I learned to bake everything from scratch. I still do. I make a mean blueberry-sour cream coffee cake and lemon meringue pie is Hub's annual birthday request.
And yes, the "baked apples" as you described were a favorite of my father's. Mom would add maple syrup as well as brown sugar with a little butter.
Along with several other commenters, I am a Flannery O’Connor fan . A recent (2023) film based on her life (“Wildcat”) is an interesting movie that alternates sequences from O’Connor’s personal life and from her novels/short stories. Directed by Ethan Hawke, it stars his daughter Maya as Flannery and Laura Linney as her mother. The two actresses also play characters in the story sequences.
In the film, there isn’t much insight regarding her diet, but there is a memorable scene wherein her aunt tells her “That last story of yours left a bad taste in my mouth,” to which Flannery responds “Well, you weren’t supposed to eat it.”
PBS did a TV adaptation of "The Displaced Person" in the late 70's. Currently available on Tubi TV, the YouTube offerings have poor video and audio.
Back in the 80s I loved to make those cold chiffon pies for summer parties. My favorites were pina colada and daiquiri pies.
Also a big fan of O'Connor.
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