For the love of pie
Courtesy of Margie Ross
The late Margaret Gregorakis was an excellent cook who specialized in Greek cuisine. Her family still makes her cream pie every Thanksgiving.
Katie Anderson/Observer-Reporter
Eileen Trovato cuts into an apple pie, her family’s favorite. She also taught her two daughters, Caterina Levato, left, and Margarita Glaum, how to bake pie.
Courtesy of Caterina Levato
Eileen Trovato teaches her 10-year-old granddaughter, Milana Glaum, how to make pie.
Courtesy of Caterina Levato
A slice of peach pie baked by Eileen Trovato, of Houston
Katie Anderson/Observer-Reporter
Eileen Trovato, 78, of Houston, cuts into an apple pie, a favorite recipe that she’s been perfecting over 45 years.
This year, why not start the Thanksgiving meal with everyone’s favorite part – the pie.
For these Washington County families, eating pie and fighting over that last piece has become a holiday tradition for which they’re thankful all year round.
A piece of the pie
Eileen Trovato raised her family on a foundation of love – love for God, love for each other and love for pie.
The 78-year-old Houston woman has been baking pies for her four children for more than 40 years with fresh fruit from the trees in her backyard – apples, peaches, pears and cherries.
“Whatever our dad grew out there, he would bring it in and Mom would make a pie,” said Margarita Glaum, one of Eileen’s daughters. “We always grew up this way – having homemade pie. It’s what we look forward to at Thanksgiving.”
Eileen’s been making pie crust the same way for decades, and the one request she gets from family each year: “Never change it.”
Eileen said she had always been told to use two-thirds of a cup of Crisco to make pie crust.
“I don’t know, maybe it was God, but I decided to do a full cup,” she said. “That’s the secret.”
She’ll never go back: It makes for the perfect pie. And her children all agree that it’s because of the crust.
“I’ve never tasted a better one,” said her son, John Trovato.
John said that while working as a high school football coach in West Virginia, he once brought a single pie to a party.
“I brought one of her pies to a coaches party, and people were fighting over the pie, even though they don’t even know my mom,” he said.
John said one of the first dates he and his wife went on as 17-year-olds was in his mother’s kitchen baking pie. Eileen made them bake pies instead of lounging on the couch watching television.
“They didn’t have time for a single smooch,” Eileen said.
Her oldest daughter, Caterina Levato, said that in middle school, she signed up for a pie-eating contest “just so mom would have to make a pie.”
Pies were also a birthday tradition for their family, Levato said.
“We’d have cake, too, but the pie was our birthday gift – the whole pie was ours; we didn’t have to share it,” she said.
Sharing the pie isn’t always easy, even though Eileen usually makes four pies for the 20 people present for their family’s Thanksgiving dinner. Glaum said her husband, Eric, will go as far as licking his finger and putting it in the piece of pie he wants, to ensure he gets a slice and no one else will eat it.
Pie for days, generations
Those favorite pies are made from recipes that live on forever, even when their initial bakers have passed.
That’s the case for Canonsburg’s beloved Margaret Gregorakis. Though she’s been gone for nearly a decade, her family’s favorite cream pie has been passed on to several generations.
“I had it all the time growing up,” said Margie Ross, Gregorakis’ granddaughter. “There was never a holiday when it wasn’t there.”
Ross, of South Strabane, said her grandmother was an immigrant from Greece who had been making pies since the early 1950s. Before her death, Gregorakis was a known culinary contributor to the annual Greek Food Festival at All Saints Greek Orthodox Church in Canonsburg.
At Thanksgiving, she always made the traditional pumpkin pie, but she also always had to make two of the custard cream pies because they were the favorite.
“It’s so simple and easy,” Ross said. “I’ve taken over the tradition of making it, and if I don’t, I get grief.”
One Thanksgiving, Ross said her dad noticed a void on the dessert table. Ross hadn’t made the cream pie that year.
“My dad said, ‘Well where’s the cream pie?'” Ross said. “You can’t have Thanksgiving without the cream pie. There could be 12 other desserts with several other pies but that one has to be there.”
Ross, who was named after Gregorakis, said she learned “a lot” from her grandma, including how to make the cream pie. Since she usually does a pre-made graham cracker crust, Ross said the only tricky part is the meringue top.
“It was all in her head, but I wrote it down, so now I have the recipe,” Ross said.
Raise a glass to pie
Sometimes those favorite recipes aren’t a birthright, but rather the result of fate finding a golden nugget in a small Kentucky town.
That’s what happened to Kay Longdon, of Deemston, in 2005, when she and her husband were there for work – they distribute goods to general stores. They stopped for lunch at one of the stores, where whatever the owners felt like making that day was on the menu.
“They brought out a Kentucky buttermilk bourbon pie,” she said. “I’d never heard of it before.”
It’s like a sweet, creamy custard, Longdon said, but has an unusual consistency, dependent on the bourbon used.
“You get the smokiness and sweetness from the bourbon,” Longdon said. “It’s a weird pie to make – You don’t think of putting milk and alcohol together.”
She asked the baker in the store for the recipe.
“She said it was in her head, but she wrote it all down for me on the back of my receipt,” Longdon said.
A few months later, while going through receipts, Longdon found it. It’s been a Thanksgiving tradition for her ever since, especially since bourbon is “more of a fall drink.
“If we go visit relatives, they always ask for me to make the pie,” she said. “When I make those, I can’t just make one – they’re that good. I always have leftover bourbon to drink, too, so it’s a win-win.”