A Taste of Guernsey

THE GUERNSEY LITERARY AND POTATO PEEL SOCIETY. What a name for a novel about the German occupation of Guernsey during World War II! I have to admit it. I was intrigued by that title, but when I opened the book and found it was written as a series of letters, I might have returned it to the shelf if my book club had not chosen it to read this month. I have never before found a book of anybody’s correspondence or personal diary fascinating enough for me to enjoy reading it.

Thanks to Sunday Readers Book Club and author Mary Ann Shaffer, I can lay that prejudice aside. From the first page I was hooked by the characters and the experience of living in post World War II London and learning what happened in Guernsey, one of the Channel Islands. Each character with his or her own nature and personality became real, struggling to live through the occupation of Guernsey or to write the story of the islanders’ survival. There are several villains, more than one love story, an orphan, history, and plenty of humor in the novel, as well as shock and horror.

Since I hosted the book club yesterday to discuss the book, it was my privilege to provide snacks. Naturally, my first thought was potato peel pie, created in the book by Will Thisbee who said he wouldn’t attend any meeting unless there was something to eat. After checking the Internet, I found that potato peel pie existed only in the pages of THE GUERNSEY LITERARY AND POTATO PEEL SOCIETY and the minds of a few creative cooks who, with varying degrees of success, had tried to recreate Will’s pie. In the novel the potato peel pie was Will’s only culinary contribution that other members of the Society actually liked. I set out using Will’s ingredients to duplicate his success and produce an acceptable potato peel pie based on a recipe from Trish of Empire Bay, Australia. Thank you, Trish!

Potato Peel Pie

2 cu. grated raw potato peels with eighth inch potato left on, packed
1 small to medium onion, finely chopped
1 large egg, well beaten
2 tbsp. self-rising flour
2 tbsp. vegetable oil. I used extra virgin olive oil.
Mashed potatoes made from peeled potatoes
2-3 small beets, cooked and mashed
½ cup sour cream
¼ tsp. pepper
¼ tsp. thyme
½ tsp. salt
4 tbsp butter
Oil pie pan. Heat oven to 400F. Mix grated potato peels, 3/4 of onion, egg, flour, and oil. Press into pie pan with spoon to form crust. Bake crust 20 minutes or more until brown.
Cook potatoes until soft. Place potatoes and all other ingredients including remaining onion browned in some of the butter. I wanted to add bacon, but they had eaten all the pig. In food processor, blend until smooth. Pour into crust and bake in 350 F oven for 15 minutes.

The pie smelled wonderful, looked like raspberry, and according to the book club was very good. Someone said it seemed like a dish for company dinner.

I also served a traditional Guernsey apple dessert, Gache Melee, pronounced Gosh Mel-are which got rave reviews. For those who asked, here’s the recipe.

Gache Melee

2 cu. plain flour
¼ lb. Guernsey butter
3 cu. peeled, cored, and chopped apples
1½ cu. brown sugar
¼ tsp. nutmeg
¼ tsp. cinnamon
¼ tsp. mixed spice
½ cu. water.
½ tsp. salt
1 egg

Cut butter into flour and other dry ingredients until like breadcrumbs. Add apple and mix.
Add egg and water, and mix well. Place in 7 inch square pan. Bake in slow (300 F) oven. Serve warm or cold. You can add a dollop of cream or ice cream. Yummy!

After all the food and a great discussion, the book club left just before Frank and I discovered that our AC had also left. Temps in the 90s are not much fun without AC, even with ceiling fans. After a sweltering night and a desperate call to the AC maintenance company this morning, we now have a new hero wearing a toolbelt and cool air again. Whew!

Funny or NOT

Since the evening after Christmas, I’ve been a little concerned about the next generation, the one that follows mine. That evening my sisters, cousins, and I presented “A Musical History of the Bolly Girls” a true farce about our childhood and teen years.

The five of us had worked for about three months preparing a singing/dancing event to entertain our daughters and granddaughters at our annual Bolly girls party. None of us carry the name of our grandfather, John Bolly, but we’ve always been proud to call ourselves Bolly girls. We thought the younger ones should know all about being a Bolly girl, so we wrote and presented what we thought was a musical comedy of our life on the hill in old South Memphis.

To the tune of “The Crawdad Song,” We sang about Grandma and our mothers, and then about us.
Five in all, we had a ball, Honey, baby mine.

Grandpa brought home from the cemetery, Honey,
Loads of ribbons in colors bright, Babe.
We sewed those ribbons and made some skirts,
Worn with pride. We were a sight! Honey, baby, mine

Our audience sat silently watching as we sang about Doris’s pet duck that was eaten by Mrs. Stackhouse and about our friends and the spanks we got. I never heard a snicker, and we thought we were doing funny stuff. Couldn‘t figure out why they weren’t laughing, or groaning, or something.

Orma’s dream was to dance on stage,
But a concussion stopped that at an early age,

We wore our daddy’s shirts; we wore our daddy’s ties.

Then she held a baton up high,
Leading on the marching band,

For pots and pans and dirty dishes,
And for your hands and for your face.

When we sang, “Grandma’s Lye Soap” in the most off-key, raucous voices we could muster, no response. But by then the youngest granddaughters were getting into the spirit and wore big smiles as they stared at us.

By the time we got to “Jesus Loves Me,” I was seeing more smiles. Almost everybody sang with us on that one.

Then:
Sunday morning in an old paneled truck, Honey,
We’d head to church, holding our noses, Babe.
During the week Grandpa used the truck
Hauling chicken manure to make his compost hot,
Honey, baby mine.

A few smiles, but mostly silence brought us to the finale.

We leave you now with a taste of just
The way we were. You’ll remember I trust,
Honey, baby mine.

While quickly transforming ourselves from 1950s teens into current dancing queens, we heard from the other room the uproarious laughter we had hoped for. They must have been entertaining each other.

You can dance, you can jive
Having the time of your life

Thanks to ABBA we ended on a high note with most of the granddaughters singing with us.

We bowed and it was all over. Not one wave of applause in the silence that followed. Nobody said much about our great performance. What a disappointment! We had so hoped they would love the show. What I heard was, “I was amazed you could remember all that and had the stamina to do it."

Finally, a week later, my daughter said they all really enjoyed our performance, but didn’t know if they should laugh or clap or what. They didn’t want to hurt our feelings. I would have thought seeing five grandmotherly women cavorting about, singing the hilarious lyrics I wrote . . .

Oh, that’s it! What a blow to the ego! I’m not a funny writer. And we had thought seeing old ladies in ribbon skirts, galloping through the house on beanpole horses would have been so funny nobody could keep from laughing.

The real concern is that our kids have forgotten how to play and have fun. I wonder if they ever get so tickled they just can’t stop laughing. I know our mothers did. And we did too, again and again, when we practiced that farce. Maybe funny these days is different. It might have to be on a screen of some kind or be accompanied by a laugh track to let people know it’s funny.

My assignment for the new year is to find out what’s funny.