Making Pie, Making Time

And just like that, there goes February and March. Yes, I want to acknowledge at the top that three months in I’m already combining months two and three for my “once-a-month” goal. Honestly, these last eight weeks went by in a blur of happy and hard; sweet family time and bad plane delays, several rounds of viruses and a heaping dose of political anxiety mixed with the beginning of Southern spring, joyful moments with E, and a professional high point or two. These last two months were not always easy, they were certainly busy, and somewhere in the whirlwind I did make a pie. 

2025 as a whole started on a mixed note. After a fabulous holiday week with family, on New Year’s Day, we were getting into the car to spend time with Stu’s family in Guntersville, when I got the news that my mentor and graduate advisor, Bernie Herman, had passed. 

Bernie was a special soul, and I’d recommend reading about his many accomplishments here. But what I want to say about him is this—the most valuable thing that Bernie ever gave me was time. During my first year working with him, when I was still physically in North Carolina, we sat down together for an hour every week to simply talk, to process and think all the big ideas being introduced in my graduate courses. When COVID-19 hit and I moved back to Alabama, Bernie gave me ample time to decide if and how to continue my studies. And when, after a pause, I did resume we met again, every week, this time on Zoom. I can’t give enough credit to those conversations in the ways they shaped my thinking, my work, my core being. Those conversations were an island, they proceeded without agenda. They weren’t for strategizing about career (though he was always willing to give me advice there too), they were about experimenting with new ideas, about challenging myself, about simply taking the time to do the thing that I had always wanted an academic life to be about; thinking, learning, turning over intellectual stones, no matter how small, again and again, until we found something new.

Bernie was generous and he was also quietly brilliant. His work is a study in illuminating meaning in the everyday. During the time I was studying with him he released a book called A South You Never Ate, which in many ways reads like a love letter to his beloved Eastern Shore and to the foods and people that comprise the stories of that place. This book is not primarily a cookbook, but I’d always been interested in trying one of the recipes nestled in its pages. 

So for this (combined) month, I landed on  sweet potato pie, and devoured once again portions of his book too, reveling in a voice that I realized I would sorely miss. I re-read Bernie’s chapter devoted to the hayman sweet potato, a white-skinned heirloom variety cultivated on the Eastern Shore of Virgina. Only Bernie could make a book chapter devoted to a niche sweet potato so compelling. When he learns that this varietal is harder to find than it once was, he remarks, in the way only he could: “I feel as though I’ve been tasked with following up on the report of a fugitive sweet potato” (139). Without giving any spoilers to the curious reader, I’ll say that the following pages carry you through 19th century exports, 20th century sweet potato treatises and 21st century growers. We learn that enjoying a sweet potato is hardly simple: “it should be grown in the right soil, handled in the right way and cooked by the right cook” (156). Towards the end of the chapter Bernie gives the reader a chance to try their hand themselves, offering recipes for the perfect baked sweet potato, sweet potato biscuits and THREE sweet potato pies.

I picked the one with the least number of ingredients, bought a frozen crust, and popped my pie in the oven at 5:30 a.m. on a Tuesday. And while at first I wondered why I was carving out the time before the sun came up to do something so frivolous in a season where time felt so hard to find, I found the short process a lovely meditation (especially because I had remembered to pre-bake the sweet potatoes). I mashed and whisked and poured and baked, and by sunrise the house smelled like soft, sweet custard. I made this pie ahead of a dinner with friends planned that night, which lasted for all of about twenty minutes before one of our toddlers puked ... .so, I wrapped up big slices in foil to-go. It really was that kind of month, but as Bernie taught me, it’s always worth it to take the time and for both the time I spent with Bernie and the time I took to make this pie, I’m glad I did. 

Adapted from “Sweet Potato Pie” (p. 159 of A South You Never Ate: Savoring Flavors and Stories from the Eastern Shore of Virginia, by Dr. Bernard Herman) 

2 cups of sweet potato (mashed) *I used regular store-bought sweet potatoes; pre-bake

1 13.5 oz can of evaporated milk 

1 ½ C sugar

1 stick melted, unsalted butter

Pinch salt

4 eggs, whisked

1 t vanilla 

Pinch of nutmeg 

1 frozen (or homemade!) pie crust, single layer 

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. 

2. Defrost pie crust according to package instructions or roll out your pie dough and lay into a 9-inch pie pan. 

3. Mash together potatoes and butter in a large bowl. 

4. Add whisked eggs, sugar, evaporated milk, salt, vanilla and nutmeg and whisk to combine.

5. Fill the pie crust.

6. Bake until the pie is set, about 45-55 minutes. 

7. Let cool completely before eating, top generously with whipped cream.