Pie traditions and recipes are a family legacy
While helping my parents cut rhubarb at the farm last weekend, our Saturday afternoon led to a buried memory in the pantry.
My mom’s recipe for her strawberry-rhubarb pie, as featured in my 2010 published “Further From the Farm” cookbook, is a cherished family favorite.
While in the process of making the pie, my mom was helping me search in the pantry for a deep pie pan when we discovered a stack of embossed metal pie tins hidden far in the back of the cupboard.
The tins featured a raised written logo that read “PIES by FASANO” with a shortened telephone exchange PO 78760.
After some research, I found that “PIES by FASANO” ranked as a Chicago pie bakery claimto-fame for many decades, and recently, the famous family signature pie recipes and business operations were restarted by the founder’s grandson. As for how these pie tins, some with perforated holes in the bottom for the prebaked crusts used for cream pies, found their way to the farm? The answer was simple.
On many weekends, and especially holidays like Memorial Day, decades ago during my youth, my dad’s older siblings, my aunts and uncles, would drive down to the farm “from the city” (Chicago) to visit Grandma Potempa and stop at the family cemetery.
Whether it was Uncle Joe and Aunt Rose, Auntie
Judy and Uncle Joey, Auntie Wanda and Uncle Bob or Auntie Loretta and Uncle Ed, they always came in cars loaded with deli meats, cheeses, rye bread and Chicago bakery specialties. And since all our aunts and uncles lived in the Polish Chicago neighborhoods along Archer Avenue on southwest side of the city, PIES by FASANO was a likely favorite stop.
Joseph Fasano Sr. starting selling his pies from a horse and wagon more than 70 years ago. In 1946, he founded his storefront bakery business at 65th Street. Soon, the pies were also sold in grocery stores, delicatessens and restaurants. The family used the popular selling slogan: “Pies as Good as Mother’s and Better Than Others.”
As for the old pie tins, considering I’ll be 50 years old in just a few months, I’m old enough to recall the practice of returning bottles and pie tins for a purchase deposit.
While growing up, my mom would sometimes stop in Merrillville in the 1970s at the Poppin’ Fresh Pies shop (launched in
1969 by the Pillsbury Company and in 1983 sold and renamed as the Bakers Square restaurant franchise) to purchase pies for her mom, my Grandma Green, when we’d visit her at her home in Rensselaer. The Poppin’ Fresh Pies always came in a metal pie tin that Mom would later return for a 50-cent deposit.
On Friday, I spoke to Peter Fasano, son of Joe Fasano Jr. and the grandson of the Chicago pie shop founder, and he shared his own family pie recollections and the challenges of resurrecting his family pie business in 2017, 25 years after the original family business ceased operations.
“So many people have their own family memories of our pies,” said Peter, who lives in Downers Grove, Illinois.
“And all these years later, apple pie still ranks as the number one dessert in the U.S. I have lots of people who mention to me about the old pie tins that they would return for a deposit. Those pie pans were in use from 1946 to 1986. Today, I still get about 20 calls a month from people who remember a pineapple and cheese pie we sold years ago that was a favorite.”
Today, Peter and his family primarily treat their pie business as a wholesale operation.
“I have a pie truck and we also do fund raising events too,” Peter said.
“This weekend, I’ll be at Brother Rice High School selling pies. Our prices stay the same with small fourinch individual single serve four-inch pies sold for $3 or four for $10. Our regular 9-inch pies are $16 for cream pies and $17 for baked fruit pies.”
For more information, visit www.piesby fasano.com or 630-4005600.
Reader Terri Kemble of South Bend shared her mom’s family recipe for old-fashioned baked custard pie with a delicious flaky piecrust.
“Anyone who tries it loves this easy recipe,”
Terri said.
Columnist Philip Potempa has published four cookbooks and is the director of marketing at Theatre at the Center. He can be reached at pmpotempa@comhs.org or mail your questions: From the Farm, P.O. Box 68, San Pierre, IN 46374.