Mountain Pies

Last night, we had a few people over for spaghetti dinner and drinks. After surfeiting ourselves with pasta, we went back outside and continued sitting around a fire we built earlier in the evening until a good thunderstorm found us at about midnight. It rained for at least an hour, but I was not surprised when I awoke this morning at about six to find a few still-smoldering coals in the firepit. I had a lot of nice pieces of firewood left that I chainsawed yesterday afternoon, so I decided to make a pot of coffee, have a little Bailey's, and rebuild the fire.

As I sat there in the backyard on the swing over several hours this morning, relaxing and drinking my coffee, listening to the birds and the residual raindrops falling from the leaves, I had a very good idea: I decided to dig out the Mountain Pie irons from the shed to cook my breakfast outside in the fire (mostly.) We live in a wooded area, our yard heavily, so with my Pie irons in hand and a large amount of woodsmoke in the air, I might as well have been camping on this Sunday morning.

Mountain Pies have been a part of my life ever since I can remember anything. As a child, at my Aunt Georgia's place out in the country, building fires up on the hill was standard practice during family get-togethers. So was making Mountain Pies. Now, a Mountain Pie is a thing of beauty. The only kind I ever remember as a kid were pizza MPs, filled with sauce and cheese, maybe pepperoni, I don't recall, and that suited me just fine, but the fillings are really only limited by the maker's imagination.

I baked the irons in the fire for a time to get rid of whatever might have been on them from sitting in the shed. As the irons cleaned, I threw a few eggs into a pan and scrambled them just until they formed. I could have cooked them in a pan over the fire, but really I just thought of that. Anyway. I then sprayed the irons with non-stick and placed one piece of "buttered" bread on each side of the iron. I added a bit of my scrambled egg, a slice of good old American cheese and a few slices of tomato, closed the irons, and placed them back into the fire. The Walrus, who is a bread fanatic, enjoyed the Pie making, also. He ate the crusts sliced off by the irons.

So there I stood in front of the firepit on this already warm and humid North Carolina morning, flipping the irons occasionally to ensure even cooking because Mountain Pies will burn if you don't give them the attention they require. It was like a sauna out there, really, especially after I stoked the fire again, but I rather enjoyed the morning, a commingling of woodsmoke and fire, good coffee, sweat, and Mountain Pies.