Meat Pies in Tasmania

When I think “pies”, blueberry, apple and coconut cream come to mind. Flaky crusts with luscious fillings, smelling heavenly and lined up on the counter, ready to serve after Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner. So the first time I popped into a pie shop here hoping to find something fruity and delicious, I was very surprised to find steak, bacon and cheese pies, curried veggie pies, sausage and egg pies, chicken pies, scallop pies and beef and kidney pies, but no “pie” pies. Did I mention we're in Australia? Pies in Australia and in New Zealand have taken on a whole new meaning for us. I'd say it was the British influence on their colonies, but of course, we were once a colony, too. The US has restaurants that specialize in outstanding pies in an ancillary way like Marie Callenders or Village Inn with huge display cases of pies as you enter. There don't seem to be any standalone pie shoppes. Australia seems to have defined a profitable niche market dedicated to meat pies that the US is obviously missing out on.

I mean we certainly have meat pies and chicken pot pies in the States. You can buy them in the frozen food case. David's Mom makes traditional Welsh pasties which are kind of like meat pies. As a kid, growing up in a French-Canadian household, we had torquay pies, a savory mince pie, around the holidays. I make Cottage Pie on board...a layered casserole of ground meat, corn and a topper of mashed potatoes. Last time I was home though, I didn't notice any fast food pie shops lining the streets, but I may have missed them. Here you can buy pies most anywhere...even the 7-11's have warm pies sitting in heated cases just waiting to be someone's lunch.

While we were in Hobart looking for boat parts (unusual, huh?), I saw a Phil Maney Pie Company and decided to poke my head in to see what they had to offer. He has a big sign on the roof that asks “Have you had your Phil today?” and another that says “21 pies for $21 (factory seconds)”. What's a factory second pie anyway? I needed to get to the bottom of this. I went in with my camera and said I was an American and wondered if I could take some pictures of Aussie pies. Well, it seems Phil Maney himself was there. He couldn't have been more obliging. I got my photos and a picture of him, too. I did not join the Phrequent Pie-ers Club (Buy 5, get one free). A factory second, by the way, is one which doesn't look “perfect”. I was thinking later that perhaps if they have 21 of them available at any one time, maybe someone's not watching what they're doing. But that's just me.

I looked on the internet. There are several pie shop franchising opportunities available here in Australia. There's Pie Face and Dinky Di's. There's Original Fried Pie, Big Dad's, King Pie and even a “How to Start Your Own Pie Shop” download, just in case you had a notion to do this.

The absolute ultimate pie in my book though is the pie floater. Now “floater” has a significantly different connotation in American English. In South Australia especially, a pie floater is a meat pie covered with a generous amount of catsup and floating upside down in thick split pea soup. I know it sounds absolutely appealing, but I haven't tried it yet. I'm going to have to work up to it.

Bottling Day

Despite the fact we had a busy day, David tested his brew last night and the specific gravity had remained the same for two days in a row. It was bottling day. We'd used the brown plastic beer bottles and caps before, so he had to sterilize them before bottling the new brew. In the boat, it's sometimes difficult to find space to accomplish such tasks, but he managed to spread out using every flat surface he could find available and got the job done. In addition to the actual brew materials, we were able to buy the sterilizing powder and a sturdy bottle brush at the Tasmanian Brewing Supplies Store (innovative store name, don't you think?). He mixed the required amount of powder with water in my big pressure canner pot, the only vessel large enough to accommodate this amount of liquid. He filled the bottles and let them soak for a couple of hours and then he was ready to begin the bottling process.

It's pretty easy. There's a spigot on the side of the brew tub with a long plastic hose which extends into the bottles. He added two sugar drops to each bottle then filled them up and screwed on the twist caps. The sugar drops increase the carbonation of the beer in the bottles. We now have 30 - .75L bottles sitting in a bin in the forward cabin … that's about 6 gallons or 23 liters of home-brewed Australia Pale Ale. They'll need to sit for another two weeks or so before they're ready to drink. That said, we usually feel the need to start testing within a week or so. Quality control is everything.

He's already started a batch of hard cider. The cider will be bottled in about 10-14 days in recycled 1.25L plastic water bottles that we've been collecting. It, too, will require a specific gravity check to confirm it's ready. It takes much longer to ferment the cider and it won't be ready till Christmas.

We've also found brew kits for ginger beer and hard lemonade, but we need to use up our current stock to make some more room.

Pink Eyes

I was thinking about potatoes the other day. There's no accounting for the thoughts that race or dilly-dally their way through my head. Something pops up and I've gotta deal with it. Why potatoes? Well, we were passing Meredith's Fruit and Veggie store and I saw a huge sign announcing they had Pink Eyes on sale. Have you heard of Pink Eyes before? It's another name for conjunctivitis, I know, but I figured this Pink Eye had to be a fruit or veggie, so that narrowed it down some. We didn't have time to stop, so I made a mental note (very risky) to research this a bit more. A few more miles up the road, Ye Olde Oyster Cove Store announced Pink Eye availability, too. But their sign was a bit more specific: Fresh Dug Pink Eye Potatoes. Aha...now we were getting somewhere.

We stopped. Not only did they have Pink Eyes, but they had Moonlight Brushed, Nicola, Dutch Creams and Red Rascals. Potato heaven! I had to stop to think of the last time I experienced such potato nervana. It certainly wasn't the South Pacific with their small, soft, gnarly spuds sitting in bug-infested dirty bins. It was at a fresh market on the island of Chiloé in Chile. I remember being absolutely astounded at the variety of sizes, shapes and colors of potatoes that were for sale...orange, yellow, white, green, even bright purple. I stopped and took photos and the locals looked at me oddly for taking the time to photograph something so common.

Potatoes were actually first cultivated in Peru around the same time the locals there domesticated the llama. The Incas grew potatoes and made a flour-like substance comparable to wheat flour for bread-making. The Spanish explorers brought the first potatoes back to continental Europe in the mid-16th century, just in time for the Poles to start cultivating them for use in making potato vodka. English explorers brought white potatoes back around the same time and introduced them to Ireland and Scotland. They had a hard time being accepted though. The Brits considered them dirty, evil and poisonous. They even started a society to disclaim these ugly tubers: Society for the Prevention of Unwholesome Diets, aka SPUD. It wasn't until the Irish starting immigrating to the States and growing them back in the 1700's that Americans explored the wonders of the white potato and they became a popular starchy vegetable. I still don't remember seeing any purple ones in the US though.

On our trip back to the States last summer, we stopped in Blackfoot, Idaho at the Potato Museum. Here the mighty potato is revered. We saw all things potato including potato lotion, couch potatoes, potato chips and plush stuffed potatoes...even Marilyn Monroe modeling a potato sack in a potato field.

All this just to say, we now know what Pink Eyes in Australia are. See how my mind wanders.