Yesterday I was sort of whining on FB that I really wanted pie and that I had already been to the store that morning and hadn’t thought of it then. A friend asked what kind of pie I liked and I responded “Any kind of fruit pie…and yes, pumpkin, mincemeat, key lime without the whipped cream, I’m not a whipped cream fan..lemon meringue without the meringue LOL and on and on…”

Of course you are now thinking “Grace, why didn’t you just make yourself a pie?” Reasonable thought, I have flour and butter to make a pie crust BUT nothing to put IN the pie. Nothing, nada, ninguno…

Yes, yes – I make my pie crust with butter. You could do half butter/half Crisco, or all Crisco, or god help your arteries, lard. (Lard?!?) 

Still – nothing to put in it, not even Ritz crackers to make a *gag* mock apple pie. Mock apple pie, to my mind, is on par with with English muffin pizzas – Why in the name of all that is holy would you make and/or eat that stuff? Gahh…

You might notice I listed mincemeat pie, that should have been mince since there is no longer any meat in mince pie (the history of mincemeat pie).  Mince pie is not the most popular of pies, indeed I am the only person I know who likes it, nay, loves it. My mother, the woman who couldn’t cook but could bake like a pro, would always make one at holiday time and I would have it all to myself. Yes, mince pie filling does have booze in it and yes I was a kid eating boozy pie but hey…She didn’t make the filling herself but rather bought it ready made and I can’t remember the brand name, either Nonesuch or Cross & Blackwell. 

Anyway, that put me in mind of chopped meat versus ground beef versus minced meat. So I did a Google dive and it is so confusing. In the UK mince beef is not ground beef because it is produced from a mincing machine not a grinder. Further diving brought up that the British mincing machine is the same as the US meat grinder – What the heck? 

The deeper you dive the more likely you are to drown in the fine details distinguishing chopped meat, or as some prefer, chop meat and ground beef and minced beef or, wait for it, hamburger meat, which seems to be in a whole ‘nother category. (Something about additives such as the amount of fat or the type of beef used. You need a damn spreadsheet to sort this all out.)

This has me also wondering if calling it chop meat/chopped meat/ground beef is a regional thing. Then again, nowadays there is ground lamb, chicken, turkey, and pork. Hoo-boy!

But beef aside, and quite frankly I can easily put beef aside, now I am really craving pie, and in a perfect world it would be a homemade mince pie. 

*Sigh*