Recipe: Coconut Cream Pie

I love digging through old family recipes. They just work. They comes with years/ generations of perfection and in my family consist of a short list of common ingredients.

A friend asked me to make her a coconut cream pie for her husbands birthday and I was happy to accommodate- although not something I make often I knew there was a tried and true family recipe I could use that would be enjoyed.

Below is my great grandmother’s coconut cream pie recipe:

Coconut Cream Pie Filling

6 Tbsp (90ml) flour

1/2 Tbsp corn starch

6 Tbsp sugar

2 Tbsp butter

4 Tbsp shaved, sweetened coconut

1 1/2 Tsp Vanilla

2 Egg yolks

2 1/2 Cups of flour

A pinch of salt

1. Combine the ingredients in a saucepan on medium heat, stirring often, until you get your desired consistency (think pudding thickness). This took me about 15 minutes. It probably could be cooked quicker but I don’t like to risk cooking milk too fast.

2. Once the filling hits your desired thickness, pour into prepared pie shells. Make the pie shells yourself, or grab the frozen ones from the store.

3. Once the filling is set and cool, you can either top it with whipped cream or you can make a meringue using your leftover egg whites. In the photos I used whipped cream.

4. Top with toasted coconut. To toast your coconut, bake 1/2-1 cup of coconut at 375 degrees for about 5 minutes.

Enjoy!

Keep refrigerated if you are not consuming it right away.

Sustainability: Making your meat go further

I’m sure you’ve also noticed the price of meat has gone up quite substantially in the last year or so.

There’s a few reasons for that, mainly a lot of meat processing plants are getting hit with COVID-19 and a lot of the workforce is of course getting sick.

A little while ago, in an effort to make the household more sustainable along with the plastic elimination, moved to purchasing meat from local sources only- this has also proven to be expensive but ironically not nearly as bad with the rise of grocery store prices. That’s made me feel a lot better financially about my choices- if I’m going to spend $10/ LB on ground beef I’d rather give that $10 to the farm down the road.

Nonetheless it’s still a lot to dish out for one meal when you have a family - I’ve started experimenting with different ways to make the meat we do purchase go a little further.

For Taco’s, it’s been the easiest, along with a pound of beef I’ll fry up a few cups of black beans. You can also put them through a meat grinder to match the consistency- but my partner isn’t a fan of the texture so I keep them whole.

Another great filler is zucchini chopped up- this fries up beautifully and will add diversity to the flavor of your tacos.

Together we have a full pan that’s ready to feed the family! I finished off my taco with a double shell (soft and hard) sour cream, cheese, cut up kale and tomatoes from the garden and Homemade salsa.

This may be an unpopular opinion but I actually enjoyed this taco more than others because there was more flavor along with the meat! Even of we get to a point where affordability isn’t an issue anymore I still want to cut my beef with vegetables.

Let me know in the comments what you do to make your meat go a little further! Not exclusive to taco fillings! I want to hear them all.