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Tuesday, February 23, 2021

More About Pasties

The pasty tradition in the Cheboygan area is not nearly as strong as it is in the Upper Peninsula, but they can usually be found in the frozen food section of the local supermarket.  Those aren't as good as the homemade ones, but they are a lot less work to prepare.  The ones sold by the vets offer the the best of both worlds, homemade fast food that you don't have to make yourself.  We first discovered them years ago when the vets were selling them in front of one of our local stores.  Since Friday is our main shopping day anyway, it was handy to pick up a couple pasties and re-warm them later for supper.  We eventually found out that the ones being sold in town were actually the leftovers from the main sale at the VVA hall.  Sometimes they would be sold out before we got to them, so I started making a separate trip to the hall in the morning before either of us went shopping, which turned out to be a more reliable source.  I usually buy four of them, two for supper that evening and two for the freezer to be thawed and eaten a week or two later.  The vets don't make them in December, so I would buy eight of them in November, or twelve of them in October if the third Friday of November fell too close to opening day of deer season.

Although the Wiki article mentions that there are different styles of pasties, we've only eaten one kind, ground beef, potatoes, rutabagas, and onions wrapped up in a piece of pie crust.  Tradition has it that the Cornish miners who introduced them to the UP used to hold them in their grimy hands while eating them for lunch down in the mines.  The thick hard edge of the crust made for a handy handle that could be discarded after the rest of the pasty was consumed.  We have come to prefer eating them on a real plate and pouring canned beef gravy over them.  The stiff part of the crust soaks up a lot of the gravy, which makes it treat unto itself.  

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