2025, Food, holidays, Seasons

Hand Pie Season

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It’s the time of year that I start to think about hand pies.  When I was a kid, Nonny would occasionally make an apple pie (no other kind that I can remember, just apple).  Depending on how many scraps she had left over, she would make either cinnamon pinwheels or every now and then “mini pies” (what we called them).   I didn’t realize until I was well into my adulthood that the rest of the world calls these hand pies.  And they are my favorites!

In my early years of hand pies, I just cut out the hand pies using a knife – triangles, rectangles and even circles.  Then several years ago I purchased a set of molds that make a rectangle shape, a “pie” shape and an apple shape.  These aren’t actually any easier than just cutting the dough by hand, but they are a lot more fun. 

In August I saw an ad online for a cat shape/dog shape set of molds from Sur La Table.  They are incredibly cute but way too expensive for an addition to my kitchen equipment that can only be called whimsical.  Now that we’re getting close to apple picking (or apple picking up, depending on my knees), I’m thinking about hand pies.  So yesterday morning I looked up the cat/dog molds online to see if anyone sold them less expensively than Sur La Table.  Nope.. didn’t find them.  HOWEVER, thanks to my search, my online world has suddenly been flooded with ads for hand pie molds.  There are a lot of different companies out there selling lots of designs.

I’m currently seriously eyeing a holiday set and have looked up some more filling recipes. The three top new contenders are Lemon Cream Cheese & Raspberry Jam, Walnut Cinnamon Sugar and Nutella Hazelnut.  In an age of trying to rid myself of stuff, I’m thinking I need my head examined thinking I need more hand pie molds.  We’ll see how long I last….

Any impulse buys recently?

47 thoughts on “Hand Pie Season”

  1. costco had a heated vest for $49 i bought yesterday along with 3 5 packs of sox and 2 sets of long johns i bought 3 fall flannel shirts and 2 pairs of jeans a month ago. must becgetting ready to hunker down i need to hit goodwill for a white shirt pickup

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  3. Well, it has occurred to me that my sudden change of address may have been just a little impulsive, but I think it was the right move. I’ve been thinking about this for a couple of years. It was just so surprising when it happened, but it shouldn’t be.

    Otherwise, no. I’m completely out of money. No one has even looked at my “old” home. It was listed on Friday. I sure hope it sells quickly. I did buy a little office/task chair on facebook marketplace for $15.

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  4. Not exactly an impulse, because I’d considered it many times, but I bought and downloaded a copy of the audio book Miracle and Wonder, Malcolm Gladwell’s interviews with Paul Simon about his process and history. I had taken it out of the library once but that copy stopped working partway through. The interviews are fascinating.

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    1. I have renewed it five times. I love it. Glad well does such a nice job and Paul Simon was obviously ready to tell the story the way that Malcolm wanted to present it if one of the best interview reviews of a Artist life I’ve ever encountered.

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    2. I bought a copy of the amy Tan book on birding that she wrote over the pandemic and found it just fascinating. I loved her reading of it on the audiobook version of it that I listen to, but I wanted to see the illustrations and the waitlist on the library was very long, but worth it

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  6. I heard him interviewed so many years ago on the old Tomorrow show, back when I did not need a lot of sleep. He played a song he was writing up to a point where he needed to make a decision. He had the lyrics. It was the music. He had two options. He played each, explained what the music was and what each said in mood and matching the words. The interviewer, whose name I cannot remember, asked Do you people know all that? Simon answered No but they know when it’s right.

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      1. No it was Tom Snyder who did that show for awhile. At midnight. Did some quirky stiff and fascinating stuff. Like Cavett he spent a lot of time with his guests.

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    1. I suppose, but it have to be a gravy-less pot pie. The molds hold everything together until they are baked but once baked, they are standing on their own so a too-wet filling would be a problem.

      It’s easy to find recipes for savory hand pies!

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  9. Sandy and I used to make pasties together. There are pasties in the freezer section of Cub. My daughter, who now and then makes pasties and shares with me, says they are tolerable. Just this weekend I was looking at them but did not buy. Impulse did not win.
    My impulse is for leather briefcases, messenger bags and the like. I have built up enough reward money on my credit card to buy one, which is on my Amazon list. My current one is still decent, support wire showing on one corner. Trying to buy as little as possible from Amazon is suppressing the impulse.

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  10. Rise and Leave the Credit Card on Ice,

    I used to give my impulse-buyer clients the assignment of freezing their credit cards in ice so they had to thaw it before using it. They also had to delete the number from favorite shopping websites, etc. I cannot say I have had any impulse buys lately, but we did, after years of considering it, put Leaf Filters on our eaves troughs 2 weeks ago. I bargained and shopped forever on that one, so not impulsive, but expensive. My son had been hosing them out for the last five years and the eaves troughs still grew stuff out of them.

    Today I am making tomato basil soup and canning it. My feet hurt just thinking about it, but my winter appetite is happy to do it. Off to the kitchen!

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    1. The mother of a friend of my younger daughter had the habit of impulse-buying items she saw on late night TV. When the stuff came she didn’t even open the boxes. They just piled up in a spare room.

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  11. The only things we have recently filled are old, semi-full paint cans and wood stains and paint thinner cans. We filled them with cat litter, just like the landfill lady told us, and took them to the landfill this morning.

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  12. I guess my impulse buys are usually limited to an occasional used book (got two pretty good shops in town), and some exotic cheese…

    Used to be shoes, but I have pretty good “shoe karma” at used places now, occasionally find something that’s barely broken in, as if they should have returned it and didn’t…

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  13. I made a buy this afternoon, not sure if it was an impulse. Not going to confess.
    For years I admired a series of books about walking the paths and climbs on the fells of the Lake District in England. While I would have enjoyed walking these paths, I knew I never would. A decade ago I gave in and bought the set. In the 30’s, I believe, a man with a full time job wrote these. He walked the paths and then produced the books, which are still used today. When I say he wrote these books, I mean that in both senses. Every word and sketch is his. He hand printed every letter of every word of every book. They are a loving masterpiece. I often take a book and scan through and read his description of a couple routes. In my latest round of reducing clutter, they are in my crosshairs. I don’t want them destroyed. Need to give them away or donate them.

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    3. I would cherish those books Clyde I went to the lake District back in 1985 and stayed in a bed-and-breakfast and when it was time to go out hiking, a woman asked what kind of things I liked and sent me to different locations three or four days in a row and when I asked her how come she knew all the stuff she said it was because her father was the guy who did the mapping for England in the lake District, and it was just the most incredible hikes that you sent me on I think back to that trip often

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  14. My most recent impulse buys were at Rock Bend, where I purchased a raffle ticket – not a winner – a button, a sticker, and, at one of the booths, some petrified wood that had been polished so that it looks more like a rock. Also a small cat figurine which is now sitting in a miniature cardboard box in my car.

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  15. OT, did anyone watch the Twin Cities Public TV show called Broadcast Wars? One of the newscasters that got a mention in that show was Stan Turner, who died on Sunday. I had that on my mind because my friend and co-worker was mentioned in his obituary as his “longtime companion”. He often came to our get-togethers and was a charming and funny guy. I’ll miss him.

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