A Little Bit Country

Fried Pies, sometimes called "mule ears," are a near-forgotten, old Southern favorite.  They were almost gone by the time I was making the family reunion circuit.  By then it was only my dad's oldest and most rural great-aunts who would make them.  Children of my generation usually passed them by for the new fangled, Betty-Crocker-type chocolate desserts, but my dad gets misty-eyed talking about them.  They were THE dessert of his childhood and the sustenance farming tradition that he was born into and were filled with homemade apple or peach butter or mashed sweet potatoes and fried in home rendered lard.  The industrialization of agriculture was part of my father's personal experience, as was the industrialization of Southern desserts. 
The fried pie tradition that remains is largely a debased adaptation of its original glory.  The pie crust and the apple butter is often store-bought and more often than not the home-rendered lard from healthy, pastured pigs has been replaced by either hydrogenated vegetable shortening or worse - rancid and hydrogenated lard from the supermarket. 
At Farmer's Daughter, I am very happy to restore the fried pie to its respectful position.  I make  my own apple and peach butter from North Carolina fruit.  The crust is homemade and the pies are fried in a cast iron skillet in fresh lard from pastured pigs just like my great-grandmother would have done.  Now available on Saturday mornings at the Carrboro Farmer's Market.