MONTANA - Pie #26 of 50 - John Frederick
I have never been to Montana.
Montana’s name comes from the Spanish word for Mountain.
The first inhabitants of Montana were the Plain Indians and is now home to seven Indian reservations.
Elk, deer & antelope population out number the humans in Montana!
Which makes sense since 46/50 of Montana’s counties are considered “frontier counties” with an average population of 6 or fewer people per square mile.
It is home to Yellowstone National Park in southern Montana which is the first National Park in the nation.
It is also home to Glacier National Park which has 250 lakes in its boundaries. The park is home to Triple Divide Peak which is the only triple divide allowing water to flow into the Pacific, Atlantic and Hudson Bay. This is the only state where this phenomenon occurs.
The pie for this state is a pasty inspired pie. It’s dinner and desert in one with a buffalo & root vegetable and cherry filling to finish and is served with a brown gravy in a crust with the state seal painted on.
The “Pasty” first arrived on the scene in Butte, MT with the tin & copper miners from Cornwall England in the late 1800’s. The pasty was an all in one dish that was a mainstay meal which was hearty and hardy and reference to as a “letter from home”.
The pie is for my sweet bud John Frederick. John is not from Montana but he has driven through it many a time on his cross country trips from his hometown of Baltimore, MD to Portland, OR where he went to college at Reed.
He’s been to Bozeman and Missoula and described it to me as vast and beautiful with sprawling mountains, skies, cowboy boots and lots of flannel.
John and I met when we were both 15 at summer camp at Yale. He took some Buddhism and slam poetry classes and I took found object art and painting.
We meet on the quad and have been friends ever since!
Big Sky Country I am charmed and hope to see the triple divide for myself soon.