Archive for the ‘Banana Cream Pie’ Category

You can recognize a person who has acclimated to San Francisco’s benign unto confounding climate because they chuckle when talking about seasons. Sometimes it seems we have two  - the dominant season that cycles each week through temperate and cold, and the glorious season of SeptOctober, our summer during which we do our best to store memories of sweaty heat in our cells to last us until the following Fall. In a climate with 4 distinct seasons, it is unusual to absentmindedly talk of today as summer when it is winter, but here in San Francisco, it is entirely possible and rather common to have to pause to think what season it is.

Against this backdrop of seasonal confusion, I have been delighting in the surge of interactions I’ve had with neighbors and customers during the last three weeks as our dwarf almond tree has opened more and more pink-white blooms, proudly and loudly declaring Springtime at the corner of 25^th and Mission Streets. The visual and olfactory beauty that is an almond tree in bloom would be so wherever that tree were to grow, but here at this noisy urban corner, that little 5 foot tall tree is determined to help us know and celebrate that it is Spring. Witnessing people’s joy in beauty feeds my spirit, and it is gratifying to know that a single tree can make such a difference.

If you want to plant a tree, there are a couple of organizations to know about. Friends of the Urban Forest helps people plant and care for street trees. It’s an easy organization to volunteer with, whether you have a sidewalk planting spot to fill or just want to pitch in on a tree planting and meet some neighbors. Just One Tree is dedicated to promoting the value of tree crops in cities worldwide, recognizing that our urban planted landscape makes an important contribution to self-sufficiency and ecological sustainability. Just One Tree’s campaign in San Francisco focuses on lemon trees, with a goal of 12,000 planted and registered. If you already have a lemon tree growing in San Francisco, register it on their website.

Work in food service affords many of the same affirmations as working the land. There is tangible satisfaction in long days on two feet, calloused hands, and a body sore from repetition. It is work that has a pulsing, breathing life of its own, a rhythm we—farmers, bakers, servers—hear as giddy-up. So we keep the greens watered and the chickens fed, the pie sweet and the coffee hot and abundant. At the end of the night, we clean up shop: put the tools away, close the greenhouse doors, secure the till. And then we are up before the sun, at it again.

It is easy for me to romanticize farm work. I attribute this to a handful of sunny afternoons in my college organic garden, those first perfect spring days as a perfectly doe-eyed freshmen. There, charismatic upperclassmen taught me to graze on pea shoots, to slaughter chickens, and to eat a little dirt with my carrots. It was playful, really. We were glowing and sweaty youth, lucky enough to be trying stuff out, learning how to feed our bellies and spirits.
My life up to that point had sort of happened for me, in a carpool lane toward a bachelor’s degree. There I was, certain to get a liberal arts education, and not a clue what to make of myself. I must have been seduced by the inherent intentionality of pulling food out of the ground. Ah-ha, I can make tomatoes happen. It felt new and unusual, and I felt cool doing it; that is how you grow a farmer.
So, when school let out, I flocked with my peers to one of those rural and beautiful places, in Carhartts and Xtratufs, to immerse in agriculture. The experience was everything it ought to have been. I spent three growing seasons learning to do-it-myself, to cultivate and celebrate food and abundance. It was both in the field and around the table that my concept of abundance came into resolution. The abundance we shared was born from thrift and creativity, and an adoration for one another. We made simple, slow food happen, then, three times a day, suntanned and smelly, we gathered around it.

Food has been my education in community and generosity. It continues in a setting wildly distinct from the farm, on a bustling corner in San Francisco’s Mission District. Here, my lens on what it means to do good work in food has broadened. In an urban landscape, food often takes place in commercial venues. Mission Pie is one of those—a bakery and café that specializes in, well, pie. Yet what makes Mission Pie special is the intention. At the heart of my work behind the counter is this question: How can a food experience feel intimate when the premise is not do-it-yourself, but, rather, have-it-done-for-you? If we do our job well, customers can interact with our food in a way that brings them to one of those ah-ha moments. This is how food happens.
I fell in love with work when I fell in love with good food. Not pretentious food, but wholesome food, from honest ingredients. And not cerebral work, but grittier work, for the nimble and dexterous. In the service industry we wear white aprons and scrub beneath our fingernails. Still, the work need not feel sterile, but rich and connected. It can be humans connecting with humans, gathering around food, participating in a community of thrifty and creative growers, bakers, servers, and eaters. Abundance is the fruit of good work in food, and it takes many shapes. On the corner of 25th and Mission St, it is circular, nine inches in diameter, and, I am learning, dimensional.

Dana Fan Bialek

Welcome to Winter Holiday time at Mission Pie.
We hope this post answers many of your questions. Any others we will be happy to answer when you place your order by phone 415-282-1500 or 415-282-4PIE or in person at Mission Pie. Sorry, we do NOT take orders by email, tweet, nor Facebook.

WE WILL BE OPEN REGULAR HOURS SATURDAY AND SUNDAY DECEMBER 22 AND 23.
WE WILL CLOSE AT 5PM ON MONDAY December 24. We will be closed Christmas Day and the day after (25th and 26th); we will reopen on Tuesday Dec 27th.

DEADLINE FOR XMAS ORDERS IS EXTENDED until Sunday, December 23 at 5pm.

HOLIDAY MENU effective December 22 – 24

Apple Pie
A mix of tart and sweet apples and classic spices, topped with a perfectly browned crust.
Dutch Apple Pie
Tart apples tossed in yogurt and baked to creamy deliciousness under a crumble topping.
Walnut Pie
Season’s Greetings to the walnut growers of California; this year-round favorite is a sweet and warming holiday pie.
Sweet Potato Pie
We are bringing a new rendition of this classic roasted sweet potato custard – richer and more decadent.
Shaker Lemon Pie
Meyer lemons, sugar, eggs and that’s it! Sweet, tart and unaccountably delicious.
Pear Frangipane Tart
Thinly sliced pears atop a rustic almond custard in a classic tart shell.
Pear-Raspberry Pie
Sweet pears and pretty berries with a crumb top. Always merry and bright.
Vegan Pear-Cranberry Pie
Made with our coconut/canola oil crust, sweet pears, tart cranberries and a crumb top.
Savory Custard Tart with Winter Greens
This beautiful and creatively seasoned vegetarian tart can be served as an hors d’oevre or a dinner side-dish, or as a lovely offering at a holiday brunch.

All sweet pies are $20, and the savory tart is $22.

Don’t see the flavor you crave? Mission Pie also sells its pie dough! $3 a piece for the butter crust, $4 for the vegan. Buy one for an open faced pie, two for a double crust.

This is a time of year that we talk a lot about giving: giving thanks; giving gifts; giving to causes; giving back.
A lot of people talk about Mission Pie as a business that “gives back” to its communities. While we appreciate the praise, we tend to reject the phrase.
To us, “giving back” implies that the success of the business relies on an unfair take away – taking from customers, from the neighborhood, from vendors or staff. Every day since we opened in January 2007, we have practiced fair exchange – giving and taking – with our staff, our vendors, our neighbors and our customers. We know this fairness is key to offering you the highest quality of experience and food. We measure Mission Pie’s success not by what we take from others but by what we do to ensure fairness in what we give and take in trade, wage, and commerce. So we can’t call it successful day without doing our fair share of giving.
In this season of celebrating giving, we’d like to give a little more than usual, and we’d like to invite you to do that with us:
We’ve identified two organizations that are doing great work and we’re going to give them money. In years past, we’ve done this for local organizations but this year we’re looking outside of our immediate communities.
The first organization is the Lower East Side Girls Club in New York City. The Lower East Side Girls Club runs programs that develop environmental, entrepreneurial and ethical leadership for economically disadvantaged girls and young women ages 8-23. In addition to a range of educational programs, the Club runs a number of social venture businesses including a fantastic bakeshop!
The second is an organization called Grow Dat in New Orleans. Grow Dat is a farm-based organization that is working toward a healthier food system in South Louisiana by engaging local youth and adults in the work of growing healthy food for local residents. This year, they have produced about 10,000 pounds of food and they are hoping to grow that fourfold by 2014. Let’s help them get there!
We invite you to join us in this giving. Please deposit cash or check into the container by the Solar panel display screen. We will match 100% of your donations to these organizations. If you choose to write a check, you may make it payable to either of those organizations or to Mission Pie for us to distribute equally between them.
We wish everyone a peaceful, joyous and prosperous end of year and we thank you for joining us in giving thanks to these two great organizations.
Mission Pie

Hello, pie fans.
Thank you for being interested in having Mission Pie at your Thanksgiving. As in previous years, our order deadline was the end of Sunday before Thanksgiving.

If you missed the ordering deadline, we can offer the following information and guidance:
We will be baking more pies each day this week (Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday) than have been ordered, and these will be available on a “first come, first served” basis. If you want to buy a pie, come to the shop sometime in the morning hours, and you will probably get what you are looking for, or close to it. We won’t be able to hold pies for you to pick up later, even if you call and ask oh, so sweetly.

If you need to cancel an order, please call us at either 415-282-4PIE or 415-282-1500 and speak with a live person.
Thank you from all of your hard-working holiday bakers.

Welcome to the holiday season. We are excited at the prospect of baking your Thanksgiving pies. Please read the following and then call us with your order or any questions. During this busy season, we are not able to respond to questions through the website, via email, tweet, Facebook in a timely way.
PLEASE CALL 415-282-1500 or 415-282-4PIE(4743)

WE WILL ACCEPT THANKSGIVING ORDERS FOR MONDAY(19th), TUESDAY(20th) AND WEDNESDAY(21st) PICKUP.
WE WILL BE CLOSED ON THANKSGIVING DAY (Thursday the 22nd).
DEADLINE FOR ALL ORDERS IS SUNDAY NOVEMBER 18 at 10 PM.

Our Thanksgiving menu includes ONE SAVORY and SIX SWEET items:
APPLE PIE: A traditional double crust pie made with apples from Hale Farm is Sebastopol.
PEAR RASPBERRY PIE: Bartlett pears with raspberries from Yerena Farm baked with a sweet crumb topping.
APPLE CRANBERRY PIE: We combine two Thanksgiving traditions in one pie, and give it a crumb top, to show off the bright red cranberries.
WALNUT PIE: Local Walnuts from Dixon Ridge Farm make this our answer to pecan pie.
PUMPKIN PIE: Freshly roasted pumpkin and squash from Full Belly Farm, Blue House and Willow Creek Farms make this the only pumpkin pie in town.
VEGAN APPLE CRANBERRY PIE: Vegans and their allies will delight in this sweet and tart pie.
SAVORY GALETTE: Wild and cultivated mushrooms and sweet Jimmy Nardello peppers wrapped in our all butter crust. Who needs stuffing?

**all offerings are $20**

Don’t see the flavor you crave? Mission Pie also sells its pie dough! $3 each for the butter crust, $4 for the vegan. Buy one for an open faced pie, two for a double crust. Rolled and in the tin for $1 more.

ON WEDNESDAY ONLY, the day before Thanksgiving, we will accept credit cards through Square.

WE WILL BE CLOSED THANKSGIVING DAY THROUGH THE WEEKEND.
WE WILL REOPEN MONDAY THE 26th.

Interested home bakers are invited to submit a sweet or savory pie to the 6th Annual Pie Baking Contest at Mission Pie. The first 20 people to enter will be the contestants this year.

If you would like to participate

* Please email us or call us <415-282-4PIE> before 5pm on Friday, September 21st at eatpie@missionpie.com with your name, email and phone number, and the type of pie you will be submitting. The contest is open to the first 20 entrants.

* On Sunday, September 23, contestants should bring one whole pie and a list of ingredients to Mission Pie between 2:00 and 2:30 pm. A panel of judges will taste and evaluate each pie. Winners in a variety of categories will be announced around 4:00 pm. Feel free to bring friends and cheerleaders to the finale.

While the judges are hard at work, feel free to take a stroll in the neighborhood, visit a friend or run errands, go home and come back, or simply hang out at Mission Pie. At 3:30, we will put pies out for contestants and enthusiasts to sample, and at 4:00, winners will be announced.

Good luck, bakers!

A couple of weeks ago, I got news from my family that my 97 year-old grandfather was failing: he was in renal failure, hadn’t eaten in a week, weighed next to nothing. The doctors said, “couple of weeks, tops”. “I’ll be there Saturday”, I said. “Bring pie”, they said. So I traveled to Florida with a peach-blackberry pie. I sat with grandpa, admired his beard (he’d never had one), tried not to gape at the sight of his feet (I’d never seen them), watched the Olympics (we both liked women’s beach volleyball) and offered him pie. He had most of a sliver and said, “very good”. He dozed, then watched men run. Dozed again, then watched women jump. Next day, more of the same. I sat, watched sport, chatted with cousins, teased my uncle, offered pie. He had some of a sliver. Final day, he was still in bed when we arrived. My uncle helped him into the chair. He held his head and said, “it sucks to be old”. I wheeled him into the kitchen and gave him some pomegranate flavored Ensure. He chugged it down. “It’s good”, he said, “try it”. “Very good”, I lied. I said goodbye, it was time to go to the airport. “See you next year”, he said. “Ok, grandpa. I love you”.
On the next Saturday he turned 98. On the next one, he died. My uncle said my pie was the last thing he ate in this life.
Now it’s Saturday again, I just got back from his funeral in New Jersey and I’m back at Mission Pie. We make so many pies. Sometimes we know the people who are eating them, often we don’t. But I’m glad I followed that peach-blackberry pie to Florida to my grandpa to say goodbye. I’m grateful to the folks at Good Humus, Fully Belly Farm, Regier and Yerena Farms for growing the fruit, to my team for making the pie and keeping everything together while I was gone and to Karen for launching this pie shop that has helped me find my heart.
To the rest of you, this: When someone offers you food, eat it-even if it’s just a little. That makes them feel good. And if you have to go somewhere and do something very, very hard- bring pie.
Krystin Rubin
Co-owner

Mission Pie is pleased to host an educational event called A Farm Bill for the 99%
co-sponsored by Food & Water Watch and the Center for Political Education

Date: Tuesday, May 29
Time: 6pm-8pm

Come learn how local leaders and communities are pushing for a healthier, more sustainable food system! Join us for an exciting evening about Bay Area food politics, the U.S. Farm Bill, and why it matters for urban residents.

The U.S. Farm Bill, the primary agricultural and food policy tool of the federal government, is up for reauthorization in 2012. Many individuals and organizations are working hard to make the Farm Bill a better legislative tool and to create a healthy food system for everyone.

If you want to read up on the Farm Bill in preparation for this evening, check out Farm Bill Primer

Featuring:
San Francisco Supervisors Eric Mar (D1) and David Campos (D9)
Susan Kuehn,Food & Water Watch
Anya Kamenskaya, Occupy the Farm
Author and journalist Christopher Cook

We got this message via Twitter recently, and the whole story is longer than 140 characters:
“I love you @missionpie, but the fact that you guys don’t accept credit cards is silly. Why did you stopped [sic] using @square? Cc @postmates”

Silly? We think not. Our choice to not accept credit cards is an example of the seriousness we bring to decisions about how and where to spend Mission Pie revenue. Quite simply, we believe a greater investment in our employee benefits and compensation is a better use of Mission Pie’s resources than investing in credit cards fees.

Last year, this is what we accomplished for Mission Pie employee benefits: We doubled the paid vacation, achieved 100% participation in our health care expense reimbursement program, and increased enrollment in our 401k plan and health insurance by 40%. If we had siphoned off $25,000 for credit card fees, Mission Pie would not have been able to increase all of these commitments.

We understand that with our “cash or check only, please” policy, we will occasionally startle and even frustrate a customer. We might lose some sales, and get an occasional uncollectable check. Many people have gotten accustomed to traveling without any cash or a checkbook, relying entirely on debit and credit cards. But many others, including a significant number of our customers, have caught on to fact that the 3% charge on credit sales does nothing to support the local economy. In the parlance of the day, spending business revenue on credit card fees does nothing to support the 99% in our community.

Once again, we couldn’t sustain these commitments without our customers’ loyalty and thoughtfulness about how and where you spend your money. One of our primary goals is to make good, healthful, tasty food accessible at everyday prices – our average transaction is $7. Another is to pay our staff well and provide them with meaningful benefits. Your willingness to carry a little bit of cash helps us toward those goals every day.

If you like food and your like photography, you’ll likely enjoy the show going up at Lomography this week, opening Thursday. There’s some fun involved, too: SF Station, which partnered with Lomography on this show, has a Foodie IQ challenge for you, with prizes and all!

A few weeks back, Krista, Joel, David, Sharon, and John visited Taylor Maid Farms, from whom we purchase coffee. TMF was hosting a roasting demo and tour of their plant in Sebastopol. Krista did additional research and offered this edifying Crop of the Week posting.

We will be open through the holiday weekend, though we will close a bit early on Saturday, December 31st – at 8pm instead of 10. We will open as usual on Sunday, January 1, 2012, at 9am and we will be open until 10pm.

AND….
On Tuesday, January 3rd, we will be closed for business, and OPEN FOR OUR 5th ANNIVERSARY PARTY from 3pm til 8pm. We hope you will join us to celebrate 5 great years together!

We will be closed on Christmas day and on Monday, December 26th. We will be back to regular business hours on Tuesday, December 27. We wish you all a delightful holiday season.

Here’s a holiday shopping opportunity for you: Drop by Mission Pie on Saturday, December 17 between noon and 3 and catch the Produce to the People jam sale. Jam makes a great gift; jam with such good work behind it is even sweeter.

If you are seeking pie to celebrate Christmas and other winter holidays, we invite you to choose from this year’s menu:
• PEAR-GINGER, a warming double-crust winter treat
• WINTER HARVEST APPLE apples, fruits and nuts with a crumb top
• WALNUT, California’s answer to pecan
• SWEET POTATO roasted sweet potatoes brightened with spice
• SHAKER LEMON, bursting with meyer lemon flavor
• PEAR FRANGIPANE TART, pears baked atop a rustic almond custard
• and VEGAN PEAR-CRANBERRY crumb-top.
All pies cost $20.
We will also offer a LARGE SAVORY GALETTE with ham and sweet and spicy chutney. This galette is like our small galettes but in a larger format to serve as an appetizer or a side dish. Each galette serves 6 to 8 people, and will cost $20.
We will receive your IN-PERSON OR PHONE ORDERS UNTIL 10 PM Thursday December 22nd. Sorry, but we cannot accept orders by email, nor through the website, Twitter, or Facebook.
Your order ensures that the pie of your choice will be waiting for you when you come to pick it up, and you will be able to pay with cash or check at the time of pick-up.
We will be open regular business hours for the week preceding Christmas, except that WE WILL CLOSE AT 6pm CHRISTMAS EVE, Saturday the 24th.
We will be CLOSED Christmas Day and the day after.
We will REOPEN on Tuesday, December 27th at 7 am.
Everyone at Mission Pie wishes you a holiday season full of good food, good company, festivity and love.

We hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving. Our menu will be changing for the Winter holidays within a week or so, and we will announce that menu here. Stay tuned…