Hoosier Mama Pie Company

As stated below, on New Year's Day, Heather and I braved the Chicago cold to make a pilgrimage to Hoosier Mama Pie Company, in West Town. Hoosier Mama is an adorably tiny pie shop, with a whole lotta pie, and a pie philosophy that really resonates with my own-- local culture, tradition, history, whole foods, women's domestic arts (see video below for more on this), as well as Hoosier pride.
The pie-makers there were all incredibly friendly (especially when we told them we were friends with Abra, who works there occasionally) and let me ogle and photograph their tin top tables and pie paraphernalia...


We even got to meet the Hoosier Mama herself (stirring on the left).

It took Heather and me a long time to figure out which 2 pies to try--Hoosier Sugar Cream & Pear Apple Cranberry? Maple Pecan & Lemon Chess?

We settled on Banana Cream & Key Lime...
via the "$5 sweet slice + coffee for here!", and took our treats to the built-in booth in the bay window.


The key lime was our favorite--zesty and delicious with an excellent graham-cracker crust. The banana cream, which was topped with white chocolate shavings, was good, albeit extremely rich. This slice had their standard crust, which was decent, though a little tough and not as flaky as it could be. Before seeing the video below, I would have guessed that they used at least 1/2 shortening and 1/2 butter. Nonetheless, we firmly entered the Pie Enjoyment Zone...
 
and browsed their awesome collection of old pie cookbooks, The Farm Journal's Complete Pie Cookbook, being my favorite.

MAN APPEAL?!
And though I'm not necessarily the type of girl to fantasize about my wedding day, this framed photo did get my mind a-reeling...

As you can see, Hoosier Mama is basically THE Pie Enjoyment Zone, and hopefully our New Year's visit will bring us in good pie for 2010.