Moosewood

What’s a small moment from your past that you still think about years later?

I still remember my college roommate Ann making an actual meal in our sophomore apartment kitchen circa 1984. I had never done any real cooking growing up, and freshman year we ate every meal in the dining hall. It was a weird feeling to have a kitchen of our own. We were like…adults…and we could be vegetarians if we felt like it.

If you were in college in the 80s and had even a passing interest in eating less meat, you probably owned The Moosewood Cookbook, or borrowed it from a roommate and never gave it back. Mollie Katzen’s hand-lettered, hand-illustrated pages felt more like a friend’s notebook than a cookbook. Everyone made the same few things: a big pot of soup, something with lots of cheese and broccoli, and a very ambitious attempt at a dinner party for six. I still have mine.

Copyright, 1977
Decades later, my son was in college in Ithaca, NY and I finally got to eat in the legendary Moosewood Restaurant in downtown Ithaca.

Their subsequent cookbooks, including “Enchanted Broccoli Forest,” were huge bestsellers, especially among young, liberal, vegetarian types. I bought “New Recipes from Moosewood Restaurant” when it came out in 1987–the year I graduated college. I still have that one too.

Yesterday, my husband asked for my old “Apple Cheddar Cheese Pie” recipe, so I dug it out. It was in the New Recipes cookbook.

This one has typed pages, rather than the hand-illustrated look of the original.
He whipped up this pie while I was working on a painting yesterday.
We had no pre-made pie crusts on hand, so he made the crust too. Impressive, don’t you think?

It came out great. The layer of cheese under the streusel makes this pie feel more like an actual meal. I would not add ice cream to this, but truth be told, my husband did.

Moosewood Restaurant’s Apple and Cheddar Cheese Pie. The last time I made this was at least twenty years ago.
The cheese isn’t really visible, but you can taste it and it’s lovely with the apples and sweet topping.
My roommate Ann (far left) and friends in our first apartment with a kitchen.
Terrible photo of my other roommate (and dear departed friend) grating cheese in that first kitchen. It was probably for a Moosewood recipe. There is lots and lots of CHEESE in Moosewood cookbooks. No meat, but a few fish recipes are included.

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