What do comfort foods and small towns have in common?

I have a confession:
The town in which I live, is not the town I call home.
I live in Port St. Lucie, and have lived here for more than 10-years. But I used to live just four short miles away from here, in Fort Pierce, for 24-years. When asked, I still say I'm from Fort Pierce.

When my parents moved to Florida from Southern Illinois, they landed in Fort Pierce. And even though they lived there for only three-years, it's the neighbors they had in Fort Pierce that became their life-long and devoted friends. And it's where they returned when they retired.

I have another confession:
When it's a holiday or birthday or I have guests, I love to do something special; most often it's food related.

So did my mother.

Mom had special recipes for certain holidays and birthdays; German chocolate cake for Christmas, a steak for my Jewish husband while the rest of us ate ham for Easter,  stinky black-eyed peas for New Year's day, "burnt" green beans for my birthday (they weren't actually burnt, but it's what we called them), her fabulous, sweet meatloaf for my dad's birthday and oatmeal cake for my brother's birthday.

It was sometime in the early 1970s that Mother and Daddy drove up to Fort Pierce from Miami for a weekend with their best friends. While visiting, they went to a small restaurant in downtown - a place we all lovingly called the "greasy spoon" - that served Peanut Butter Pie only on a certain day of the week. That pie quickly became Mom's favorite recipe to fix for special occasions....which brings me to the topic of this post, Mother's comforting Peanut Butter Pie.

She convinced one of the waitresses to give her the recipe, but went home and tweaked it a little by changing the topping. It became the "go-to" dessert for two very special birthdays when my son and my niece both referred to it as their "favorite."
It popped into my head this past week, and I suddenly needed to make it for some new friends who were coming over for a visit.

This is Mom's recipe card for Peanut Butter Pie.
ha ha
Like so many of her cards, much of the information is missing. She kept so much in her head. Luckily, unlike the Orange Kiss Me Cake, I had watched her make it many times. Otherwise, I'm sure I wouldn't have known what to do. In fact, without even looking at it, I sent it to my niece a few months ago, because she wanted to make it. I hadn't even noticed, until she called, that the entire recipe wasn't even on the card.
The recipe Mom copied onto a napkin ( I wish I had it.) listed meringue as the topping, which is very good, but Mother changed her topping to a generous portion of Cool Whip (much easier).

Like Mom, I've tweaked it just a little to include more peanut butter. I've had many different samplings of Peanut Butter Pie, but I must say that this recipe is by far my favorite.

Peanut Butter Pie

one baked pie shell
one 1 oz. box of instant vanilla pudding
2-cups of cold milk
1-cup powdered sugar
2/3-cup of peanut butter (crunchy or creamy)
8 oz. container of Cool Whip

Make the instant vanilla pudding according to directions on box and set aside.
Combine the powdered sugar and peanut butter until crumbly.
Set aside about a tablespoon of the crumbly peanut butter mixture and pour the remainder into the baked pie shell.
Pat down lightly, then pour all of the pudding on top of the crumbly peanut butter mixture.
Top the pudding with a generous amount of Cool Whip.
Sprinkle with the crumbly peanut butter mixture that had been set aside.
I also cut some Mini-Reeses Cups into small pieces and sprinkled them on the pie.

You can do the same -- tweak it and make it yours.
As my mother always told me, "Be Who You Are."

The feeling that comes from some very common foods - like this peanut butter pie, or meatloaf, or mac 'n cheese - is much like the feeling that comes from living in a small town. Both surround me with flavors of love and, well, comfort.

I love and miss you, Mom.