Uploaded on: 06/24/2007
Our Lady of Lourdes steeps French-Canadian tradition in the kitchen
By Julie Pfitzinger
The Catholic Spirit
French-Canadian ancestry doubles up in this familyJim Jorgensen, a member of St. Vincent de Paul in Brooklyn Park, said his maternal grandparents came to America from Quebec, as did both his wife’s grandfathers and their wives’ parents. Only a few things stayed with them enough to pass on to their children — a few words, a prayer and a Christmas dish, the tourtiere. “For meals, we would say the regular blessing, ‘Bless us, oh Lord, and these thy gifts. . . .’ We always added this to the back of that prayer: ‘Jesu, Mari, Joseph, prepaneu’ (sic). It is our understanding that this means Jesus, Mary and Joseph, pray for us. My wife’s family said this as part of the blessing for every meal, and we did it.” |
At Our Lady of Lourdes in northeast Minneapolis, there is a beloved (not to mention delicious) French Canadian tradition that lives on thanks to the efforts of a group of dedicated parishioners who make les tourtieres, or meat pies, by hand twice a year in the church’s kitchen.
The pies, filled with pork, onion, celery and spices, have always been a favorite dish to serve on New Year’s Day when families go visiting. According to Barb Bye, a life-long parshioner at Our Lady of Lourdes and a member of the baking crew, the secret recipe for the parish’s meat pies was created in the 1940s.
“Evelyn Lund, who died two or three years ago, is the one who came up with our original recipe,” said Bye, who adds that the elderly woman was so small she had to stand on a box to operate the old-fashioned mixer for the dough.
As they did in the 1940s, the bakers work in an assembly line and do everything from hand-rolling the crust to filling the pies.
“We make them a bit differently than our grandmothers did,” said Bye. “They used potatoes as a binder for the filling, but that gives the pie too much moisture. We’ve switched to dried bread, so the night before we’re baking the pies, there are loaves and loaves of bread drying out on our long tables.”
The pie bakers’ motto is, “If the crust isn’t right, the pie isn’t right.” Bye said all pies are tested after they are partially cooled. “If it doesn’t slide correctly out of the pan, the crust’s not right,” she said.
Les tourtieres are then frozen and stored in three big basement freezers. Bye estimates several hundred pies are made each year. They are available for sale at Our Lady of Lourdes’ parish office. Today, the cost of a meat pie is $15, “a lot more” than when the group first started making the pies 60 years ago, Bye said. Profits from the sales of les tourtieres go into Our Lady of Lourdes’ building restoration fund.
The church also donates more than 700 meat pies to the Dorothy Day Center in St. Paul twice a year and provides the traditional accompaniments of au gratin potatoes, pickled beets and milk.
“It’s a very big undertaking to make all those pies,” Bye said. “And it takes us about a week to get everything ready.”
Michael Rainville, who is part of the fifth generation of the Rainville family to worship at Our Lady of Lourdes, believes the making of les tourtieres is a tradition that has helped keep the parish’s French- Canadian heritage alive.
“The piece of meat pie I had last month tasted exactly the same as a piece I had 40 years ago,” said Rainville. He fondly recalls church festival days when les tourtieres, beets and apple juice were considered “a feast.”
Even Rainville’s 9-year-old son has embraced the traditional meal, with one exception. “He likes the meat pie, but he hates the beets,” Rainville said.
Although Bye remembers making les tourtieres with her grandmother, an early parishioner at Our Lady of Lourdes, she said many of today’s elderly bakers wonder who will carry on the tradition of les tourtieres. “Our parish has become such a melting pot now with so many members who aren’t from the neighborhood, but from the suburbs,” she said. “But the meat pies are such a tradition. It’s something that is just not going to die.”