Beth Howard with pie
Iowa has a fabulous ciderhouse culture.
Really good Iowa boozes
Diane Sheehy is a pie goddess in Iowa.
WHY DOESN'T IOWA HAVE ANY OFFICIAL FOODS?
Des Moines is home to new and old breweries, each serving unique craft brews and good times.
By Jim Duncan
Forty-eight states, including all that border Iowa, have official foods by legislative fiat. Some are dishes invented or made famous there. Others are bountiful crops associated with them.
Identifying with good foods is considered an asset by most states. For instance, Vermont made maple syrup its official state flavor, and Maine made it the official state sweetener. Louisiana has two official state jellies, sugar cane and mayhew, plus an official state cuisine — Gumbo because it’s both Creole and Cajun. Alabama has an official fruit, tree fruit, game bird, legume, dessert, vegetable, nut and cookie.
Massachusetts has an official state doughnut (Boston cream) plus an official bean, berry, dessert (also Boston cream — pie or cake), cookie and muffin. New Mexico has two official vegetables — the New Mexico chile and the pinto bean. Its official state question is “red or green?,” referring to choice of chile sauce. Connecticut has an official cookie, the snickerdoodle, and an official dessert to eat it with — ice cream. Its official food is pizza, named so after the movie “Mystic Pizza” that made Julia Roberts famous.
California, which has declared four different nuts as its official state nut. That’s kind of degrading to almonds because California produces 80% of the world’s almonds.
Some seem weird. Hawaii is famously known for pineapples, cane sugar, coffee beans, and SPAM, but its only official food is the coconut muffin. Similarly, Georgia is known as the Peach State, but its legislature proclaimed grits and Vidalia onions the official state foods. Seeing an opening, Delaware made peach pie its official state dessert. Kentucky is probably most famous for Bourbon, but its official beverage is milk. Really?
Less confused, Maryland, Idaho, Mississippi and Florida know exactly where their best foods are buttered. Maryland designated crab its official food and blue crab its official crustacean. Idaho’s down-to-earth official food is the potato. Louisiana’s official food and official doughnut is the beignet. Mississippi named the butter cookie its official food. Florida designated oranges the official state fruit, Key Lime the official pie and Tupelo the official honey.
Texas, of course, has the most official foods with 11 including a dish, fruit, pepper, native pepper, vegetable, snack, nut, bread, cobbler, pie and squash. Oklahoma, which calls Texas “Baja Oklahoma,” has an official state meal with 11 courses.
In Iowa’s neck of the woods, Illinois has an official state snack, vegetable, fruit, pie, grain and bean. Pumpkin is the pie because the state grows most all the pumpkins that end up in cans. The brownie was invented in Chicago when a chef at the Palmer House got so drunk he forgot to add yeast to a chocolate cake. Illinois popcorn is an important part of Illinois’ agricultural production — making it a natural choice as the official snack food. Wisconsin has an official grain, fruit, pastry and dairy product. South Dakota has an official bread and dessert.
Minnesota has an official muffin, pop, fruit, mushroom and grain. The mushroom is the morel, which should have been Iowa’s. The grain is wild rice, which isn’t even a rice. Missouri has an official tree nut, grape and dessert. The tree nut is black walnut, which should have been Iowa’s because this is the only state where black walnuts grow in all counties. Missouri designated the ice cream cone its state dessert. It’s usually agreed that it was invented at the St. Louis’ Louisiana Purchase Exposition, sometimes called the St. Louis World Fair, in 1904.
Besides Iowa, only Arizona’s legislature has so resolutely refused to designate any food as official. In Arizona, fans of the chimichanga petition the legislature every year on behalf of that deep fried burrito.
Why not Iowa?
We have been asking that question since 1990 when we teamed with the Lou and Larry in the Morning radio show. We began by recommending possible official state songs which we also lack. Listeners voted for “All I Have to Do Is Dream,” made famous by the Everly Brothers who lived awhile in Shenandoah and were discovered there on “KMA Country School,” a talent show produced by radio announcer and seed salesman Earl May. Our recommendation went nowhere with the Iowa legislature.
Iowa used to call itself The Corn State, but as our population moved from predominantly rural to mostly urban and suburban, we have developed a bipolar disorder identifying with our most bountiful agricultural product. Now Iowa corn is more likely to be found in toothpaste, glue, automotive fuel and the dreaded high fructose corn syrup than in foods to be proud of. Only our Latino population thinks of corn as sustenance. Should our official state bread be the corn tortilla?
Vegetables have their most historical context in squashes. The acorn squash is native to the state, not too far from Des Moines. The Sibley is far less known but a favorite of many chefs. In Des Moines, people think steak de Burgo should be the official state dish, but it’s mostly unknown outside the city.
In Sioux City, Muscatine and Ottumwa, loose meat sandwiches, by many different names, are revered as a sandwich. But breaded pork tenderloins are beloved statewide. And bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwiches are blessed with the best tomatoes on earth, plus myriad great bacons and superb artisans of both Italian and French breads.
So, we think our best chance of getting any food, drink or dish designated for all Iowa is to focus on either a cocktail or dessert — and pie in particular.
Only a few American cities and states have their own cocktails, either official or all-but-official. New Orleans has the sazerac. Wisconsin has the Wisconsin old-fashioned, made with brandy not whiskey. New Jersey’s cocktail is the Jack Rose, a sour made with juice, grenadine and apple brandy, a spirit with its own long history in the state.
Cedar Ridge in Swisher makes an apple brandy with Iowa apples, aged for three years in American, and finished in French oak casks. Iowa has some incredible cider houses. Fishback & Stephenson in Fairfield even incorporates their hard cider mash in the diets of their exclusive cattle herd, raised for their hamburgers.
We asked Jesse’s Embers owner Marty Scarpino about identity cocktails in Iowa.
“The unofficial Iowa cocktail is the ‘Polk County.’ It’s 7&7 — half Seagram’s 7 and half 7 Up. (Polk is the 77th county in Iowa counting down from west to east and from north to south.) It goes back to before liquor by the drink.”
Templeton Rye (TR) has carefully created an infamous identity, in a good way. Their Carroll County distillery claims roots growing out of Prohibition legends. That county, mostly heavy drinking Irish and Germans 100 years ago, flaunted laws against booze. Al Capone reportedly called TR “the good stuff.”
An official Iowa cocktail should include apple brandy, apple cider or Templeton Rye. TR is partnering with Iowa brewers Toppling Goliath, Confluence, Peacetree and Exile on new boozes that are made with the grain bills of the brewers’ best products, aged to TR specifications.
PIEOWA
Beth Howard is a baker, food writer and filmmaker. Her books include “Making Piece: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Pie;” “Ms. American Pie;” and “World Piece: A Pie Baker’s Global Quest for Peace, Love, and Understanding.” She preaches the healing powers of pie.
We asked her what Iowa’s official dessert should be.
“Of course, I think it should be pie,” she answered to no surprise. From 2010 to 2014, she lived in the iconic American Gothic House in Eldon, where she ran the Pitchfork Pie Stand. In 2015, she embarked on a round-the-world journey teaching pie classes in nine countries to promote world peace. As a widow who understands grief, Howard responded to the Sandy Hook Shooting in 2012 by organizing 60 volunteers to bake 250 pies for the residents of Newtown, Connecticut.
She is currently making a documentary film called “PIEOWA.” It might be released by press time but more likely by state fair time.
“I quit a good job in web production for one baking pies at a gourmet bakery in Malibu. I am pretty sure that I got that job because I was from Iowa. When they saw that on my resume, it closed the deal. Other applicants had better kitchen credentials, but they weren’t from Iowa.” In Malibu, a pie-maker from Iowa is authentic.
Howard believes that pie and Iowa have an intermingled destiny.
“Making my film, I came to realize that everyone has a pie story. Pie touches that part of their soul where they store their cherished memories. ‘The first time I went out for pie with my grandfather;’ ‘I had a wedding pie instead of cake;’ ‘Pie was the first thing my mother ever let me make with her.’ That sort of thing.”
On KFMG’s Kitchen Insider, Howard and George Formaro agreed that they would rather have a pie than cake, “even at a wedding or anniversary.” If Iowa made pie its official state dessert, should we also have an official state pie, and what should it be?
“I don’t know how it got started, but every time I google ‘Iowa and pie,’ I read that sour cream raisin is our state pie,” Howard noted. That likely started with Stacey Mei Yan Fong, a Singaporean living in Brooklyn who wrote about that odd connection in her book “Fifty Pies, Fifty States.”
“I hardly ever meet an Iowan who bakes sour cream raisin pie. I know from my years selling pies that the most popular pie in Iowa is strawberry rhubarb. It’s always the first to sell out at RAGBRAI and such events.
“But making the film, I learned that Iowans love all pies, savory or sweet. Trang Pham (Eggroll Ladies in downtown Des Moines) told me that dumplings and eggrolls are pies, so is anything that is stuffed into dough.”
Why is pie so Iowan?
“Diane Sheehy thinks that pie is the perfect Iowa farm food. She raises everything she needs to make pies on her farm, even her pig lard.”
Sheehy is a pie goddess in Iowa. Mostly retired now, she dominated state fair pie contests for decades. Once, I walked into an apple pie contest with her, and contestants seated in the audience sighed, as if defeated. When they realized she was judging, not competing, they cheered among themselves.
“Diane is kind of a bad ass. She and her husband used to be long haul truckers, even ice road truckers.”
So, if all fillings make great pie, what is Howard’s recipe for the fat in the crust.
“Fifty-fifty butter and vegetable shortening, though the best crusts I have made and eaten used animal lards.”
Forty-eight states, including all that border Iowa, have official foods by legislative fiat. Some are dishes invented or made famous there. Others are bountiful crops associated with them.
Identifying with good foods is considered an asset by most states. For instance, Vermont made maple syrup its official state flavor, and Maine made it the official state sweetener. Louisiana has two official state jellies, sugar cane and mayhew, plus an official state cuisine — Gumbo because it’s both Creole and Cajun. Alabama has an official fruit, tree fruit, game bird, legume, dessert, vegetable, nut and cookie.
Massachusetts has an official state doughnut (Boston cream) plus an official bean, berry, dessert (also Boston cream — pie or cake), cookie and muffin. New Mexico has two official vegetables — the New Mexico chile and the pinto bean. Its official state question is “red or green?,” referring to choice of chile sauce. Connecticut has an official cookie, the snickerdoodle, and an official dessert to eat it with — ice cream. Its official food is pizza, named so after the movie “Mystic Pizza” that made Julia Roberts famous.
California, which has declared four different nuts as its official state nut. That’s kind of degrading to almonds because California produces 80% of the world’s almonds.
Some seem weird. Hawaii is famously known for pineapples, cane sugar, coffee beans, and SPAM, but its only official food is the coconut muffin. Similarly, Georgia is known as the Peach State, but its legislature proclaimed grits and Vidalia onions the official state foods. Seeing an opening, Delaware made peach pie its official state dessert. Kentucky is probably most famous for Bourbon, but its official beverage is milk. Really?
Less confused, Maryland, Idaho, Mississippi and Florida know exactly where their best foods are buttered. Maryland designated crab its official food and blue crab its official crustacean. Idaho’s down-to-earth official food is the potato. Louisiana’s official food and official doughnut is the beignet. Mississippi named the butter cookie its official food. Florida designated oranges the official state fruit, Key Lime the official pie and Tupelo the official honey.
Texas, of course, has the most official foods with 11 including a dish, fruit, pepper, native pepper, vegetable, snack, nut, bread, cobbler, pie and squash. Oklahoma, which calls Texas “Baja Oklahoma,” has an official state meal with 11 courses.
In Iowa’s neck of the woods, Illinois has an official state snack, vegetable, fruit, pie, grain and bean. Pumpkin is the pie because the state grows most all the pumpkins that end up in cans. The brownie was invented in Chicago when a chef at the Palmer House got so drunk he forgot to add yeast to a chocolate cake. Illinois popcorn is an important part of Illinois’ agricultural production — making it a natural choice as the official snack food. Wisconsin has an official grain, fruit, pastry and dairy product. South Dakota has an official bread and dessert.
Minnesota has an official muffin, pop, fruit, mushroom and grain. The mushroom is the morel, which should have been Iowa’s. The grain is wild rice, which isn’t even a rice. Missouri has an official tree nut, grape and dessert. The tree nut is black walnut, which should have been Iowa’s because this is the only state where black walnuts grow in all counties. Missouri designated the ice cream cone its state dessert. It’s usually agreed that it was invented at the St. Louis’ Louisiana Purchase Exposition, sometimes called the St. Louis World Fair, in 1904.
Besides Iowa, only Arizona’s legislature has so resolutely refused to designate any food as official. In Arizona, fans of the chimichanga petition the legislature every year on behalf of that deep fried burrito.
Why not Iowa?
We have been asking that question since 1990 when we teamed with the Lou and Larry in the Morning radio show. We began by recommending possible official state songs which we also lack. Listeners voted for “All I Have to Do Is Dream,” made famous by the Everly Brothers who lived awhile in Shenandoah and were discovered there on “KMA Country School,” a talent show produced by radio announcer and seed salesman Earl May. Our recommendation went nowhere with the Iowa legislature.
Iowa used to call itself The Corn State, but as our population moved from predominantly rural to mostly urban and suburban, we have developed a bipolar disorder identifying with our most bountiful agricultural product. Now Iowa corn is more likely to be found in toothpaste, glue, automotive fuel and the dreaded high fructose corn syrup than in foods to be proud of. Only our Latino population thinks of corn as sustenance. Should our official state bread be the corn tortilla?
Vegetables have their most historical context in squashes. The acorn squash is native to the state, not too far from Des Moines. The Sibley is far less known but a favorite of many chefs. In Des Moines, people think steak de Burgo should be the official state dish, but it’s mostly unknown outside the city.
In Sioux City, Muscatine and Ottumwa, loose meat sandwiches, by many different names, are revered as a sandwich. But breaded pork tenderloins are beloved statewide. And bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwiches are blessed with the best tomatoes on earth, plus myriad great bacons and superb artisans of both Italian and French breads.
So, we think our best chance of getting any food, drink or dish designated for all Iowa is to focus on either a cocktail or dessert — and pie in particular.
Only a few American cities and states have their own cocktails, either official or all-but-official. New Orleans has the sazerac. Wisconsin has the Wisconsin old-fashioned, made with brandy not whiskey. New Jersey’s cocktail is the Jack Rose, a sour made with juice, grenadine and apple brandy, a spirit with its own long history in the state.
Cedar Ridge in Swisher makes an apple brandy with Iowa apples, aged for three years in American, and finished in French oak casks. Iowa has some incredible cider houses. Fishback & Stephenson in Fairfield even incorporates their hard cider mash in the diets of their exclusive cattle herd, raised for their hamburgers.
We asked Jesse’s Embers owner Marty Scarpino about identity cocktails in Iowa.
“The unofficial Iowa cocktail is the ‘Polk County.’ It’s 7&7 — half Seagram’s 7 and half 7 Up. (Polk is the 77th county in Iowa counting down from west to east and from north to south.) It goes back to before liquor by the drink.”
Templeton Rye (TR) has carefully created an infamous identity, in a good way. Their Carroll County distillery claims roots growing out of Prohibition legends. That county, mostly heavy drinking Irish and Germans 100 years ago, flaunted laws against booze. Al Capone reportedly called TR “the good stuff.”
An official Iowa cocktail should include apple brandy, apple cider or Templeton Rye. TR is partnering with Iowa brewers Toppling Goliath, Confluence, Peacetree and Exile on new boozes that are made with the grain bills of the brewers’ best products, aged to TR specifications.
PIEOWA
Beth Howard is a baker, food writer and filmmaker. Her books include “Making Piece: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Pie;” “Ms. American Pie;” and “World Piece: A Pie Baker’s Global Quest for Peace, Love, and Understanding.” She preaches the healing powers of pie.
We asked her what Iowa’s official dessert should be.
“Of course, I think it should be pie,” she answered to no surprise. From 2010 to 2014, she lived in the iconic American Gothic House in Eldon, where she ran the Pitchfork Pie Stand. In 2015, she embarked on a round-the-world journey teaching pie classes in nine countries to promote world peace. As a widow who understands grief, Howard responded to the Sandy Hook Shooting in 2012 by organizing 60 volunteers to bake 250 pies for the residents of Newtown, Connecticut.
She is currently making a documentary film called “PIEOWA.” It might be released by press time but more likely by state fair time.
“I quit a good job in web production for one baking pies at a gourmet bakery in Malibu. I am pretty sure that I got that job because I was from Iowa. When they saw that on my resume, it closed the deal. Other applicants had better kitchen credentials, but they weren’t from Iowa.” In Malibu, a pie-maker from Iowa is authentic.
Howard believes that pie and Iowa have an intermingled destiny.
“Making my film, I came to realize that everyone has a pie story. Pie touches that part of their soul where they store their cherished memories. ‘The first time I went out for pie with my grandfather;’ ‘I had a wedding pie instead of cake;’ ‘Pie was the first thing my mother ever let me make with her.’ That sort of thing.”
On KFMG’s Kitchen Insider, Howard and George Formaro agreed that they would rather have a pie than cake, “even at a wedding or anniversary.” If Iowa made pie its official state dessert, should we also have an official state pie, and what should it be?
“I don’t know how it got started, but every time I google ‘Iowa and pie,’ I read that sour cream raisin is our state pie,” Howard noted. That likely started with Stacey Mei Yan Fong, a Singaporean living in Brooklyn who wrote about that odd connection in her book “Fifty Pies, Fifty States.”
“I hardly ever meet an Iowan who bakes sour cream raisin pie. I know from my years selling pies that the most popular pie in Iowa is strawberry rhubarb. It’s always the first to sell out at RAGBRAI and such events.
“But making the film, I learned that Iowans love all pies, savory or sweet. Trang Pham (Eggroll Ladies in downtown Des Moines) told me that dumplings and eggrolls are pies, so is anything that is stuffed into dough.”
Why is pie so Iowan?
“Diane Sheehy thinks that pie is the perfect Iowa farm food. She raises everything she needs to make pies on her farm, even her pig lard.”
Sheehy is a pie goddess in Iowa. Mostly retired now, she dominated state fair pie contests for decades. Once, I walked into an apple pie contest with her, and contestants seated in the audience sighed, as if defeated. When they realized she was judging, not competing, they cheered among themselves.
“Diane is kind of a bad ass. She and her husband used to be long haul truckers, even ice road truckers.”
So, if all fillings make great pie, what is Howard’s recipe for the fat in the crust.
“Fifty-fifty butter and vegetable shortening, though the best crusts I have made and eaten used animal lards.”
