There was a long line at the meat case this Saturday at the grocery store and I was standing with the crowd. I enjoyed asking everyone in line how they make ‘their’ Tortiere pie. I was in the company of experts - it’s a serious subject in Maine.
Tortiere is a meat and potato pie seasoned with sweet spices, similar in flavor and texture to a coarse country pate but made with potatoes as the binding agent instead of fatback and Tortiere is enrobed in a double crust.
One cute older couple told me they were making 20 pies. She told me, “we have the time to make tortiere pies for our family - they are too busy to make it for themselves.” It is the season to make Tortiere pie. It’s a French Canadian treasured recipe and tradition and everyone makes it differently.
Some will only make it with a lard crust - I save my saturated fat calories for something more spectacular. Some sweet little old gray haired ladies insist that the only way to properly make the filling is with finely minced meats, hand done. My family, meaning my mother’s side of the family always made it with ground pork and beef, equal weights. I make my pie with a butter crust - I am a ‘no lard or Crisco’ chick.
Certain people, I’m told, are particularly susceptible to taking their parents seriously, just as they might be to sunburn, or T.B. I believe it, especially around New Year’s Eve, when a trio of my Mom’s personal aphorisms begins to clang around my head. 
Whenever my sister-in-law comes to visit, she tries to sneak in rum balls. There's a deli near Union Square that sells them and it must be sending out a homing signal. A rum ball beacon. It doesn't matter what we're doing or where we are, it's only a matter of time before she says "who wants to go get rum balls!" It's not really a question so much as a rallying cry. 
It's not too early to start planning what you are going to make with your 
Before moving to Paris, we sold our house in New Jersey, and I gave away most of my kitchenwares. No more unnecessary objects, I told myself, putting cookbooks detailing how to make rice in fifty-five ways in a box for Good Will. Wedding presents that never made it to the table – the egg steamer, the fish plate, an orange sugar bowl – went into the box as well. I pictured my post-Paris kitchen as holding nothing but my old, beloved Le Cruesets: friendly, large and utilitarian.
in a shiny burnt-crimson color. There’s no end to the gorgeous food that can be made in my cocottes. For a dinner party on Friday I used the very best chocolate – after much investigation, my current favorite is Michel Cluizel’s – with generous splashes of Grand Marnier and a box of eggs, to make fierce little chocolate cakes. Under the giddy influence of a Parisian December, I gave each cake a generous dab of crème fraiche thinned with Grand Marnier and topped with a translucent star made from pure spun sugar.