Bonnie Cash, a customer at Mrs. Rowe’s, says, “When my husband used to travel on business and was in Staunton, he always ate lunch or dinner at Rowe’s. He ate there so often that on one occasion Mildred told him she wanted to cook dinner for him and invited him home to eat. He would never eat mincemeat pie. Well, she served mincemeat pie and he ate it so as not to disappoint her. It turns out that it is also now a favorite during the holidays. I must admit he never had eaten ‘real’ mincemeat before.” This mincemeat is about as “real” as it gets. According to Grace Firth in her book Stillroom Cookery: The Art of Preserving Foods Naturally, “Mincemeat is a salute to the triumph of nature and humanity’s ingenuity in bringing it all together in pie.” Because making mincemeat is an undertaking, make a huge batch of it, keep it in the refrigerator, and make fresh pies all season long.
