Deborah Meadows makes her famous pie dough from scratch. (Photo by Nathan Simone)
Fresh, fried friendships in Collinsville
By Mary Beth Snow
If there is one thing I love about the South almost as much as sweet tea and football, it’s a good fried pie. I met Deborah Meadows, owner of Deb’s Pies, a few weeks ago at Trade Day in Collinsville through a mutual friend. A true picture of southern hospitality, Debra immediately invited me to make pies with her whenever I wanted. I was very excited to recently have the fortune of spending the morning with Deborah. She welcomed Nathan, our visiting Living Democracy journalist, and myself into her pie-making kitchen and shared a slice of her life with us.
Both of Meadows’ machines, a roller and crimper, paid for themselves after a month of making pies. (Photo by Nathan Simone)
Her pies have been a Trade Day staple for more than 15 years, but for the past 25 years she has worked on Trade Day on Saturdays. It’s a family affair. Her husband works in parking at Trade Day and has since he was 12 years old. Two of her children help in the booth- one of them coming home from Jacksonville just to work on Saturdays. For Deborah, however, pie making isn’t a weekend affair- it’s a huge part of her everyday life. Not only does she sell her fried pies at Trade Day, but she also sells frozen pies to individuals and restaurants all over the region and even in other states. She works for multiple hours every day making her dough and filling from scratch and then preparing trays full of frozen pies to either be delivered to restaurants or taken to Trade Day and cooked in the fryer there. When we were there, she was preparing to send her son Ethan with a huge delivery of pies to Riverfest in Gadsden, and I’ll be seeing her at the next Trade Day when I buy the fried apple pie I’ve been dreaming of all week. In fact, as you are reading this, there’s a decent chance Deborah is somewhere doing something pie-related.
Watching her make the dough amazed me. She combines biscuit and doughnut flour to create the perfect mixture, never using a measuring tool of any sort. I suppose after making pie every day for 15 years she doesn’t need them anymore. She just knows how it should feel and look. As she stirs the dough, it’s hard not to notice how muscular her arms are: muscles, she says, that are partly hereditary, partly from growing up on a farm and baling hay, and partly from working with heavy mounds of dough every day. People always ask her if she works out, and they are usually surprised when she tells them that she just makes pies. Putting the mixture through the dough roller multiple times and then on the pie crimper does in fact require some muscles. When it was my turn to turn the handle on the pie crimper, I needed Deborah’s help to move it. She told us that making 500 pies a week has a toll on her body. She actually visits a chiropractor once a week and describes it as essential to dealing with the wear and tear her body takes. In another part of her pie-making room, a TRX band hangs from the ceiling that she uses to stretch out her shoulders and back.
Mary Beth Snow fills and prepares to crimp her first fried pie. (Photo by Nathan Simone)
I really loved the time we got to spend with Deborah. It’s so fascinating to see what real people in my community do with their days. It reminds me of an Annie Dillard quote- “How we spend our days, is, of course, how we spend our lives.” Deborah spends her days making pies and being with her family. She can remember maybe six or seven times she’s missed Trade Day in the past 25 years, most of them due to being snowed in on the mountain where they live or the serious car wreck her son Ethan had a couple of years ago. Her schedule may be a bit unconventional. She laments that she doesn’t get weekends like other people do, but the full life she has pays off in more than good cooking. It might be my Southern upbringing, but at least to me, making food for others is one of the best ways to express love, and that’s what Deborah does every day. I am so grateful that she opened up her pie-making kitchen and shared a little bit of her world with Nathan and I, and I can’t wait to eat my next fried pie.
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