As siblings, we are very close in age, which makes us practically peers. Growing up in a small midwestern town where we graduated high school with the same fifteen kids we went to elementary school with, we managed to keep a firm sense of independence and to pursue our own interests and friendships (thanks in a large part to a strong mother intent on raising us and our brother, Chris, as self-determined people). Though we shared a bedroom, teachers, basketball coaches, and after-school activities during our school years, we followed very different paths after high school—Emily to New York City and London for art school, and Melissa, after finishing a degree in finance, on an extended work visa journey through Australia and New Zealand—before reconnecting to live together again in an old house in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, where we would eventually discover a mutual love for pie baking and turn it into our livelihood.
The Calico Kitchen, on Main Street in Hecla, South Dakota (population 230), was our second home as kids; our playground for creativity; our venue for weekend breakfasts, high school lunch breaks, and after-school hangouts; the site of our first job (dishwasher), second job (waitress), and third job (cook); and the backbone of our family life. Founded, owned, and operated by our mother and her sisters, Susan and Anne, the restaurant absolutely defined a community gathering place—serving lunch to the region’s farmers, banquets to the local bowling team, meals to the wild game hunters who traveled from afar for the abundant local pheasant- and deer-hunting seasons, coffee to the after-church crowd, and annual prom banquets to the high school students.
Over the years we held family gatherings there—especially when all our aunts, uncles, and cousins made it back to town for a holiday—and the restaurant would be filled to capacity with just family. Mother’s Day was one of the biggest days of the year at the Calico and was always a special time to be working together in the kitchen with Mom and our aunts, serving breakfast, lunch, and dinner to our close-knit community of mothers and their families. Every day, it was the norm to be surrounded by hardworking women in white aprons simultaneously handling the grill, the oven, or the fryer; washing the dishes; prepping the potatoes; carving the meat; and, yes, baking the pies. And there was one special woman who baked all those ever-popular pies, our grandmother Liz.