Page 58 - Always Virginia

46 Virginia Day Fritscher

Christmas Eve 2000. Virginia bakes her pie for her son Jack.
Photo by Mark Hemry

EAT THIS HISTORY

When Virginia Day married George Fritscher in 1938, she was
already making this pudding which was the filling for her famous
banana cream and coconut cream pies with four-to-five-inch me-
ringue. Her mother, who baked daily when she had a family, made
a lemon pie and a coconut cream pie every Friday. “I learned this
recipe from my mom, probably back in the late 1920s,” Virginia
said at Christmas 2000. “The corn starch pudding is good by itself.
With bananas stirred in at the last, or with coconut stirred in, the
pudding makes a delicious pie. I’ve baked a million of these pies,
and always baked them for Mom and Daddy and Father John when
they came to Peoria, and for all my brothers’ and sister’s visits, and