Pam Bordsen of Chapel Hill writes:

After I threatened my husband with a divorce for moving me and two young children to that vast frigid wasteland known as Massachusetts, he recognized I was at the end of my rope. He sent the darlings to spend the week with their grandparents in North Carolina and took me on "vacation" to Nantucket for the day. Taking our bikes on the ferry, we enjoyed a morning of sightseeing, window shopping and house touring.

Shortly after lunch, I emerged from a shop and missed a step, badly spraining my ankle. While lying on the curb in an attempt to keep my ankle elevated while my husband ran to get ice, a wonderful woman approached and asked if I was hurt. ("No," I thought. "I always lie around on the curb like this!") As it turns out, Toby Greenberg was a volunteer for the island's medical center designated to make arrangements for injured or ill tourists. Hurriedly, she drove me to the hospital and left her phone number for us to call her when we were done. She took us back to her beautiful downtown home where she and her husband served us this delicious pie and regaled us with island stories until it was time to catch the ferry home. I, on crutches, and my husband, navigating two bicycles, boarded the boat. Our husbands ended up doing business together so we stayed in touch during my family's remaining years in Massachusetts.

Eventually my husband realized the error of his ways and we returned to the South. Years later, I noticed the pie recipe in a magazine that was attributed to that wonderful woman from Nantucket, making use of the fresh cranberries so plentiful in the fall. I make this crustless pie each Thanksgiving for my family and remember the true "Southern" hospitality of that generous, kind woman.

Recipes

Toby Greenberg's Cranberry Pie

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