Last year, the Tri-Village Lions Club took home first place at the first Apple Pie Recipe Contest, a friendly competition among Lions Clubs based in and around central Ohio.
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Photos by Wes Kroninger
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The culinary cunning behind the winning apple pie belonged to Grandview Heights resident Jackie Alarie. With a delicious, flaky cheddar cheese crust and sweet McIntosh apples, the pie swept the competition, which was held at the Ohio State School for the Blind last fall.
The competition was a blind taste test, literally, as the judges were blindfolded. Various pie recipes were submitted by members of the different participating Lions clubs. The prize for winning the competition included a trophy along with a small prize pool of money for whichever charitable cause the winning club saw fit.
Asked by another member of her club to participate, Alarie entered a Vermont-inspired apple pie recipe.
“She comes up to me and asks if I can bake a pie,” says Alarie, “and I say, ‘Of course I can bake a pie.’ Apparently, the judges agreed.”
Despite the winning record, Alarie doesn’t cook professionally. Cooking is a passion for her,
Photo courtesy of Jackie Alarie
The contest’s judges were blindfolded for the taste test.
and her home has bookshelves bursting with cookbooks. With a long work day, Alarie squeezes in cooking up confections and other meals in her evenings and weekends. Normally, she cooks just to put a hot meal on the table after a long day of work. Her husband of 42 years, Bill, also thinks her pies are a winner.
Alarie has enjoyed cooking since she was a child and sees it as an act of love.
“If you cook something, if you put in the time and effort into this thing, you’re giving to someone, you’re giving them your love,” says Alarie.
The love can be seen in every step that went into making the pie. Everything was created from scratch, and the ingredients used were pulled from Alarie’s original home of Vermont. The sharp cheddar used was chosen for its taste and perfect consistency to get the right flakiness for the crust. The apples were gathered by Alarie’s daughter-in-law from a market in Vermont. All the ingredients come together to create a pie that has equal portions of flavor and nostalgia.
Alarie moved away from Vermont when the economic slump in the early 1990s affected her job.
“I had two children in college, and I was not about to tell either one of them to give up their dreams,” says Alarie.
With parents living in Ohio, Alarie and her husband decided to make the move in 1997, and they’ve been a part of the community, as well as the Lions Club, ever since.
Alarie’s connections to the Lions Club can also be traced back to Vermont, where she was the first female Lion inducted in the state. After the move, Alarie and her husband couldn’t find a club that really worked for them until they came across the Tri-Village Lions Club.
“One day, we decided to go out,” says Alarie, “and we noticed everyone was wearing red jackets. They were all Lions.”
After Alarie recognized the group as Lions, she and her husband were invited to eat with them. Now, she’s on the board of directors. She and her husband volunteer time whenever they can to help out with causes such as the Give Your Write Arm to a Soldier program, in which comforting letters from home are sent to active duty military personnel, and Get a Book, Give a Book events, where children are able to choose one book for themselves and one to gift to another person.
One of the Lions Club projects Alarie is most passionate about is a newer program for which the club collects eyeglasses and recycles the frames and lenses. The lenses cannot be recycled within the United States, but are donated to optometry and vision assistance causes in Third World countries. Last year, 170 lenses were collected and distributed.
Alarie views the time and effort the Lions Club puts into charity work and fostering community, along with events like the apple pie recipe contest, as invaluable.
“I can’t think of a more worthwhile cause,” she says.
Kyle Banfill is a contributing writer. Feedback welcome at hbealer@cityscenecolumbus.com.
