Waking from a meat-hangover sometime mid-week after cannibalistic excesses, I somehow found iTunes and soothed my poor colon with a collection of gastronomic songs for the under-tens; namely, Snacktime by Barenaked Ladies. For the uninitiated, here are some of the choice lyrics that inspired me to create my meat-free feast:

“A day without snacktime? That just isn’t right. People, everywhere, in harmony, each one has their share – that’s snacktime”.

The Canadian Snacktime Trilogy Part One is a musical record of the food-tastes of ordinary people, and, with over 20 separate food entries, obviously the perfect menu for a Sunday lunch with friends.  In a scene resplendent of the Barenaked Ladies’ ‘Food Party’ we ate macaroni cheese mopped up with white sourdough bread, chilli-marinated salmon, tricolore pasta salad, jelly beans, stilton and crackers and blueberry pie with clotted cream – a nutritional fiesta if there ever was one.  Maybe it wasn’t refined, and maybe we used the same plates for sweet and savoury, but still nothing beats snacktime on Staircase 44.

Blueberry pie (serves 10)

350g plain flour
1 tsp salt 30g white granulated sugar 110g butter
110g shortening (Trex vegetable fat or a decent quality lard will do wonderfully)
Ice cold water
Butter for greasing
1 egg
Sugar for sprinkling
For the blueberry filling:
570g blueberries (equivalent of 4 punnets from Sainsbury’s)
100g white granulated sugar
20g cornflour
2 tbsp lemon juice
1 tsp lemon zest

To serve: Clotted cream, whipped cream, pouring cream, ice cream, custard, yoghurt. Endless possibilities.

Sieve the flour and salt into the largest bowl you can find. Chop your butter and shortening into cubes and ‘rub in’ to the flour. When the mixture looks like fine breadcrumbs (which it never truly will, it’s just a well-used cook’s phrase), very, VERY slowly add some water, a tablespoon at a time and mix with a knife. Keep adding water until the mixture resembles, well, pastry. Finish shaping the pastry into a ball with your hands and wrap in cling-film or a damp teat towel and put in the fridge. Preheat your oven now to 200°C.

Now it’s time to make the filling. Weigh out all of the ingredients into a saucepan over a low heat and cook, stirring occasionally until the sugar has dissolved, but the blueberries are still structurally sound.

Roll out your pastry into two circles for the base and lid of the pie (a wine bottle is the key thing here) and assemble. To stop too much juice oozing out of the lid during cooking it helps to paint a little beaten egg around the pie rim. Decorate the pie edge with a fork and go wild making little shapes out of pastry.

Paint with beaten egg and sprinkle with sugar.   Bake the pie for 20 minutes at 200°C (use a low oven shelf) then at 180°C for 35-45 minutes until it looks like a cartoon pie: golden and glorious.