Pasties provide tasty lunch, funds for Montecahto Club
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What do you make with 100 pounds of hamburger, 100 pounds of potatoes and 50 pounds each of carrots and onions?
Well, if the Montecahto ladies are in charge, you add a few other ingredients and make pasties, the authentic Butte kind. While these pasties probably won’t go into the copper mine in anyone’s lunchbucket, they could since they are created using the same family recipe provided by Alice Rautio, who grew up in Butte.
For the next couple of weeks, Montecahto members will be meeting a couple of days a week in the Lake City Bakery’s basement kitchen to make pasties to sell. The group on Feb. 17 included Claudia Barry, Lora Cole, Alice Erb, Linda Hewitt, Anza Ketterman, Cindy Lawin, Susie McNatt, Sharon Payne and Kay Wall.
Five of the women are new members, and all the ladies volunteer at least one day a week in the community. Husbands are involved, too. Gary Erb was plowing snow at the Montecahto clubhouse, and John Payne was microwaving meat to thaw it.
Monies raised from the sale support the club’s $500 scholarship for a Polson High School senior, for maintenance of the clubhouse and for boxes they send to servicemen containing toiletries, books, magazines and other items.
Formed as a social outlet for families who lived on the east shore and Finley Point, the Montecahto Club began in 1935 with members gathering in each other’s homes and bringing their children, according to Alice Erb, president, and Kay Wall, past president.
The club proved so popular residents decided to build a clubhouse in 1938. Some activities in those days were rolling bandages for the Red Cross and selling war bonds, Wall added.
Wall joined the club in 1983 because she wanted to make some friends.
“Well, doggone it, it worked,” she said, grinning.
Many years of parties, breakfasts, Boy and Girl Scout meetings, 4-H club meetings, voting, dances, dinners, card parties, weddings, teas, candidate forums and other gatherings have made the clubhouse an institution on the east shore of Flathead Lake right across Highway 35 from Ricciardi’s Italian Seafood House.
The building still has its original windows, which need to be replaced to make the building more energy efficient. The estimate to replace the windows is $7,000, so club members are doing more fundraising and have elected a 501c3 status so donations are tax deductible.
Besides bake sales, pie sales at the Flathead Cherry Festival, cookbook sales and renting the club out for events, the group has added making and selling baked or frozen pasties just in time for St. Patrick’s Day.
In an assembly line, Barry and Lawin prepared the pastry, Cole and McNatt mixed the meat mixture, Hewitt diced potatoes, Payne and Ketterman chopped carrots, Erb sliced celery and Wall minced onions. Then everyone cleaned their cutting boards and started rolling balls of pastry into circles, added meat mixture, flipped the dough over and crimping the edges, ending up with a crescent-shaped pastry ready to be pricked with a fork and baked or frozen.
Opinions in the group varied on how to eat a piping hot pasty. Barry likes to put Bearnaise sauce on her pasty, Lora Cole prefers brown gravy and John Payne dips his in catsup.
To try the group’s pasties, call Lora Cole at 887-2535 or Alice Erb at 887-2216 to order. Pasties are $4 apiece and can be ordered frozen or freshly baked.
