Linda Hamilton has two principal aims that, at first blush, may seem an odd match.
First, she wants to make the Harrisburg area’s finest apple pies. Secondly, she wants to make the world a better, more socially aware place.
To Hamilton, these goals fit together perfectly.
“I think of myself as a socially active capitalist,” she said, while making her signature apple pies in Linda’s Pie Shop, a bakery and café she opened a few months back in downtown New Cumberland. “I feel really passionate about our food situation in the world right now. To me, it’s time to take some action.”
On any day, you’ll find Hamilton’s beliefs baked right into her business.
All the meat and produce is organically grown on farms in Perry and Adams counties. On the walls, local art is featured, and the Pie Shop quickly has become a meeting place for politically and socially active groups.
For breakfast on one recent morning, her devoted customers savored a broccoli and cheddar soufflé made with raw milk and eggs from free-range hens.
For lunch, there was chicken salad, chicken pot pie and slow roasted pork. The soup of the day was a thick and tasty ginger carrot, made, more or less, from Hamilton’s grandmother’s recipe.
Then there are the pastries.
A large case displays “Big Brownies” roughly the size of a grown man’s hand and at least as thick, cinnamon popovers and chocolate pecan and caramel apple pies.
“People gravitate toward that apple pie,” said head chef Ben Mason, adding, “We bake everything fresh each day.”
Said Hamilton: “I wanted to have a place where real food was available, but it’s not all sprouts and wheat grass.”
Life of Activism
Hamilton lived her early years with her missionary parents in Hong Kong. When she was 13, the family returned to the United States, first to California and later to New Jersey and south-central Pennsylvania.
In 1984, she married a medical supplies sales representative and became disillusioned by what she termed “the corruption and exploitation of disenfranchised people by large corporations,” becoming a social activist.
She founded a nonprofit organization called Birth Without Boundaries and lived awhile in Costa Rica, advocating for young, especially single, mothers in matters including natural childbirth and breastfeeding, helping them “take power back in their own birth experience rather than forfeit it to expensive doctors and hospitals.”
One day, a friend, who was also an environmental advocate, pointed out Hamilton’s life history—which included owning a baked goods stand in the West Shore Farmers Market, selling homemade desserts to support her children. She then decided to turn her cooking prowess into a restaurant. For start-up money, she opted for crowd-sourcing, seeking 15 people who would contribute $1,000 each, with a promise of repayment within a year.
Linda’s Pie Shop opened March 9. Her goal, she said, is to provide nutritious, great-tasting food to her customers and pay a living wage to her employees.
The minimum wage at Linda’s Pie Shop is $10 an hour, and, if there is no family member willing or able to care for pre-school children, Hamilton helps find—and pay for—daycare so the mother can work.
“Subsidized child care in Cumberland County has a two-year wait,” she noted. “A woman with a pre-school child and low skills and education has no options—none.”
Gather & Talk
The restaurant features widely spaced tables, a bookcase and several armchairs. In the front window is a stage for performances by local musicians, including, for instance, a talent show and an open jam with guitar player John Catalano of Camp Hill.
The walls are decorated with paintings by New Cumberland artist Brian Campbell. Hamilton said she plans to showcase a different area artist every two months. The venue also is available for meetings of area groups.
“Important elements in society need to be addressed, but it’s hard to find a place to gather and talk about issues,” Hamilton said.
In May, Harrisburg-area participants in a national march opposing genetically engineered crops retired to the pie shop to “discuss the issue and have some real food that wasn’t GMO (genetically modified organism),” she said.
Of course, non-activists also eat there.
“We work in Harrisburg and came here for lunch,” said Steve Goldstein, a state employee enjoying a chicken pot pie one recent day.
“This is what brought us here,” said Goldstein’s co-worker, Clint Johnson, speaking of the organic, free range chicken and produce.
“That’s all I talk about is organic food,” Johnson said.
Great, natural foods, stirred in with activism—it’s a recipe that seems to be working.
“So far, we’re looking good,” Hamilton said.
Linda’s Pie Shop, 316 Bridge St., New Cumberland
Hours: 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., Tuesday through Saturday; closed Sunday and Monday.
Phone: 717-836-7397
Internet: www.lindas-pie-shop.com
Facebook: Linda’s Pie Shop
Readers may contact john@JohnMesseder.com.
