A Memory of Christmas in Bermuda

I've been thinking of favorite Christmas memories from my childhood. Yesterday I made casava pie, a traditional Bermuda Christmas dish. It is a meat pie consisting of a delicious golden crust made from ground casava meal filled with stew meat and gravy. The meal is ground from the casava root, which looks something like a long sweet potato and grows in the West Indies.  I remember my daddy making this every Christmas Eve and I still use his recipe. In the old days, when I was a child, I remember him grating the casava root himself  and my mother would use the milky liquid that was released to starch clothes in a big metal washtub. Were they really the good old days? If you ever visit Bermuda during the Christmas holidays, be sure to ask for some casava pie.