First Slice

I'm putting off my pie-baking until Sunday, because we're having an Oscar party for work and I'm going to make a vegan blueberry cobbler. The blueberries are like turkey after Thanksgiving; I have to figure out ways to use all my leftovers. I've been having blueberry yogurt smoothies for breakfast, and last night I made blueberry muffins, and I know I'll still have enough for Sunday's pie.

I feel like this.

Yesterday, on my way to the grocery store I stopped by a little cafe I love called First Slice. It's a cafe with a mission to make homemade meals for the homeless and needy. I had a slice of their cherry pie and a cup of coffee, black. It felt good to be inside, looking out. The sun's been shining but it remains so cold. The pie was tart and tasty, but I didn't feel down on my pies like I expected. I like the idea of putting pies to good use, like First Slice.

I'm going to write about the vegan pie when I've made it and shared it.

The right soundtrack

Music is an integral part to baking and cleaning. Put the right mix on, and you can forgot about the fact you don't have health insurance yet, or the possibility that the next rent check might overdraw your account. Listening to a hopeful, yearning song like "Skylark" makes you almost forget the nauseating pain of your recent break up.

Music takes you to another realm, where you can safely pretend that your life is always this: baking pies, washing up after yourself, taking a break to play with the cats. Rolling the dough. The hot, soapy water. The snow melting down the window. The fragments of conversations, poetry, and dreams that jumble through your mind as you wait for the timer to ring. And then you'll have a friend or two over and talk about whatever, while the music sets the mood. Playing Hildegard Knef, you can pretend your hair is always washed, your bathroom clean, and your dishes matching. You can pretend that you are happy, content with life, and proud of what you've accomplished. But in the midst of this make-believe, you realize this isn't all fake; this is who you are and this is what you wanted. This is your life. These moments. You are connected.

Is this what Virginia Woolf meant when she talked about the party mindset in Mrs. Dalloway? Things aren't real in some ways, much more real in others. Reality and unreality merging over a slice of pie, a cup of tea. Our pretend selves/our actual selves.

All that being said (nice and good and sweet as it is), my actual self drank himself to sleep last night and woke up at noon, despite his cat's best efforts to start the day at nine. I then promptly went down the Lana Del Rey rabbit hole, which led me to discover you can make a pie in the time it takes to listen to one of her albums! I had woken up with two and a half hours to make a pie, get ready, take care of the cats, and get out the door in time for afternoon tea at the Langham, which meant that today's baking was matter-of-fact, unpoetic. I was making a pie because I said I would do one a week.

Looking through my Good Housekeeping cookbook this week, I stopped on blackberry pie. It sounded perfect. The cherry pie was delicious and gone the day after it was made (split between three people), and we were all craving it. I decided to stick with fruit pie, and work on the crust. I'm not sure what happened between choosing the pie and grocery shopping, because I ended up with more than twice the amount of blueberries than blackberries I should have bought. It took me until today on my way downtown to realize my mistake.

I rushed out of the house and to the red line, conscious that I couldn't remember where we were meeting, but fairly confident I'd just figure it out when I got there. I was almost off the train before I looked at the time and realized I was an hour ahead of schedule. It took me another hour to realize there hadn't been a time change, I was just confused.

But the sky! My goodness, the buildings were cloaked in fog, nearly invisible. And then the release of the rain.

When I got home I took a picture of the pie. Every time I set it down bits of charcoal-like crust fell off. I need to remember to knock off fifteen to twenty degrees next time, and cover the pie with foil partway through baking.

It's a mess, but hopefully a delicious, unexpected mess.

Just a bowl of cherries

It's Valentine's Day week, and I decided I wanted to make something red. Initially, I thought I'd bake my childhood favorite: red velvet cake. But when I was telling a gentleman friend about my project, he exclaimed his love for all the traditional pies--apple, peach, and cherry. So, this week I made a cherry pie. It's red, it's classic, and it was suggested by my valentine. Cuuuuute.

Cherry pies seemed dull to me as a kid. I preferred anything with chocolate. But my appreciation for cherry pie has grown as I've gotten older, and makes me nostalgic for an era I experienced only through Twin Peaks.

A cup of joe, a slice of Norma's pie, and a supernatural killer on the loose--ah! the good ol' days.

Cherry pie is just so...American. White bread, white picket fence, white grandma in the kitchen America.

Norman Rockwell. Heaven help me. 

And so it makes sense when that opiate-eyed songstress of dark Americana includes them in her song along with Pepsi-Cola..."my eyes are wide like cherry pies."

With all this, along with a couple cans of cherries, I filled my homemade pie crusts to the soundtrack of Georgia Gibbs, Perry Como, and Ella Fitzgerald.

Martha Stewart cherry pie

My cherry pie

I made a canned cherry pie with a flaky crust, substituting butter for shortening. The filling was delicious! I hope it's as good cooked. I had some trouble with the crust, and I hope it turns out. Last time I made a crust I rolled it out too many times and it was all tough and difficult to cut. This time, there was just one terrific curse yelled out while I was attempting to move the dough onto the pie plate and it tore into pieces. Other than that, it looks ok. Kinda black around the edges, but I'll knock those off when it cools, before my guest arrives.

Creating is a continual lesson in the futility of perfection for me. I want so much to be good at something, to present something perfect and have a perfect little party, but it never happens. Really, it can't happen, and so I just have to laugh about it and move on. "You live and you laugh at it all!"

You work, you slave, you worry so, but you can't take the dough when you go.

And finally, you need to watch Rachel Dratch in the 30 Rock Valentine's Day episode: Happy Valentime's!

Starting the mess

Someone I respect a lot recently started a daily blog about the things she loves. It's a great, life-affirming idea, and I enjoy reading it. It made me miss blogging. I enjoyed my summer project writing about Jane Austen, and I wanted a new goal. But what? What is something I wanted to focus on and develop an understanding for?

And then the answer came, in the form of a sorely belated birthday cake. A dear friend, who gets caught up in his work, finally agreed to make time in his busy schedule to come by and celebrate his birthday (which was in November). He wanted a spice cake with cream cheese frosting. I told him I'd make his cake from scratch (because that's the only way cakes should be made).

We agreed he'd come over Thursday at noon. I decided to bake the cake on Wednesday, since I would be going out that night (Eataly, woot woot!) and knew I wouldn't wake up in time to bake, cool, and ice a cake before noon. I love baking cakes. While I'm mixing the ingredients and preheating the oven I feel like I love my life, I love who I am, and everything's lovely. I have the best "Baking a Cake" playlist, as well.

And then the cake comes out. Small, hard around the edges, and lopsided. There isn't time to do fix it, since I have to dash out the door, but I figure icing it tomorrow will hide any flaws.

If baking a cake makes me feel in love with my life, icing it arouses all the self-loathing and frustration that keeps itself hidden under normal circumstances. I mean, what the f? How does the icing manage to go all the way up the mixers and refuse to blend? And then when I'm spreading it across the cake, it seems to take all the crumbs with it, which then stare at me like, "What you gonna do bout it?" And I don't know! I also didn't fix its lopsided problem, so it just ended up looking dejected and crumby. It was at that moment that the doorbell rang.

Why I Like to Bake Cakes
1. It's a nice thing to do for other people.
2. It always seems surprisingly easy (and then really frustrating, of course)
3. I like having sweet things around!
4. It feels domestic, comforting, and safe.

It wasn't my guest, it was the mailman, but in finding that out I managed to lock myself out of my apartment in a t-shirt, house slippers, and holding a cat. It was a stressful moment. I ran next door to our landlord's, who was thankfully home and able to let me back into my apartment.

While telling my friend about my baking experience, I decided I wanted to bake my way though the pies and cakes in my 1975 Good Housekeeping Cookbook. There's a goal! From fruitcakes to apple pie to orange-juice cake (?), I'm a-gonna do it. And hopefully one of those will be beautiful. Cause look at this one:

Sad, sad, sad.

Then I cleaned the kitchen and ate frosting.

...which is to say this all ended in me dancing around the kitchen to Strauss with an insane sugar high.