This is how you make a pie

First Step: Preheat the oven.

On the day I scheduled to make a pear pie with my friend Casey, Chris decided to pack up the kitchen. Now, Elise and I hadn't lived on our own before the three of us moved in together, and since it didn't make sense for us to get three sets of everything, all the kitchen equipment came from Chris. So when he packed, we were left with no skillet, no spatulas, no saucepans, etc. Gloria Wood's "Hey, Bellboy!" rose to a frenzied crescendo of shriek-like singing while I scrubbed the stove top and he packed away our only mixing bowl. Gloria's needling insinuations were perfectly irritating as he rendered the next five weeks just a bit more difficult for all of us.

Second Step: Mix together the filling.

Casey came over with his own Mary Poppins bag of necessities. He brought all the ingredients and a few of the supplies. Best of all, he brought pears from his family's virile tree in Indiana. His father cans the pears himself, tons of them, Casey says, and they still have bags of fresh pears to give away. We had two beautiful mason jars to work with. Casey has his Polish grandmother's recipe by heart, and has been making this pie since he was a child. There aren't many ingredients, it's a simple, delicious family recipe. He did it almost by feel, which made me apprehensive since all I've known about baking so far is that you have to be very precise. Draining the pears with our hands and the lids of the jars, since the colanders were packed, we then improvised with different soup bowls in order to mix together the pears with sugar and cinnamon.

Third Step: Make the crust.

The dough had sifted flour, milk, and lots of oil. My favorite part of making the pie was shaking the oil and milk together using the rinsed-out pear jar. While I crumbled the dough together between my fingers, Casey urged me to add more oil, which I did hesitatingly, cautiously, making him laugh as he urged me on. I formed the oily dough into a firm ball with no crumbs. We broke it in two and he smashed half of it down onto a sheet of waxed paper, and placed another sheet over the dough patty before I rolled it out. Casey is playful when giving directions, and I can imagine him at the head of his classroom, with the little kids listening to him. They must like him: He talks to you like he believes you can do wonderful things.

Our pie dishes are identical, and they are both slightly larger than what any recipe calls for. The dough, though rolled out paper-thin, didn't quite make it to the top, so we patched it together as best we could. It was cracked and patchy, but we figured it would do.

Fourth Step: Pour the mixture into the crust and cover with a top crust. Bake for forty-five minutes, or until golden-brown.

As we had rolled out the dough, the sugar had started breaking down the pears, and there was more liquid in the mixture. We poured that into the crust and covered it with a top crust. At that point, Kyle rang the bell. I love being around Kyle (who steals the show in a great production you must see!). He's always making me laugh, befriending servers, and telling stories. Kyle cracked jokes while Casey and I padded down the top crust with milk and sprinkled it with sugar. We put the pie in the oven, set the timer for forty-five minutes, and we went out to get Cokes and ice cream.

When we came back, the pie still had twenty minutes to go. We made rum-and-coke floats and had just a deliriously good time waiting for the pie to finish. I told them about the kitchen stuff being packed away, and Kyle looked me up and down with pursed lips and said, "Gurl, it seems you've been busy relying on other people when you should've been believing in yourself."

Fifth Step: When it comes out, sprinkle with sugar and serve with vanilla ice cream!

This is Kyle all over

They showed me the proper way to cut a pie--not into quarters right away, because you don't want to expose the sides to air. The pie was delicious, but Casey and Kyle agreed it should have more sugar. I had misunderstood Casey when measuring out the sugar, and added too little, but I liked it just the way it was. The crust was flaky and the pears were perfect. We ate quickly and jumped into a cab to go to a cabaret show in Wicker Park. The show was in the back of Davenport's (which is the perfect name for a bulldog!) and the audience was made up of intoxicated performers. The singer had a beautiful tenor voice and a very straight collection of songs--Maroon 5, JT, and Allen Stone. It was called "Mixtapes for an Ex-Girlfriend," and whenever he almost made you feel something, he made a joke about it. Like how my grandmother hugged us--she embraced you with one arm, but then put an iron hand against your chest to prevent you from getting too close.

As you can imagine, some of the songs were angry, some were bewildered and broken-hearted, but then he ended with Jason Mraz's "You and I Both." I hadn't heard that song since sophomore year of college. The words came back to me as he sang, but fresh and new. It's a song about splitting up, but it's full of tenderness and forgiveness, and was a lovely ending to the show. It's a pop song, so it's made to manipulate emotion, I know that, but maybe because of all the drinks I'd had...I closed my eyes and they burned and there was Vanessa. There was Andie, and also Elaine. And then Wil and Eric and Dan and Paget and...this procession of people who I loved so much for such a brief time, before we plummeted away from each other into our different narratives.

So this is how you make a pie: You take something you have and something he has, you make it into something new and better, and then you share it with whoever is around you. If you can afford it, you have a couple drinks and a scoop of ice cream. Your friends will go their way eventually, but you'll have that evening to talk about when you run into them again, whenever that may be.

Nesselrode Pie

I had a late start to my baking today, and I forgot to take the pie dough out of the freezer last night, so I had to scramble to see what I could do today. I have no proper cake tins (and I still feel burned by my last attempt), so that narrowed it down to pie, but it had to be one with an unbaked crumb crust. There were only a few of those, and many of them you had to do at least a day ahead of time.

Which is how I ended up making a Nesselrode pie. I think it is an awesome name. It calls to mind Nessarose, the evangelistic witch of the east in Gregory Maguire's Wicked. Apparently, it is a pie that is named after a Russian count (pictured above), and has been out of fashion for decades (unlike his hairstyle, unfortunately). But for those who know of it, it is thought of fondly as a delicious, quintessential New York dessert.

Here are just three of the ingredients: unflavored gelatin, four eggs, and dried fruit. Make a pie out of that in your mind. Sounds kinda gross, right? I figured I could buy all of those things at the corner convenience store, but no. You can't get it at the health food store, either, but I guessed that.

I didn't mind walking to the grocery store because it's a beautiful day. There were lots of flowers blooming in the Andersonville yards today. The gheys had their deep vees on, showing off their tacky chest tattoos ("Born this Way!"). Monday it snowed, and the sadistic band at Kopi played Christmas music. "Jingle Bells" in spring is just depressing.

Once at the grocery store, I was lost. I had no idea where to find anything I was looking for. Mixed candied fruit = fruit cocktail??? Thank goodness my mom picked up when I called! Saved the pie from a watery fate. I had to ask an associate to help me find something, and he was gone for almost ten minutes (or maybe five, standing still in a grocery store stretches out time) while I stood in place, peering down aisles, wondering where they kept the unflavored gelatin. When he came back, he told me what I wanted was seasonal. Was Nesselrode pie a holiday dessert? I wondered.

It isn't.

The real pleasure to this pie is that it calls for rum. I splurged and bought two beautiful glass bottles of Coca-Cola.

my pussy tastes his pepsi-cola

I poured myself a cool, tall rum-'n'-Coca-Cola and made my pie.

Songs for the day:

"You Are My Sunshine" - Johnny Cash

"Cola" - Lana Del Rey

"Rum 'n' Coca Cola" - Tim Tim mix

Each song led me onto others of the same, so I ended up listening to a lot of religious Johnny Cash. I was getting into it, thinking of my Grandma Ginny, and then Noreen (Strega Nona) decided she'd had enough and walked across the keyboard, shutting the music off.

One night Elise and I were sitting in the living room. Chris was asleep, or so she said, but then there was music playing. "Shouldn't you turn your music down?" Elise asked. "I don't have music on," I said. When I walked by my room, however, the Puppini Sisters were blaring from behind my door. I walked in to see Strega Nona-Noreen crouched on the keyboard.

She's becoming a real bad-ass cat. Today I saw her chase Twinkle Toes out the room. He is considerably larger and younger than she is. When she gets on the kitchen table, I try to sweep her off like I do with the other cats, but she sits like a gargoyle.

what are you gonna do about it, son?

The pie is now chilling in the fridge (just chillin'). I had to add the rum and lemon after the fact, because I forgot it. I think it will be fine.

The next step, right before serving, is spreading whipped cream and adding candied pineapple. I will take a picture of it and post it later. Now I have to get ready to go to a birthday party.

4/27/2014:
Here is the picture of the pie:

It was lovely, and really not too bad. But I only ate two pieces and ended up throwing most of it away at the end of the week. I just couldn't get my stomach excited about custard dry-fruit pie. 

To the Lighthouse

I set out to visit the Grosse Point lighthouse in Evanston today. Kate went a few days ago with her husband and posted pictures on her blog. Her pictures display a place grand, remote, and shrouded in love. Their smiles cover up their secret, which is whatever it is that makes them so happy to be together and in love.

I was going to bake an apple pie, but I found myself putting on my coat and scarf. I had to go to the lighthouse first.

It takes an hour on public transit to get to the lighthouse. I bought a coffee and brought my book, Milan Kundera's Identity. It is an intelligent, erotic story about a couple as they grow distant and unfamiliar to each other, misunderstanding the other's intentions at nearly every step.

I finished Jane Eyre yesterday. It made me wonder if Charlotte Bronte ever married. At the end, Jane says:

"I know what it is to live entirely for and with what I love best on earth. I hold myself supremely blest--blest beyond what language can express; because I am my husband's life as fully as he is mine. No woman was ever nearer to her mate than I am; ever more absolutely bone of his bone, and flesh of his flesh."

Kundera's protagonist provides a sharp contrast:

"Love as an exaltation of two individuals, love as fidelity, passionate attachment to a single person--no, that doesn't exist. And if it does exist, it is only as self-punishment, willful blindness, escape into a monastery. She tells herself that even if it does exist, love ought not to exist."

On the walk from the el stop to the beach I felt oppressed by the largeness and the beauty of the Evanston homes on either side of me. I felt acutely that I would not end up in a place like that, and it made me depressed. I imagined living out my days in a tiny apartment in a city. I missed my family, and Kentucky.

When I wasn't expecting it, the lighthouse was there in front of me. Once there, I found I didn't care to look at it for long. I walked around and towards the lake, immense, crashing, and beautiful through the twisted black branches of the bare trees. I walked out on the sand and stared at the water. Being on the lake reminded me of my first summer in Chicago. Once, during a terrible storm, I walked out to the edge of a barrier and stood there as the waves crashed around me, reckless, alone, and free. The next day we heard about a Northwestern student who had been swept into the lake and drowned, and I wondered if he had gone out like me, to push his limits, to dare himself.

Standing on the dirty sand, blocks of ice to my left and the blue-gray water before me, I started laughing. I was so happy to be here, alone. I laughed like a crazy person, without real mirth but loving the sensation. I faced the lake and I started singing an old disco song about picking up the pieces and standing up, strong and defiant.

I walked back to the el, not feeling oppressed by the houses anymore. I remembered: My uncle at the lake after his son's graduation; Christopher's story of his baptismal dip in Lake Erie after his last breakup; and my dad and me having lobster bisque at a tavern--he was telling me that life is like water, and sometimes you're up at the crest of a wave and sometimes you're just even, but there are always times when it rises up again.

I went home. The feeling of freedom and elation didn't last once inside, and I made the pie with fury and bitterness. As I rolled out the dough and the butter kept sticking to the rolling pin and I just couldn't get it right, I felt like I was going to have a nervous breakdown. But when I finally got it and was sprinkling the sugar and spice mixture onto the apples, the smell rose up and suddenly I was in my grandmother's house. It was unbidden and I couldn't think where or when the memory was coming from. I imagined her making pies. I imagine to her it was more a matter of routine. Of course, somewhere inside her she did it out of love for her family, but it was because it was just the thing one did. You were a grandmother, you were a woman, so you made pies for your family. No big deal. It wasn't an event for her. It's just a pie.

The pie just came out of the oven, bubbling. It smells sweet and delicious, and I'm going to share it with people I care about.