last of the season

As you can see, part of the dough survived the rolling pin

This week, feeling overwhelmed with these endless commutes, work, and cat-stress (how can that be a thing? people without pets wonder), I hardly thought about my baking. Recently I've been feeling trapped, with no dreams readily available. I spend so much of my life under Chicago, so to speak, in humid tunnels with creaking, shrill noises, surrounded by people I don't know and would never want to know. And that's all before I even get on the train. 

I was in the midst of my grocery shopping when I remembered I didn't have anything planned to bake this week. I intended to make a yellow cake with chocolate frosting, which was Howard's request (what a classic!). When I looked at my Good Housekeeping book, I found I had already made those two items, of course, so I will have to save that for a bonus. 

Jenny from work had what I think might be the last of her rhubarb in the freezer at work for me, and Joan brought be some the last strawberries from her farmers market. So again I made strawberry rhubarb pie. The rhubarb was mushy from being in the freezer, and some of the strawberries couldn't be used, but they made enough for the filling. 

I made an oil crust again, so my vegan friends can eat it at work. I've been having the worst trouble rolling out the dough, so I've been all about the "no-roll" pie crust (read: pressing it into the pie plate and along the sides while Howard chops the strawberries and mixes the filling). But my friend Patrick gave me this lovely dough-cutting tool which I'm obsessed with. It makes it much easier to move the dough around. The right tools! As my Dad would say. They make all the difference. 

We made the pie quickly, because I was in between a phone meeting and our movie night with a friend. We still managed to be late to the second installment of our Leopold and Loeb-themed film night.

There isn't much to write. I was stressed and felt strung out this week. Yet I had a nice lunch with a dear friend, and a few lovely days with my boyfriend. 

Failure

I almost didn't make a pie this week. I had every intention to make two to share, in fact, people were expecting it. Two separate people bought me rhubarb, and one of them also bought me the most delicious, irregular, real farmers market strawberries to go with it. I set out to make two rhubarb-strawberry pies, one for the new roommates, one for my coworkers.

I did everything the way it was supposed to be done, even chilling the dough before rolling it out. One moment I was struggling with getting the dough to roll out, but thinking how rhubarb looks like those little candies Grandma kept in a dish on the table, and the sugar was like snow, and what a nice long day in the sun I'd spent with Howard, but god, the dough kept sticking to the vodka bottle I was using as a rolling pin; it wouldn't stay together at all. The next thing I know, I am on the floor of the new kitchen, worried I'm about to cry. I couldn't roll out the dough. It wouldn't happen for me.

I thought about running out to see if any market was open that sold pie crusts.

I tried again and again to roll out the dough. I switched out the balls of dough I had in the freezer and tried until each was a hard little fistful of crumbs. I looked at the pile on the table and knew it wouldn't work.

I threw away the dough, cleaned my dishes, and went back to my room to eat a row of Oreos. Once I felt fat and pathetic, I returned to the kitchen to try again, this time not putting the dough in the freezer. Maybe that was the problem. For awhile, things were looking up. And then I tried to peel it off the table, and it came apart in my hands.

In a fit, I just dumped the dough in the pie pan and pressed it down with my fingers. I spooned the mixture in and sprinkled dough atop. Fuck it.

I don't know what the issue is--maybe I'm tired, maybe it's the late hour, or it's being in a kitchen I don't know with an oven I don't understand and living with people I don't know who don't understand me because I can't afford better.

But goddamnit. I wanted to at least be able to make a pie. The mess that is baking in the oven is hardly what I imagined bringing to work tomorrow. What a humiliation; not being able to make a simple pie.

The pie that nearly broke me

Strawberry Rhubarb Pie

Before I write about this week's pie, I want to write about last week's cake. That cake saw more of Chicago than most baked goods, and left a little bit of itself in every neighborhood. It's maiden voyage was a short one, in the walk from Aaron's to mine. Soon after it journeyed up to exotic Rogers Park on a very crowded bus,  finally sitting pretty and untouched on the counter while I cat sat for a friend. It's next trip was the longest, on the red line down to the expensive Gold Coast. This was its highlight of the evening. It sat quietly in the fridge while friends talked and laughed and read their writing to each other, and then came out, bedecked in birthday candles aglow, to be enjoyed even by the lactose-intolerant. After the festivities, a portion was sliced away to be eaten later by the hosts. The next leg of the journey, a third of it missing, the cake traveled on a late night train to Palmer Square. The next morning, another section parceled off for the host, the cake traveled first by bus, where it attracted the attention of a talkative woman who was taking a course in cake-decorating, and then by train again to treeless Uptown. There it was admired by employees of a cat shelter, and small slices shaved off here and there, until it was just a fraction of what it had been the night before. After all its traveling, the cake returned to his home, not its birthplace, but where its platter originated, the one with the black flowers and birds painted in an eternal circle. Finally, the remains of the cake were separated from the plate and wrapped in plastic, to be saved for a lady and her gentleman caller.

The cake was enjoyed by ten people in total, in four neighborhoods of Chicago. Needless to say, it was delicious.

I'm finally settling down to type up this blog at a quarter to eleven, after a long, hot day. I threw on my kimono, poured myself a glass of rose, and turned on my music.

Rhubarb, which is currently in fashion, according to my coworker Robin, who was my baking buddy today, is surprisingly difficult to track down. On my Hunt for Red Fresh Rhubarb, I went to four grocery stores before finding it at Whole Foods. According to my cookbook, the season for rhubarb (an honorary fruit) is January to June, so it's almost over. But this is 2014 in 'merica, so I figured rhubarb could be found all year long.

I biked home with the aforementioned bottle of rose in my water bottle holder and two and a half pounds of rhubarb clutched in my hand. Robin was cat-sitting, so I prepared by slicing rhubarb and strawberries. She's the one who suggested the pie, which made me happy because rhubarb is something I associate with my mom (and mother's day is Sunday!). I have such a good memory of eating rhubarb cake on the screened-in porch with a glass of sweet iced tea and an episcopal bishop.

Today I put on my summer mix from last year while I mixed the fruit with flour, sugar, and salt. It is eighty degrees today. Chicago bypassed spring altogether and flung us, sweaty but mostly non-complaining, into a fitful summer. Tomorrow it will be fifty again.

Robin brandishes a rolling pin

The pie was easy to make,

though it took us awhile because we chatted and drank.

Robin is goofy and full of stories. She's only three years older than me, but she's been married for four years.

Four years. I drank much faster than Robin.

When the pie was in the oven, we walked to the corner market for ice cream. The pie is so delicious--one of my favorites that I've made. The rhubarb has such a great, tart taste--almost like citrus, and the strawberry is clearly present with its sweetness. I wish my mom were in town to enjoy it with us!