(Un)Traditional Peach Pie

Soundtrack: Connie Converse's So Sad, So Lovely, First Aid Kit's The Lion's Roar, Cary Ann Hearst's "American Made Machine" and "Are You Ready to Die?," Joni Mitchell's "A Case of You" and "Big Yellow Taxi," Joan Baez's "Diamonds and Rust," and Mumford & Sons' "Awake My Soul."

Yesterday my friend and supervisor, Kate, came over and we made a peach pie. I anticipated it would be pretty standard, a traditional pie, sort of like the way this woman describes baking a perfect peach pie: Farmers' market peaches, lattice-top pie crust, whole wheat flour to add an "earthy note that complements the sweet peaches."

I bought seven peaches from La Casa del Pueblo, the largest grocery store near me. The recipe calls for six cups, so I thought seven would be plenty, and probably leave some over.

She came in, looking fresh and lovely, her hair pulled back in a bun, wisps of brown hair around her neck and face. Kate is natural and easy, and exudes peace and kindness. It is easy talking to her. She washed the peaches, and I peeled them. Peaches have such a special scent: They are warm and sweet--summer embodied. I love their soft skins (the ones I was slicing away with a little knife and tossing into the garbage).

All seven peaches added up to about five cups! What! We walked to the corner market, which of course didn't have peaches, so we bought a mango. As I mixed the flour, salt, and oil to make the crust that I padded down into the pie plate (rolling it out didn't work out so well), Kate mixed the peaches, mango, flour, sugar, and cinnamon together in a big red bowl. She couldn't find the lemon juice in the fridge (it was with the vinegars, oops) so she cut up and juiced a lime instead. When the delicious-smelling mix was in the pie crust, I pressed pie dough into pieces between my fingers and dappled the crust.

While it baked at 425 for forty minutes, we went outside to look at my downstairs neighbor's beehive. Kate loves bees (BEES!).

We ate our slices of pie in the little park across the street. The pie is tasty--messy, a little tropical, and sweet. The crust is savory and measures out the sweetness of the peaches and mango.

California Lemon Pie

Put on Mrs. Miller, because recently you and Elise have become obsessed with her. A housewife with no talent, singing old pop songs in a ridiculous opera voice...it's a perfect background to our pie-baking.

1 9-inch unbaked pie crust, which you have to make from scratch since you forgot to take the pie dough out of the freezer yesterday. Making your own goes surprisingly well. 
3 eggs, separated. "Separated how?" Asks Elise, eyes wide with faux-innocence. "Like, around the house? Like an Easter egg hunt?"
1 cup sugar
1/4 cup butter, softened in your hand
1 cup milk, also using the measuring cup with sugar residue
1/4 cup lemon juice
1 tablespoon all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon grated lemon peel. Since there's no grater, scrape away as much as you can with a paring knife

EARLY IN DAY--LIKE AROUND TWO:
1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Prick piecrust with fork; bake only 8 minutes; set on top of refrigerator.
2. Turn oven control to 350 degrees. In small bowl, with mixer at high speed, beat egg whites until soft peaks form. However, since for some reason the mixer was left out but the beaters were packed, you will have to do the best you can whisking with a fork by hand. When your hand starts hurting unbearably, pass off to partner. Whisking as hard and fast as you can, sprinkle in a 1/2 cup sugar until dissolved, or close enough.
3. In large bowl, with a small fork, beat 1/2 cup sugar with butter and egg yolks until well mixed; at "low-speed," beat in milk, lemon juice, flour, and lemon peel.
4. With wire whisk (but you don't have one of these either, so use rubber spatula), "gently fold" whites into yolk mixture. Stop Elise from beating the mixture together, because the recipe did say gently, after all. Pour into pie crust. Look at it for a moment, since it doesn't reach up to the top of the crust, it looks a little sad.
5. Bake 35-40 minutes, taking the time to call Amber for her birthday and write this blog. Then stick a knife into the pie and when it comes out clean, it's done. Sprinkle/dump some powdered sugar and do a photoshoot. Refrigerate and start watching Band of Outsiders, or have Elise cut your hair. Makes 8 servings.

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.

Elise "Monet" Cowin

She's wearing a gramophone horn

 I met Elise my senior year of college at Goucher. We were in a composition theory course and a Virginia Woolf seminar. She was a thoughtful, intelligent classmate, and I respected her. We slowly became friends. Her figure, grace, and color scheme had me calling her "Elise Monet:" she looked like she had just stepped out of a painting.

Elise walking down Van Meter

Our friendship cemented when she said she'd like to visit me in Cleveland and actually did. Christopher and I returned the visit, staying with her in Chicago, leading to the move here. She's a woman of her word. Reserved with her emotions, but strong in her friendships.

She has given me a lot in terms of fun, creativity, and inspiration. Her ideas for projects are like a cool wind blowing my mind open. Her sense of humor catches me off-guard, and I love the weird things she gets excited about, like Elizabethan collars.

Rocking that post-op style

She works tirelessly, obsessively on her art, with many late nights, aided by glasses of red wine, and early mornings, with the necessary tiny cup of espresso. Her big black notebook is a staple of her days, with its pages full of notes comprehensible only to her: snatches from Woolf, Bauhaus performers, eccentric Italian costume designers, and scribbled drawings of her own perpetual motion machine.

Performing "The Weight of My Right Leg" in 2013 at the Sullivan Galleries

Her work method sometimes takes a circuitous route, as she works from feeling and intuition rather than a methodical plan laid out with measurements and little details. But no matter the route, it arrives, and lands. What I like about her art is that it has an enormous respect for the audience, those people that come to shows to be inspired, or moved, or even "just" entertained. She won't reward your patience and time with repetitive motions that don't develop, or a piece where nothing happens, and there's never some masturbatory confessional element. She creates something out of disparate pieces, choreographs them, and entertains and enlightens her audience. Her work always gives people something to discuss, and it's rarely what I expect to see. Check out her website for more of an idea: www.elisecowin.com

Her parents are so clearly responsible for how their daughter turned out. Her father is passionate, intelligent, and his sense of humor is sometimes opaque and for that reason, a little intimidating. Her mother is equally matched, with the addition of loveliness and grace. She will calmly dish out quips, which can be sharp, but never cutting. Elise and I were walking around Bucktown one day, and she was telling me she had been emailing a certain gentleman she'd liked for awhile. "And he's writing back?" I asked. She laughed and said I was just like her mother, which I took as a very high compliment.

Saturday will be Elise's birthday, and since I will be at a chorus retreat, we are celebrating today. I made her the pie of her choosing, and bought her a little succulent.

Elise Playlist
The Lady is a Tramp - Frank Sinatra
I Could Have Danced All Night - Chet Baker
Here You Come Again - Dolly Parton
You're The Top - Patricia Barber
Tea for Two - Pink Martini
A Fine Romance - Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong
Mack the Knife - Peggy Lee
Blue Velvet - Lana Del Rey
Fur Elise - Beethoven
Sister (Miss Celie's Blues) - Suede
Royals - Lorde
Sweet Home Chicago - Eric Clapton
Bend it! - Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich

Elise's Birthday Pie
Chocolate Mousse with graham cracker crust: reminds you of childhood.

Vegan Blueberry Pie

Food?

Yesterday I woke up two hours earlier than usual to make a pie for that night's Oscar party. Wearing my kimono and listening to my Tea for Two playlist, I first fed my hungry, hungry hippos and then set about baking. The majority of the people I work with are vegan, which I think goes with the territory when you work in animal welfare, so it set up a new challenge for me. But pies are really vegan-friendly, as the only non-vegan ingredient in my recipe is butter. My coworker Sydney told me about the butter substitute Earth Balance, so it was easy. 

In my cookbook, blueberry cobber is listed as a tweak to the blackberry pie recipe, which led me to wonder what the difference between a pie and a cobbler is. Judging by the internetz, the difference between a pie and a cobbler is:
...
no one knows, and everyone makes up his or her own answer. I feel that one day, you know, I'll just stumble across the answer. For right now I'll say I made a vegan blueberry pie with what Good Housekeeping calls a cobbler crust. It was a pie bottom with a square in the center.

As recommended by Patrick, I knocked twenty degrees off the oven temp, and as recommended by my mother and my cookbook, I covered the edge with aluminum foil. Between those two and the butter substitute, my crust turned out a lovely golden-brown instead of crispy-charcoal. And of course this is the one pie I didn't get a picture of, but luckily Kate, my inspiration for this project, did. You can see it on her blog:

http://steadfastandyearning.blogspot.com/

It's part of her entry for today. Looking at it, I think that when I can make a decorative edge I will feel more satisfied about my crusts.

After I decided on making a pie for the party, I overheard two people at work talking about how they don't eat gluten, so I was pretty sure no one would eat my pie. But they did! I loved sharing something I've done with them. We laughed a lot, and I was surprised at how interested in the awards ceremony I was, especially considering I hadn't seen any of the movies. It's a weird sort of thing, when you see all these faces you recognize from movies and magazines and you feel like you know them, like they are a part of your life.

But the people who are in my life made the night truly great. I can't coherently write about the party, but I loved:

Coming into the kitchen and seeing Elise ready to go in her big trench coat, pink scarf, and my beret, finishing her martini.

Kate talking about her dream pie shop.

Looking at the back of Kady's head as she delivered her relentless snarky commentary. She makes me laugh.

Susanna in her primary colors, her "We Sing in Sillyville" outfit, standing in the doorway asking: "Beer?" Yes, please. She joked that she dressed for Pharrell's "Happy" performance.

Ollie stepping out to play the guitar and sing softly, beautifully.

Looking through Sydney's childhood photo albums.

Talking to Jenny about Animal Care and Control. She has so much passion. They all do. It's inspiring.

It was fun to see the faces on the screen, but I'm really enjoying getting to know the faces around me.

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.