Pie

I never learned to cook from my Mother. She is not able to share her kitchen with anyone, nor has she any patience with a naturally messy critter like myself. When I left home, I was under the impression that Jello was difficult to make...

She did, however, make marvelous pies. They were stuffed full of fruity goodness. Back in the days before Pillsbury came out with Already Pie Crusts, she used to buy Pillsbury Pie Crust Sticks (I don't think they make those anymore.) A pie crust stick looked pretty much like a stick of margarine. Mom would put a couple into a bowl, break them up with a fork, then mix in the water and roll out a pie crust. Her pie crusts were always very thin and flat. (The better to taste the filling, in my opinion.) Once, she actually came up with a flaky crust. She was delighted. I was not, nor had I any idea that a flaky pie crust was desirable. To this day she likes to tell people that my response to my first taste was, "Eww, what's wrong with this pie crust? It's flaky."

Frankly, once I learned how to make pie crust, I never understood why she bought those pie crust sticks. All they were was a mixture of flour and lard. It's pretty easy cutting the shortening into the flour, to me the hard part is putting in just the right amount of water. I almost always make my pie crusts from scratch. Pillsbury's are convenient, but they get soggy quickly and mine are better anyway.

The Engineer loves pie. When he and I were in high school, we lived kindof across the street from each other. He and the Twin had pie radar. Every time my Mom baked a pie, she would have twins on the front porch almost as soon as it was out of the oven.

When the guys were in grad school, they firmly believed it was my job to keep them in chocolate chip cookies and pie. It became so expensive that they were required to buy the ingredients. When they complained about my pies being too small, I said, "The pies are as big as my pie pan."

They bought me a bigger pie pan.

This early training has resulted in my having a fine reputation as a pie maker. True, the circle of my fame is small, but my fans are sincere. It's flattering, I enjoy it.

Today I made a rhubarb pie for the 4th of July BBQ. Rhubarb is one of the Engineer's favorites, one of mine too.

And I don't skimp on the rhubarb, there's eight cups of it inside that pie crust.

Chapter 2 -- The Pie Part

I'm a pretty darn good cook. I'm a little scattered, though.

I decided Tuesday that Wednesday's dinner would be sausages with pinto beans, left-over coleslaw with julienned Armenian cucumber added and spoon bread with fresh cut off the cob corn in it. Then I found out I didn't have any pinto beans.

I don't do canned beans. I buy dry beans and cook them for hours because they taste better and I know what's in them.

So no sausages and beans for Wednesday dinner.

But I had some left-over sockeye salmon in the freezer. Ooh, quiche! Salmon, cheese and onion quiche, crusty Le Brea French bread (if your local grocery store carries Le Brea, you owe it to yourself to try it, it's the best!) and oh, I don't know, some kind of vegetable. And since I needed to make a pie to take to Idaho in a couple of weeks, I'd stop by the produce stand and buy some berries, make enough pie crust for quiche and pie, then freeze the resulting pie. Am I brilliant, or what?

Then Wednesday morning I got all wound up in The Great Potty Hunt (see yesterday's blog) and having lunch with my pregnant friend. I also took my Wacom Intuos digitizing tablet along because her employer's letting folks ask for the tools they'll need for the coming year and she has to do lots of computer drawing in her job -- she makes newsletters among many other duties. The Wacom was the hit of the office. Everybody had to come in to her cubicle and try it out -- even the big boss, so I think she has a lock on getting one.

Running late, I rushed about my errands and swung by the grocery store for a bag of pinto beans (I had this faint nagging feeling I was forgetting something, but it wouldn't come into focus) and the produce stand for berries. They had beautiful, big blueberries Wednesday.

I got home about 5:30, put the beans on to soak for the next day, picked over and washed the berries (made a few of them disappear in the process -- yum!), then got out the stuff to make crust with as the Engineer was pulling into the car port. I put the salmon in the microwave to thaw and started sautéing the onions, then opened the fridge for the eggs...

Oh, crud! I only had two eggs. That's what that nagging feeling was at the grocery store.

This was not going to work. When I make a quiche, I make a large and robust quiche that takes over an hour to bake. The salmon had already been broken into small pieces and there wasn't enough for a whole meal in any case.

"I'm going to the grocery store for a dozen eggs," I announced. "You're not going to have quiche for dinner, you're going to have a frittata." Out the door and back to the store I went.

The frittata was very good. It's just like a quiche except no crust and it cooks one heck of a lot faster. We had French bread, so who needs crust.

I did bake the blueberry pie after dinner. Kind of a shame to have to freeze it instead of eating it.