The Pie Project

Baking=immediate results and warm sugary feelings. Writing takes a leather ass and regularly sends me into despair. But both require a leap of faith, if you think about it. Flexibility. Neither one is very social (though baking could be, I guess). Both require putting other things, big and small, out of your head: they want all the attention. Hmmm. More on this later! For now, coffee and novel, novel and coffee, no sugar, and no more sleep. Ha, that's almost poetry.

I'm not feeling up for pie. I think all the creative cooking energy is being sapped by my students and my work. I know. It's a pie blog, right? Maybe there's a time for dessert, and a time for ... health food. Or maybe it's the weather. Houston in late January is more about margaritas and chips, beer and samosas. It's me pounding through classes, thesis, trivia night, art museum tours, stories, plays (that's a nice little list, right? I shouldn't complain. It's a bourgeois life). Taking in some family drama. Trying not to get bronchitis or procrastinate with cable. That said, here's one cloud-like tropical concoction that is a pie but somehow doesn't quite fit my idea of pie. It's so...spongy. Voila, passionfruit chiffon! A Hawaiian delicacy, I'm told. I could only find frozen passion-orange concentrate, which I have to say, gave the pie a distinct popsicle flavor. I'd look for the real juice next time - maracuya, lilikoi, passionfrui...

Post-holidays I feel like some kind of cave-dwelling creature just emerged into the sun, blinking and confused. It was worth it, though! The Guatemala trip was fabulous, alternately gritty and luxurious, and I ate my fill of homemade tortillas. M. was the best traveling companion ever. Not that I doubted she would be. The kitties are happy to have us back (our landlady, not so much) and I'm finally back in the gym and at the laptop. I hacked up the novel and now it awaits me, pitifully. Luckily I read Junot Diaz and Anne Enright while away and they fired me up. Now, to actually do it. The semester starts next week, too, with a new workshop and the Intro. to Drama class I'm teaching. That's right. The powers that be, in their infinite wisdom, switched my lit section on me. Really? Really. In six days I'm teaching Introduction To Drama. The last play I read was Hamlet. IN TENTH GRADE. I also started my new WITS teaching gig, which includes a bilingual classroom. That...