The Pie Project

A hurricane is in the Gulf, it's hotter than hell, and it's been over ten days since I last posted. How can it be?? The semester started, short answer. I'm teaching creative writing and a section of composition, fiction editing, teaching a kids' writing workshop on Saturday mornings, taking three classes... the round-up for a grad student, I guess. Anyway, my baking hat had been set aside, until this morning when I made a Black Bottom Ricotta Pie. It's in the oven right now. Sounds weird, but I think it'll be good-weird. Cheescakey. (It's is another Haedrich invention). Meanwhile I treat you to pictures of something decidedly NOT in Haedrich's cookbook: red huckleberry pie. First of all, I feel I must redeem the Northwest given Sarah Stalin, er, Palin's association with my region. I bet you a million bucks she has never made a red huckleberry pie. This is a Northwest delicacy. It's distinctly tart - woodsy, fresh, and intense. It's special be...

Tropical deluge in Houston or chilly drizzle in Seattle - I'll take it. I like rain. It helps with the whole last-minute-push-to-get-work-done-before-semester-starts thing. And while this Raspberry Crumble is a summery pie, it's got a homey topping and jam layer that pair well with rainy days. Wouldn't that be a great cookbook - recipes to match the weather? This is a sturdy little recipe. Maybe not dinner party elegant, but tasty with ice cream or with tea, for breakfast. Yes, pie for breakfast! The crumb top forms a firm cinnamon-y layer over the berries, and after cooling, it slices up almost like a fruit bar. Only prettier. I'd never made a just-raspberry pie because raspberries are so juicy and seedy and, well, wimpy, as far as berries go. But this is a definite keeper. I found it in Ken Haedrich's "Pie" and followed all the rules until I got to the topping. Freeze the unbaked crust awhile, check, spread with raspberry jam before filling and baking, c...

I am unreasonably emotional about the gymnastics last night - Alicia Sacramone, my favorite, fell twice and looked ready to cry. She said after it was her fault they didn't win (though the numbers say otherwise), and I teared up myself. I know how it feels to be your own worst critic. And that situation is pretty much my nightmare - you work hard for something for so long and just when everyone's watching, you mess it up. I guess it's like getting terrible reviews. It'd be worse, I suppose, to never make it at all - to never pursue your passions. High risk, high reward, huh? I can't help making all these parallels to the writing life. Not that throwing yourself into the MFA is the same as trying for an Olympic medal. The odds might be similar, though, if you're talking good publication. Which brings me around to what I'm always telling myself, that success is relative, that success has to be internal just as much, if not more, than external. I saw Joan Didio...

I have so many pies under my belt - um, literally and figuratively - from this past month I hardly know where to start. My hometown had a salmon bake that featured 100 homemade fruit pies, slices plopped into little paper boats and crowded onto plastic tables. I made a mixed berry they didn't even use, they had so many. After sampling several I'm pretty proud of my own pie. Well, my crust. The whole crust-is-key thing was confirmed. Thick and brittle? No. Blanched by shortening? Better but also bad. That's not to say I had crust success all the time. I overconfidently skimped on water and ended up with barely roll-able crumbly messes. I had to patch like crazy. My OCD cousin had a conniption as one crust broke into a gajillion pieces on folding. Still, I didn't care very much about appearances. Of baked goods or my own self. It's not that I'm a fashionista - ha! - but I wear eyeliner every day and fuss over the amount of space between jeans and waistline. At hom...

There's a reason I've been slow to post lately - I'm west of Seattle (yes, there is something west of Seattle), land of intermittent internet connections. The north Kitsap Peninsula contains trees, salmon, old loggers, new yuppies, rocky beaches, tons of berry bushes, my huge family, and hundreds of pie bakers. I come back here and I'm put in my place. Of course you make the crust from scratch. And my family will tell me if there's too much cinnamon or the filling is undercooked in the middle. They like my pies, don't get me wrong, but it's a far cry from the city kids I usually eat with. Turns out I'm a bit of city kid myself when I get back; the lazy days and long drive to the grocery store (well, to anything) throw me off at first. Then I adjust. I don't go online, I wander the seaweed-y beach, I tromp around for hours searching out berries ... I couldn't live like this all the time, but it's pretty good stuff for a couple weeks. Morgan an...

I bought peaches on the side of the highway between Dallas and Houston, farm-fresh and proffered by a bored teenager. The bag sat in the car smelling of sun and promising a juicy pie all the way home. Then I tried making it. Peaches, who knew? That is some hard-to-get fruit. My kitchen looked like a peach massacre site. My cookbook blithely says you can dunk the peaches in boiling water a minute to easily remove their skins. I burned my fingertips pulling off strips of mushy peach fuzz, only to run out of fruit. Turns out those little suckers had huge pits. All bone, no flesh, totally disappointing (hmm, does this apply to people?) Luckily, J.O.C. suggests a peach raspberry combo and I had frozen raspberries. I tossed in two cups and hoped for the best. Hello, beautiful accident. The filling was deep mauve-orange and rich as a sunset. Thick, fruity slices held the firm sweetness of peaches with the tarter, brighter bite of raspberries. Just. Wow. I learned a couple of things. One, l...

Making pie makes me happy. That's probably obvious. But really, it gives me that all-is-well, everything-in-its-time, you're-okay feeling. I suppose it's about the zen-like focus a pie takes and the basic pleasure of creation. Or, the fact that I associate pie with the best of my childhood: big family, big forest, small town. Speaking of which, I'm off to WA on Monday for more summer fruit pie glory. Blackberry (two kinds), strawberry-rhubarb, cherry, and maybe, if I'm persistent with my pickin' fingers, huckleberry. They snap in your mouth like tangy little firecrackers and damn, they make great pie. As a kid, I wasn't often rolling out flaky crust - I was more about adventuring into "sticker bushes" to collect berries than pie construction. But still, getting flour all over my hands, the smell of fresh cut fruit, brings me back. It's such a simple, summery indulgence. Lately, I've made a peach raspberry and an apple crumble pie. Both lusc...