My first pie baking experience

As a youngster, when it came time for me to learn how to cook I had no real interest. As I always told the story, it was my mother's fault. She didn't have much patience when it came to teaching me. The truth is probably more than that. While it was true that we didn't jell in the kitchen I also just didn't care about learning how. Creating and whipping up concoctions was not high on my lists of activities. I tried. I thought baking cookies would be fun, but when it came time to stir the cookie dough it was too hard. My arms hurt. The dough never got soggy enough with me twirling the spoon around in it, and even after my mother would fix that problem it took SO long to drop the dough on to cookie sheets. And I could never get the size right. I was always being admonished about the size; it was too large, it was too small; the cookies weren't correctly spaced. I hated it.

After my required home economics class in grade school, I became more tiring in the kitchen. I wanted to measure everything and follow the recipe, but my mother didn't cook like that. While she had recipes she rarely gave them more than a glance and everything was a "pinch of this" and a "dash of that". Huh? It made her crazy when I would measure out teaspoons and tablespoons, and I spent a lot of time just standing and staring at the recipe, the bowl of whatever we were concocting, and into space. Most of the time my mother was in a hurry and she would get mad. I learned early on that if I didn't want to work in the kitchen I could appear blank and she would send me out quickly. I left home not really able to cook much beyond spaghetti and a boxed cake. 

Moving into my own apartment I existed on a lot of spaghetti and Breyers chocolate chip ice cream that first year. It wasn't until my co-workers pushed me a little on changing up my dinners that I started dabbling in the kitchen. One co-worker taught me how to cut vegetables correctly. One co-worker talked me through making stir-fry. My co-worker's mother worked very hard at teaching me and constantly sent me home with different recipes. By the time I met my husband I had a few meals under my belt, but it wasn't until Kelly, Hazel as my husband called her back then, moved here and began cooking for our family. She would come two or three nights a week and whip up dinners for us and it was watching her and having to provide for my children that I learned to cook. 

My mother was a good cook. She prided herself on her various dishes, one of those being pies and pie crusts. Her recipe was one that came from my father's mother who taught my mother how to properly make pie crusts. My mother got to be a snob when it came to tasting pie crusts and rarely liked anyone else's crusts. The only pie crust that passed her test was my mother-in-law's pie crusts. Everyone elses? Ugh.

Pies are not a favorite of mine. I could careless about a pie. Give me a cake. I love cake. I could eat a piece of cake everyday. The only pie I really cared about as a kid was pumpkin and my Aunt Lorene's coconut cream pie. As I got older I added Village Inn's peanut butter and french silk to the list, but for the most part pie eating is very rare for me. As my mother and I spent holidays together here in the latter part of her life, she would lament about how she would never taste her pie crusts again because she was unable to stand and make them. She talked to me about how I could learn now that I was a good cook, but the thought of being in a kitchen again with her as a teacher making, of all things, a PIE was not high on my lists at all. I rejected the idea time and time again and she would sigh, "Grandma Mason's pie crust recipe will die with me then because I'm not sure I taught that to Rusty. Perhaps your sisters learned, but if not, no more Grandma Mason's pie crusts." And she would sigh again and again. "Oh, to have one more bite of that crust."

Yeah. No. Rolling out dough? I couldn't even tolerate that chore when I bought the Pillsbury over the counter ready made dough. I preferred to chop it into pieces and slap it on to the cookie sheet then roll it out and cut shapes out of it. Having her yell at me while I was learning to make pie crusts? God forbid. I vetoed it and never learned.

Then came this year's Thanksgiving. I don't know what happened, but suddenly, I wanted to have Thanksgiving, and I wanted to do it right. Of course, I had Hazel. Hell, I don't know how to cook a turkey and have no interest in learning that little chore either, but the rest of it, mash potatoes, green beans, stuffing, rolls, etc? I could certainly handle all of that and more. I invited my husband's family to join us, and Hazel and I made the Thanksgiving list. My MIL, who never comes empty handed, offered to bring the wine. She said, "What can I bring? What would you like me to bring? Wine? I could bring wine and...." I didn't jump in waiting for her to say, "and pies", but that never came. Instead it she said, "I could bring wine and...wine. I could bring wine." And I thought what the hell, the woman is 85 years old and has cooked enough Thanksgiving meals in her life. Bring the wine! I'll get the Village Inn to cook my pies.

Then I ate a pumpkin pie from the Village Inn. I didn't find it to my liking, and while our local Publix bakery makes decent pumpkin pies, I suddenly decided that I would make a pumpkin pie. Hell, I would make TWO of them and I WOULD MAKE THE PIE CRUST MYSELF. I don't know what got in to me, but I was determined. I felt something inside of me and it was telling me that I could do this and do it right. I did not have Grandma Mason's pie crust recipe, but I did remember that Crisco was involved and so I looked up the recipe on their site and bought the ingredients which consisted of flour, salt, Crisco, and water. Seriously? Note to self: Check mother's recipe box at The Condo for Grandma's recipe for next year.

I started late the night before the big feast. I whipped up two batches and did the suggested, "put dough in the refrigerator for thirty minutes." After that time period I began rolling out the dough. It wasn't easy. There is a knack for that, I believe, and I certainly do not have it. My husband wandered in to watch me, and while he brought back memories of my mother hovering, he also has extraordinary teaching patience. He stepped in to help me lift the dough on to the pie plate, and he did not panic when it broke apart, instead piecing it together because, "no one will see that when the pumpkin is on top of it." I did the second pie crust all by myself with minimal frustration and tears. The pumpkin part was very easy and took no time at all. Soon the kitchen and house began smelling of what I remembered from my mother's pumpkin pie making days.

They were delicious. While the pie crusts weren't not perfect they tasted fine and the inside was delicious if I do say so myself. I tasted the pie the next morning before I served it to anyone just to make sure. I practically sobbed from the deliciousness of it. Holy, crap, I baked pies!! They were a hit at Thanksgiving and my family enjoyed the leftovers until I dropped the entire pie on the floor two days later, shattering the borrowed glass pie plate I had borrowed from my friend. Hey, I can't be perfect right out of the gate.