Magical Moment Mondays: Pie

I love pie! But I rarely eat it because I am a pie snob and only like homemade. And I only make pie on Thanksgiving so I am a happy camper right now! I’d certainly be happy if others made me pie. In fact I would probably prefer if others make pie because the phrase, “easy as pie” is just not true! Sure the filling isn’t really hard to create, but excellent crust is very difficult and requires a certain talent. I am an excellent baker of cakes and cookies, but my piecrusts just don’t do it for me. I know that practice makes perfect, so I guess I should practice more often. But as it happens, I go for baking chocolate chip cookies when the need to bake hits me—and it can hit me hard. I don’t think to bake a pie.

I find that frozen piecrusts taste better than my own and I have difficulty accepting that. I mean, what kind of baker has to use pre-made ingredients? I use them for quiches when there isn’t a lot of time and I want a simple and yummy dinner. But to serve to guests? I can’t do it! So I muddle through and make my own crusts only on Thanksgiving. I am sure that they are good enough—just not as divine as other crusts I have had.

I did have a magical pie moment this summer in Maine eating warmed wild blueberry pie a la mode (vanilla all the way) at Moody’s Diner.  My husband had the walnut pie with a huge dollop of thickly whipped cream—I admit I had some of his too! Truly magical. The fillings and especially the crusts were perfect.

So my magical moment today is for pumpkin pie and pecan pie. Thank goodness for Thanksgiving (and leftovers) because I get to eat pie!

What’s your favorite pie?

A Wicker Basket
By Robert Creeley

Comes the time when it’s later
and onto your table the headwaiter
puts the bill, and very soon after
rings out the sound of lively laughter—

Picking up change, hands like a walrus,
and a face like a barndoor’s,
and a head without any apparent size,
nothing but two eyes—

So that’s you, man,
or me. I make it as I can,
I pick up, I go
faster than they know—

Out the door, the street like a night,
any night, and no one in sight,
but then, well, there she is,
old friend Liz—

And she opens the door of her cadillac,
I step in back,
and we’re gone.
She turns me on—

There are very huge stars, man, in the sky,
and from somewhere very far off someone hands me a slice of apple pie,
with a gob of white, white ice cream on top of it,
and I eat it—

Slowly. And while certainly
they are laughing at me, and all around me is racket
of these cats not making it, I make it

in my wicker basket.

XOXO Rachel