Traveling Light:
Pie Pans
Janet I. Buck
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Pie Pans
My new mother-in-law is one of those saints who makes homemade noodles for a chicken pot pie, seldom says damn, and NEVER says Swanson, so their pending visit to the Rogue Valley forced me to put rhyme schemes on the back burner and dig out the Joy of Cooking from a box of books rotting happily in the hot garage. Sunday I tackled cinnamon rolls from scratch; today was pie crust practice.
I learned three important lessons right off:
1. You don't open a 10 lb. bag of flour in a hurry wearing a pair of black shorts.
2. You don't blow the bangs out of your eyes while you're staring in the sack.
3. There was a good reason God invented Sara Lee.
Pie crust, I said to myself, can't be all that hard. As it turns out, I started my first pie at age 45 and finished it when I turned 46. I rolled that sucker out at least eleven times, long enough, I figure, to get in the running for a well-paid executive position with the Goodyear Company. I finally called long-distance for reinforcements and, well, did a little unadulterated begging. The recipe she sent was straight-forward enough, but the ball came out like a batch of horsehair wrapped in Super-glue and I was coated from head to toe in the white sea breeze of fabled domesticity. The mixing part went off without a hitch and I saved the excess ice water for my husband's evening shower in case the faucet of unadulterated praise wasn't running up to speed. The rolling part was a whole other novel not to be repeated in the company of untainted ears.
The first thing I told Dad smacks of coercive flattery: "Tell her I worship her, then ask her if you can get away without making slits in the top if it looks like a snowflake from Hell with enough bursting seams to turn it into a Weight-Watchers meeting." He was more amused than I with my slits au naturel. Sensing my uneven disposition, Dad kindly dragged June Cleaver sopping wet out of her evening shower and she gave me a few more explicit directions. It was a little late, but I then learned you're supposed to press with light, short strokes and not the lawn roller on your neighbor's front porch.
"Ok, when I get 'Calamity's Quilt' put back together, what oven rack do I use?"
"Second," she says.
"Thanks," I say, and hang up faster than you slam down the receiver on a house-siding salesman calling at the crack of dawn. Then I sit there for fifteen minutes meditating. We've got four racks. Is it second from the top or second from the bottom? Precision and pickiness are family traits, so I spend the rest of the hour moving the racks around until they turn into toddlers and learn to walk of their own accord.
By this time, the kitchen is hot enough make the Sahara Desert feel like an ice cream cone, the oven is as ready it's ever gonna be, and the crust is not. I've eaten half the sliced apples for the filling and most of Sunday's cinnamon rolls, so I cut up a shoulder pad from an old evening dress, bulk up said product a bra size or two, and feel pretty smug about my sense of inventiveness. While the dog is spitting up a pile of stray apple seeds, I'm copiously taking notes from the wizard at the wrong end of the continent, who strikes me as a little too relaxed in the center of a busy battle zone.
The pie, which now resembles road kill meets headlights on a bad curve, is set for the last lap. I discover that it takes longer than 45 minutes to bake it if you open the door every ten seconds to check on the birthing process and scoop the syrup off the burner coils. I now know that Plath's death was an accident; like me, she probably stuck her head in the oven in a desperate search for the fluted edges of a bad day at Bon Appetit. Right about dinner time, I chisel the pie plate off the oven rack, throw the hot pads in the washing machine, toss in my apron, and crawl in after 'em.
Like many women, I live for male praise and call my husband on his cell phone to give him a detailed account of my self-sacrifice. He's in the middle of an important meeting and one of his co-workers asks if it's an emergency. "It isn't now," I say, "but if he doesn't bring home a dozen roses and a tub of vanilla ice-cream, he'll be spending the next six months bouncing from the doghouse to the cast-iron couch." Since she doesn't have her ears packed with pie dough and her shoe-laces coated in cinnamon, she hops to and delivers my message at a fairly respectable speed.
I've never understood why people invented a contest centered on aiming pies at someone's face, but now it's as crystal clear as a row of zits before a senior prom. It's called a temper-tantrum in the jaws of the not so jolly kitchen nook. If you can't roll 'em right, you teach 'em how to fly.
~Janet I. Buck
An award-winning author, published in hundreds of literary magazines, Janet has also written several books. For more information on her public readings, and latest publications, including Before the Rose, her new CD with musician David Jackson, visit her website, listen to a sample or email.
© 2001 by Janet I. Buck. All Rights Reserved.
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