My rolling pin glared at me from the corner of my kitchen counter. Each square inch of her smooth marble surface practically flashed pissed-off purple.
“On Thanksgiving morn,” her indignant voice echoed between my ears. “Why aren’t YOU using ME for your most challenging culinary task of the year?”
Ms. R. Pin referred to my annual act of squeezing molecules of flour, margarine and water into pie crust dough, all the while praying the result would melt in the mouth rather than crack dental fillings. Although I’d baked a variety of pies during the past 70 years—pumpkin, mince, lemon, cherry, rhubarb, custard, chocolate, pecan, apple and berry—each individual crust always possessed its own personality. Some tough. Some tender. Others total flakes. A few downright surly. They were unpredictable characters in my life-long story.
Today, inspired by Elaine Cookman (the wife of Roger, my husband David’s second cousin once removed) I intended to pat instead of roll the crust for my annual pumpkin pie. When we’d visited the Cookmans during our recent trip to England, Elaine had created delicious pie crusts without rolling them into submission. With Google as my guide, I’d try to do likewise.
The loaf of sour dough bread was already rising in the pan when I commenced “Operation Pie Crust Pat-Down.” My recipe called for canola oil instead of a solid shortening. But all that liquid fat transformed the flour into mush. Elaine’s dough hadn’t looked like this. What should I do?
There are times in life when one needs faith. In oneself. In God. Or maybe in the words written on a recipe card. I’d never sat in an oven and watched a pie crust bake—for obvious reasons. For all I knew, traditional rolled crusts initially turned squishy when the shortening melted.
As a scientist, I certainly realized that some experiments didn’t work. No doubt about it, this crust was an experiment. I glanced toward the clock. Nearly 8 am. I needed to put the bread into the oven at 9:15, then work on the turkey. Talk about a time crunch. I’d have to use this pastry or none at all.
I plopped the oily goop into my pie dish. My fingers pushed the stuff into place. Once I’d added the pumpkin filling, the experiment went into the oven. Forty-five minutes later, I pulled out a pie with a well-browned crust. Looked great. But what about texture and taste? Would my pie-crust character be a hero, a villain or a wishy-washy wimp? Whatever, it would contain love, a main ingredient in all my cooking. Didn’t love always help?
My thoughts turned toward preparing the turkey stuffing. I’d chop the onion first. Soon my eyes stung and watered. The best yellow onions always made me cry. This batch of dressing would be a winner.
Christmas, just weeks away, also always made me cry—tears of mixed sadness and joy. The process of aging reduced the familiar cast of human characters around me on an all-too-regular basis. In 2013, David and I had lost several more friends. Plus David had taken a tumble in September and separated his shoulder. Now he had one bad shoulder and another even worse. I’d done most of the luggage hauling during our recent travels. No complaints from me. What if he had sustained a more serious injury? David remained the beloved star in my life story. We’d been lucky.
I added the chopped onion to the stuffing mix, then stirred in spices and chicken broth. David and I probably wouldn’t be able to manage a real Christmas tree this year, even if we had help dragging a six-to-seven-foot fir into our house and maneuvering it into a stand. Sawing off the branches in January to dispose of the tree would be beyond our present comfort zone. A small fake tree might have to do. Would our daughter, Alicia, be disappointed when she came home for the holidays?
The morning hours of Thanksgiving melted into afternoon. I served dinner at 5:00. The mush I’d turned into a pie crust was delicious. Perfect, really. I’d never cooked a better pie. Surely putting up an artificial Christmas tree would work out fine, too. Wasn’t the real Christmas all about love? And love always helped.
With love,
Laurel Anne Hill
Author of HEROES ARISE
http://www.laurelannehill.com