There's art to making pies, learned in mother's kitchen from traditions of your ancestors.
My mother made pies.
Not often. Not always without complaint. And not necessarily by choice. She made pies because other people wanted her to — people who were important to her, people who she loved.
Most people don’t take the time anymore to make crusts by hand, to blend the sugar and cinnamon that make the tops shimmer or to add the subtle, game-changing flavor of almond to a pedestrian cherry pie. But she did.
She did it because she understood the stories told with flour and fruit and the connections those stories created — to her mother’s kitchen and the threshing crews she fed on the Nebraska plains, to my father’s “Nana” and her secrets to making a crust flaky in the Indiana humidity, to my aunt, her sister-in-law, who thought she could bond with an awkward teenager over “pizza, Pepsi and pie,” to her own resistant daughter and her rebellious granddaughter.
When my father began working for a nonprofit organization some years ago, he was tasked with throwing appreciation parties for the organization’s volunteers. After the big blow-outs of the holidays, he invited people to a simpler, stripped-down soiree, timed roughly to coincide with Presidents Day, and enticed guests with hand-churned ice cream and cherry pie. It started out small, maybe four or five pies, and then grew — so that, by the last few years, my mother was making about 16 pies for two parties just days apart.
And the volunteers came, hungry for a sweet treat and a pat on the back. Then they came back for seconds. The head of the organization came — and raved; the volunteer of the year came and accepted that extra piece that blew up the new year diet; the mayor came and continued to come when he was the former mayor. He told my dad he was there to show his appreciation for the help the nonprofit had given his own mother; he told my mom he was there for the pie.
On the day of the party, I would get up early and join my mom in the kitchen for a baking marathon. The recipe, simple and time-tested, said cut in the shortening “until the mixture looks like meal” and then “until it’s the size of giant peas.” What kind of meal, exactly? I wondered. And how big are giant peas? My mom knew. So she mixed the crusts and I rolled them out.
Soon the counters were covered in flour; utensils and hands were sticky with syrup as tart cherries bubbled in a hot oven; and the enticing aroma of cinnamon filled the house.
And in the midst of all that, there were stories and jokes — everyday stories and inside jokes — and the great gift that comes from creating together, cooking side by side, feeding a community, or a family, that you love.
And in the midst of all that, there were stories and jokes and the great gift that comes from creating together ...
Once, someone — an aunt or a friend or a hungry stranger — asked my mother why she didn’t use store-bought pie crust. “It’s so much easier,” she told my mom, “and tastes just as good.” I don’t know what my mother said then, probably something noncommittal or nonconfrontational, like, “Hmmm, I don’t know about that.” But later, she said, “It might be easier, but it definitely isn’t better” and “What is this world coming to?” and “If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing right.”
What she didn’t say but what is true anyway is that pie-making is a journey. There are shortcuts that will get you where you’re going, but you lose something along the way.
The real satisfaction comes when you get your hands dirty, when your fingers and the kitchen counter are covered with flour and the rolling pin feels natural in your hands. When you meander through the farmers markets that sprout up in parking lots in the spring, bursting with berries and rhubarb. When you stop at the first fruit stand of summer for a basket of ripe peaches and eat one before you get them home to your kitchen, letting the sweet sticky juice run down your chin and between your fingers. When you cap off a challenging year with the same pumpkin pie recipe that’s been on your Thanksgiving table since you were a child and you whip the cream by hand. When you peruse the heirloom cookbook, stained and tattered and a little old-fashioned, as the kitchen fills with the irresistible aroma of history and hard work and rich, earthy spices.
Sometimes now, when I miss my mother, I make pie. I’m not yet the pie baker she was. It doesn’t yet come as easily to me as it did to her when she made all those pies for my dad’s parties. And I’m still not sure what size giant peas are, but I enjoy discovering a new recipe that combines common fruits in an innovative way and I embrace the challenge of creating a beautiful, maybe even artistic, crust.
And because my mother taught me, I know this: A cup of coffee and a piece of pie taste a little bit like love.
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