Family legend has it that my aunt made my uncle a pie every day when they were first married. Also, my mom has a friend who makes pie daily, and also makes the world’s best coffee, and her husband is a solo logger who comes home every day from chopping down trees by himself in the woods and has a pie and coffee (and I need to put all that in a short story at some point).
And of course all this has Dave asking, “Where’s my daily pie?” Let’s be honest, daily pie is probably not a great idea, really, for lots of reasons. But I acknowledge that I could up the pie frequency a bit. So we made two pies this week.
The first was a Coconut Custard Pie from Everyday Food. This is not the kind of pie I usually go for, but I have to say it was really, really good. The only problem was when we told Eli he couldn’t eat the whole thing. It’s a coconut custard, with toasted coconut on top. Of course, being a Martha Stewart recipe, it seemed like maybe there were six superfluous steps, but in the end it wasn’t hard at all (except for that I forgot the cardinal rule of blind crust baking — to put the crust in the fridge or freezer for a bit — and we had some shrinkage).
The second pie was an apple pie. I swear I’ve been trying to make an apple pie since September and people keep trying to talk me out of it. Why is the world suddenly conspiring against my favorite pie? I mentioned this to Dave and he said I was crazy and who would talk me out of making apple pie, but this was about twelve seconds after he said, “It’s too late in the day to make apple pie” so there you go. I made the pie anyway, and it was great, thank you very much. (Anne, remember when you gave me a pottery pie dish 15 years ago and wondered if it was a good gift? It was.)
And the lesson for today (besides “Pie is Good”) is that pies look much tastier and more artistic when photographed in the conservatory in the afternoon than when photographed against the dingy glass cooktop at 6:00 p.m.)
I see from the article in yesterday’s NYT “Beyond Cupcakes: Children in the Kitchen”, you should be writing a cookbook when you have those little guys balancing on your counter.
Julie do you have the Joy of Cooking? Because the worlds best peach custard pie is in it. I grew up on it.
I forgot to tell you about our Thanksgiving pie. It had a gingerbread crust, pumpkin filling, and a walnut streusal top. It was beyond good. It was crazy good. I bought it at my moms church pie fair. We’re trying to figure out how to find the Anonymous Pie Lady so we can get the recipe.
Sarah, that pie sounds amazing (though I am not a fan of walnuts, but I can deal with them in a streusel). I made the pumpkin pie from Cooks Illustrated for Thanksgiving, and I have to make another, because it got eaten too quickly and I didn’t get as much as I wanted. I do have Joy of Cooking and will check that pie; it sounds like one Dave would like.
Mom, how come you always see things in the New York Times that I miss? Do you get some special New York edition of it? I didn’t see anything about cooking with children. What section was it in?
I just like to say “struesel” as much as possible this morning. Streusel. Streusel. MMMM.
Any sentence that begins with “Anne, remember 15 years ago…” and doesn’t end with “…when we skipped Mr. Mallozzi’s algebra class” is guaranteed to make my head explode.
Mmmmmpie.
It was in yesterday’s Science Section on page D5 under Health.