When my youngest sibling was two or three years old, young enough that their pyjamas still had feet on them (they were a fuzzy blue green, with a navy blue collar and cuffs), my mother came out to the living room to find them sitting on the couch, eating the last piece of apple pie. It seems my sibling had dragged a chair over to the kitchen counter, climbed up and got themself the glass pie plate, with one perfect slice left. They were extremely pleased.
My mother was less impressed, and asked what they thought they were doing. How can you eat pie for breakfast?
“It has fruit in it,” my unrepentant sibling said, and my mother couldn’t argue with that.
My sibling will be twenty-seven in December, and has enjoyed many pieces of pie for breakfast since that day. If my dad had made an apple pie and any was left - my sibling was going to be eating it for breakfast the next day.
In my house growing up, we never purchased pie, save a coconut cream one from the bakery on the corner. It was tall and luscious, and also not one we considered ourselves able to make at home. Once I dropped a whole slice of it, cream-side down, on the kitchen floor. I cried, not because there was no pie left and I couldn’t cut another slice, but because the splat of whipped cream and coconut custard was so final.
Pies were made by my dad. He had mastered his crust recipe by the time my memory kicks in, and apple pie was a semi-regular fixture in our house. Sometimes a strawberry rhubarb (rhubarb being the only thing which grew easily in our backyard), sometimes a blueberry. We would go down the street to our neighbours’ for an afternoon to make meat pie, my dad in charge of crust, while Danny made the filling. My mom and Anne would have coffee. My siblings and I would go play with the toys Anne and Danny had in theory for their grandchildren, but we’re mostly for us, their honorary ones.
I would help my dad make pie, when I was small. I would measure the ingredients, though my hands were too small to wield the pastry blender (and to be honest, my hands never really got big enough to wield it well). I would generously sprinkle sugar and cinnamon over the apple slices, my dad letting me fish a couple out of the crust to snack on. I would use a fork to crimp the edges with him, and then the pie would go into the oven.
The house smelled delicious, and the pie would cool on the counter before supper, waiting to be sliced.
I never had any of those pies I helped him make. In my tiny little head (I was a very small child, for the record. I was the smallest kid in my kindergarten class), I had decided I didn’t like pie.
I know! Didn’t like pie! What a foolish thing to think!
Eventually, I got over this. Right around the pie-for-breakfast incident, actually, because my sibling clearly had something figured out. Pie was that good, was it? Worth dragging a chair over from the table to the counter and risking punishment for eating it for breakfast? My sibling knew something I did not, and surely I was not going to let some silly little toddler have all the pie if it was that good.
The next time my father made an apple pie, I tried it. And I liked it. The warm, spicy apples and the flaky crust. I began to enjoy meat pie. I tried a slice of my mother’s beloved coconut cream, the very pie she would detour a family vacation for - and found that she was right. I enjoyed a blueberry pie, strawberry rhubarb, and even dipped my toes into lemon meringue, which was not for me. I gamely tried my dad’s attempt at a pumpkin pie (it was fine. It turns out none of us really have a deep love for sweet pumpkin goods. I prefer my pumpkin to be savoury).
As an adult, I enjoy pie, but I’m picky about it. I don’t order pie out, usually, because my dad makes what I think its really the peak of apple pie and it’s my favourite. I will occasionally buy pies for charity events. My father recently turned his efforts to perfecting meat pie: our neighbours died many years ago now, and the meat pie afternoons ended well before that, when they were no longer well enough to do that much food preparation. I really do think he has it nailed now, and I look forward to it when I go home to visit my parents’.
In 2020, a local pie shop opened near me and was immediately successful, despite it opening a few weeks before the COVID shutdown. She makes lots of different kinds of pies, riffs off of traditional ones, and her crust is flawless. I have a long list of favourites I watch for on her seasonal, rotating menu. And her apple crumble pie is one I’ll go pick up for a taste of a more classic pie when I have a craving.
Because you see, despite having come far in my pie journey and being a fairly decent home baker, I have never made a pie. At least not in the traditional sense. I’ve made apple pie cookies. I’ve made crisps and cobblers. I fearlessly dove into bread making - and as I write this, my apartment is filled with the smell of baking loaves. I make my own lemonade from scratch when I get bored and I’ve spent the last week entertaining my coworkers with the slightly zany kinds of pizza I keep bringing in, all made at home, of course. Oddly, I don’t even make shepherd’s pie, not really. My partner took over that particular meal once and it remains under his purview.
Surely I could tackle making pie. I think I could be even pretty good at making pie. I’ve tried to make lots of other things and they have turned out well. I’m the official toffee-maker for the family now, for example, because I gave my parents some of a test batch a few years ago and they inhaled it. I’ve even planned to bake pies now and again. I had all the ingredients on my grocery list.
I bought them, and used them for other things.
I’m not afraid of spending all day making a very fussy dish. I have four types of flour in my cupboard. I take my food seriously. And yet, I do not make pie.
Perhaps it’s because my relationship with pie still feels so tenuous after all these years. I like certain pie from certain people, and what if I’m not one of those people?
Yes, I realize this is silly.
So take this as my declaration: before the end of 2023, I’ll have conquered making pie.
Now I want pie.
Seriously. I checked out that apple pie cookie recipe and if you can make that, making a pie should be a snap!