Tag: pies

Perseverance–and Happy Thanksgiving

~ Crystal Sands ~ 2 Comments

I had decided not to do a super fancy dinner for Thanksgiving but that I was going to make everyone in our family their favorite pie. I am a pretty good pie maker. My family raves. The neighbors talk. One time, when I met my neighbor’s sister, she said, “Oh my gosh! You’re the amazing pie lady!”

I have been cooking from scratch for so long now that I pride myself in being able to know what is going to happen as I put ingredients together. I know how to adjust even a new recipe to make it better, and I have been growing more confident in my cooking skills.

Yesterday, I had a busy day with work. I am working on some sports articles for my local newspaper, and I am not much of a sports person. The research has been intensive, but the articles are about girls basketball, which I adore. I grew up playing basketball, and I learned so much about myself as a person thanks to that sport. Anyway, I have been on the phone with girls’ varsity basketball coaches all over the state of Maine the last two days. I thought I could handle it though. I’m a good pie maker. I could finish my interviews during the day and make five pies in about four hours in the evening, I thought.

Oh, my arrogance! I decided to try a new recipe for butter pie crust that I had read about earlier in the year but hadn’t tried. I was also making key lime pies for my daughter’s partner and my teenage son. Fruit pies are my specialty, but I can usually make a pretty good key lime pie. The issue is that both of my customers do not want graham cracker crust, so I have to find a pie crust recipe that is “just right” for key lime pies.

It turns out that my new recipe wasn’t right at all.

I was in the middle of getting the blueberry filling ready when my timer went off for the key lime pie crusts, which have to be baked before the key lime filling goes in. They both collapsed! I was in a kind of shock for so long that I just stared. Then I swore. A lot. Then I cried.

Ron said surely they could be fixed, and he tried so hard to unroll them. Then he said, “well, just put the filling on top of them. It will be a unique key lime pie.”

But the Virgo rising in me would not allow it. I collected my humbled self and went online to find a better recipe for key lime pie crusts. I had to dig deep, as my old recipe was lost, but I found one.

And so I started again.

At 1:30 in the morning last night (or this morning, depending upon how you look at it), I finished those pies after seven hours of leaning over the counter. My back was on fire. I stretched before bed. Ron was already asleep. He had tried to stay up with me but gave up about midnight.

Friends, I am happy to report that the pies are beautiful! They will be beautiful gifts for my family. I want them to forget their troubles and the worries of the world for just a little bit when they taste a beautiful pie, their favorite, made with so much love just for them.

I hope you all have a happy Thanksgiving. I am sending love and good energy. The holiday is problematic for sure, but I am not going to think about that right now. Right now, I am just going to think about how much I love my family and how lucky I am to have the ingredients, the skills, and the perseverance to make five beautiful pies–two key lime, two blueberry, and a pumpkin pie for Ron. That middle blueberry pie is for my daughter, and it’s so perfect. I can’t wait for her to see it!

The cranberries are my favorite…

~ Crystal Sands ~ 1 Comment

Day 199 of 365

It was a good day, though I was a little sick with some kind of terrible allergies this morning. Benadryl saved the day, and I was able to finish out the cooking; still, I was most thankful today we decided to have a small feast, much smaller than usual. It turned out that I especially needed an easy day.

We had decided earlier this month that we would have a simple Thanksgiving with the goal have a meal consisting only of food from our little farm. We mostly did it, but the accessaries included ingredients from the store. I made pumpkin pies and a key lime pie. We had neither pumpkins nor limes on the farm this year, though I am consulting with Ron about the possibility of having my very own pumpkin patch this coming year. We just don’t know where to put it, but there has to be a place for pumpkins.

I made two pumpkin pies today–one for Ron and one for our neighbor. When I was talking to my neighbor yesterday, she said she made homemade pies to donate to a fundraiser and was too tired to make more pies for Thanksgiving for herself and husband, so they were having store-bought pies themselves. That’s my neighbor. She’s so kind and always sacrificing her wants and needs for others, so I decided to make an extra homemade pie for her since store-bought pies seem sad to me. They are just not the same. I hope it was good. I am a pretty good pie maker, and people will rave about my berry pies because I love berries deeply and know how to honor them in pie. But I do not like pumpkin pie (it’s a texture thing for me), so I worry I don’t make good pumpkin pies. I can’t taste test.

It was a lovely dinner, and it was made even more lovely by the fact that Ron grew almost everything. I forgot the one other exception was the cranberry sauce. I made it homemade, but the cranberries came from the store. They were local though, and I adore fresh cranberries and the sauce. The color is so vibrant and beautiful!

The limes definitely were not local, but they were such a treat. My son, who doesn’t like pie at all, actually really liked it. That made my mom’s heart happy.

It was a cozy, somewhat restful Thanksgiving. I think it will be a while before I make a big, fancy dinner again. Today was too nice. In fact, it was one of my favorite Thanksgivings. I hope yours was lovely as well!