When Pies Weep: The Emotional Life of Food

“You’ll get pie in the sky when you die.” ~ Joe Hill

Lemon Meringue pie. The humid climate of Houston. The two do not combine well and the invariable result is a weeping pie. You know, the pie comes out of the oven looking lovely. The meringue is golden brown on top, like a perfectly toasted marshmallow. You sigh and set it aside to cool. Alas, it WEEPS!! You know, those little syrupy teardrops on top of the meringue that condense and stay there while the pie is cooling. I made three pies and the every one of the sweet things wept. I looked up why pies weep (having a passing interest in pie psychology), and found that humidity is a factor, and so is cooling the pie in the refrigerator. Pies don’t like being cold and damp. So they weep. Well I can’t very well move every time I make a pie, and I’d rather have a few drops of syrup on my pie due to refrigeration than a case of salmonella or worse. In a dilemma, I showed the little droplets to Pat, and she said, “Pies are supposed to weep. They weep with joy because they are a delight.” She’s a genius, so I suppose she’s right. Noone else but me seemed to mind. The pies tasted good. Our marriage and family class ate theirs up and so did everyone at home. I told Brittany I would bring the recipe to Utah for Christmas and make some pie there where it is dry. Then we’ll see if humidity is really the key factor in controlling pie emotional outbursts.

Life goes on without a calling. The first wave has passed over me in the ward reorganization cycle (the Relief Society) with no place for me. So I wait, and ponder, and attend Relief Society and Sunday School. I’ve been catching up on my reading, attending the temple, doing my visiting teaching early in the month, and Pat and I have taken up card-making. Those really cool intricate pop-up cards designed by Japanese people that you have to use an exacto knife and a metal no-slip ruler to make. I discovered that curved line cards like flowers, which looked like the easy ones, really weren’t. Pat discovered that making a card with a lot of straight parallel lines is also more difficult than it looks. The easiest one so far has been letters that spell out thank you. If we get a batch that turns out well we’re going to donate them to the upcoming public library auction. Because we approve of books, especially the kind that teach you how to make cool pop-up cards.

Sarah’s high school Homecoming game and dance were last week. She went with her friend Abel and a huge group of other people, about half of whom I don’t know well except for what Sarah has told me. I got to know a few of them better though, when they came over to make mums. For those of you who do not live in the south, I shall explain what mums are (although I’m still at a loss as to why we actually continue the tradition instead of just painting faces, which is much cheaper and takes less time). A mum is a sign of school spirit. It consists of one or more silk chrysanthemum heads, decorated with various trinkets, mini stuffed animals or animal heads, sprayed with glitter spray, and framed with ribbon loops. The mum is attached to a backing, to which is attached multiple lengths of ribbon, little hanging trinkets, jingly bells, sparkly names, and glitter spray. The girls wear mums on their fronts, some of them nearly at tripping length. The guys wear mum-decorated garters on their upper arms (about half the girls’ mum length).

Sarah and I read up on how to make mums and garters on the internet so she could make one for Abel, and after some experimentation we figured out how to do it. It’s not difficult, it just requires some mad skills with glue guns, ribbon, and staples, and a little bit of artistic tendency. It helps to be able to match colors and curl ribbon. Abel wanted some assistance with making Sarah’s mum, so he came over, and soon a whole bunch of other people I had never met came over to make theirs. I think it’s because we had a hot glue gun and kinda knew what we were doing, plus we found it’s kinda fun to swap extra trinkets and ribbon for variety. So we had an impromptu mum-making party. Most seniors wear white mums with metallics, but Sarah and her date decided to buck the tradition and go with scho ol colors with white and metallics added on. All the mums came out cute.

Luis, Kristina, Sarah, and Abel

with their mums and garters

Mums are fairly expensive to make, and even more expensive to buy from a mum crafter or florist. I think if we bagged the mum tradition and each high school student donated the amount they would have spent on making/buying a mum or garter, it would probably put a major dent into our school district’s debt, despite the deficit caused by the money-sucking Berry Center’s maintenance bills. Or we could just do away with football entirely and save even MORE! /ducks to avoid flying footballs, mums, cheerleader pom poms and mustard-covered hot dogs tossed by angry fans. The home team did win the game, which I think was a huge shocker due to past history, but a welcome surprise.

We had a time finding the right dress for Sarah to wear. After she went shopping with friends for one dress, it was determined that we needed to return it and find another dress we could actually accessorize and tweak for modesty. So that dress was returned, and Sarah, Sarah’s friend Roxanne and I scoured the mall for dresses. It seems this year that the dresses are shorter than ever before. Whether this strange phenomena is a result of economizing and cutting back on fabric by the designers and manufacturers, a misconception that teenage girls’ legs are shorter than they actually are, or just the current increasingly skanky style indicating the proportionately declining morals of our society, we may never fully determine.

After visiting nearly every store in the mall, we finally found a dress we both liked that fit Sarah, on the clearance rack of Jessica McClintock. Honestly I think the dress was only on that rack because it was missing half of its hook-and-eye closure in the back, easily replaced. It was white and lacy and poofy with a white ribbon sash. A tiny bit short, but the coverage was not bad. It was too late to get a shrug made, so we thought….what if we used the silver shrug Sarah had at home, the silver sparkly shoes she wore to the wedding, and replaced the white ribbon with silver satin ribbon from the fabric store? We also added another row of lace around the bottom to add just that tiny bit of length and poof. She even had a shiny silver bag at home. It was done, Sarah looked gorgeous, and we were pleased.

Jim is going to Utah and Idaho this weekend to give a presentation to a business college about his course (an IT course for accountants), and to meet Derek’s parents. He asked Mary what he should bring her, and she asked for tortillas. We were remarking on the reason for the lack of really tasty tortillas in Idaho and Stephen piped up and said, “That’s because all the tortillas in Idaho are made of potatoes. The really healthy ones have peels in them”. Stephen had his Herbst appliance removed last week, and his bottom braces put on. So for several days he couldn’t eat normal food due to trouble chewing and a sore mouth and he ate a lot of yogurt and mashed potatoes. We appreciate potatoes, as long as they aren’t in tortillas.

Danny and I have quite the routine on our morning walk. We have met lots of nice people and animals. Like the man in the white shirt, who rides a large tricycle with a radio in the back basket, a lady whose blind and deaf little dog is 16 years and 7 months old and still limps along on her daily walk (the dog not the lady), the man with the two large active dogs who love to splash in the drainage ditch and steal each other’s tennis balls, and a very large ginger cat who meets us each day for a pat from Danny and walks down several houses and a little way down the greenbelt with us before returning home. We hope it never meets up with the great big splashing dogs. We don’t think they would get along so well.

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Book Review of the Week:
“To Say Nothing of the Dog” ~Connie Willis

I absolutely loved this book. Not only was it clean, but very entertaining. Much more so than the recently popular “The Time Traveller’s Wife” which I feel falls into the category of “really great idea for a plot but written by the wrong person so it sucked”, right along with “Twilight.” /ducks to avoid plastic fangs, baseballs, notebooks that say “I HEART Edward!” and other flying vampire paraphernalia.
I recommend “To Say Nothing of the Dog” for fans of time travel, Victorian era history buffs, mystery fans, and cat lovers. Granted I’m only 3 of the 4, but I also give kudos because one of my favorite books, “The Moonstone”, is mentioned multiple times by the characters. Although, if you read this book before “The Moonstone”, you’ll know who steals the diamond because Verity tells you while explaining mysteries . There’s also a bulldog who can’t swim, lots of references to 18th century English literature like “Alice inWonderland” Tennyson, and “Three Men in a Boat”, an absent-minded professor who runs about collecting rare fish (to the great delight of the cat), and much speculation on the effects of time travel on the bombing of Coventry. Enjoy!

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I got this week’s recipe from one on AllRecipes.com called “Grandma’s Lemon Meringue Pie” and tweaked it to my taste. It is inexpensive, especially if you make your own crust (which I don’t). It’s not a beginner recipe. Those who attempt it should have egg separating skills, ability to operate a mixer and stir a boiling pot of filling at the same time, and the knowhow to combine said boiling filling with egg yolks without cooking the yolks into little tiny scrambled egg thingies, cause that’s just nasty.

Lemon Meringue Pie

1 cup white sugar
2 Tablespoons all-purpose flour
3 Tablespoons cornstarch
¼ teaspoon salt
¾ cup milk
¾ cup water
2-3 lemons, juiced and zested (to make approx. 1/3-1/2 cup juice)
2 Tablespoons butter
4 egg yolks, beaten in a small bowl
1 (9-inch) pie crust, baked
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4 egg whites
6 tablespoons white sugar
½ tsp cream of tartar (opt)
1 tsp vanilla (opt)
1 tsp lemon juice (opt)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 C.)

To Make Lemon Filling:
In a medium saucepan, whisk together 1 cup sugar, flour, cornstarch, and salt. Stir in water, milk, lemon juice, and lemon zest. Cook over medium-high heat, stirring frequently, until mixture comes to a boil. Stir in butter. Remove pan from heat. Gradually whisk ½ cup of hot sugar mixture into beaten egg yolks. Whisk egg yolk mixture back into remaining sugar mixture. Return to heat. Bring to a boil and continue to cook while stirring constantly until thick. Remove from heat. Pour filling into baked pastry shell.

To Make Meringue: In a large glass or metal bowl, whip egg whites until foamy. Add cream of tartar. Add sugar gradually, and continue to whip until stiff peaks form. I like to add lemon juice and vanilla for flavor. Spread meringue over hot pie, sealing the edges at the crust.
Bake in preheated oven for 10 minutes, or until meringue is golden brown.

P.S. With any luck, your pie will weep at the joy of being a delight.