Amidst the colder weather, more mask mandates, more testing and more cases of COVID-19 begin to mount on the official state dashboard graph. Consequently, more families are cautioned about moving about the so-called COVID cabin, particularly when it comes to vulnerable family members living in long-term care facilities or living with the challenges of serious health issues.
By now, we all know the drill. Wear a mask when you can’t physically distance while in public places. Wash your hands. Sanitize surfaces. And try not to get too neurotic about it. Be grateful for your friends and family. Say a prayer for those who’ve lost loved ones. It’s something we can do.
That and bake a pie for someone, even if that someone is you.
Let’s take these strange days one pie at a time. It’s much more manageable, and it tastes a whole lot better than the bitter pill of cancellations we seem to have to keep swallowing.
So this wintry morning, I’ve been prepping for an apple pie. I know an appreciative family of apple-pie lovers who could be on the receiving end of my homespun efforts. And that act of giving is a dose of goodness that will make me feel good as well.
I emerge from the pantry tying my apron. I’m thinking of last month, when I taught my daughter-in-law and my grandsons how to make butter pastry. I smile as the cabinet doors swing wide and drawers slide open as the mixing bowls are placed on the counter along with a sack of flour, a bag of sugar, Morton salt and jars of fragrant spices. A few steps around the island and the fridge door squeaks softly as seven apples are chosen from a half a peck and loaded into a bowl. I make a mental note to ask Steve to oil the hinge later. The utensils ting and clang and bump as the soft soapstone counter splays with measuring spoons and cups, a peeler, a paring knife and a rolling pin. A cold stick of butter is cleaved in half lengthwise, then in fourths, and finally into tiny cubes atop a small cutting board before being dropped into the flour and salt and cinnamon. A paper wrapper is tossed into the fireplace across the room. The sweet smell of apple peels swirls in invisible scents around the work of rolling the dough and gently filling the pie plates with slices of fruit and squeezed lemon from wedges. A dab of butter. A spoonful of sugary spices sprinkled.
With Thanksgiving nearly here, celebrating an American cultural tradition in spite of COVID and with sensible caution will be done in the spirit of “from here to kingdom come,” at least until 2021 when a vaccine arrives. Most of us know by now and until then that it means masks when you can’t socially distance in public places. It means hand-washing. It means also giving people the benefit of the doubt. After all, Americans are good at being charitable and kind, good at keeping a sense of humor, and especially around such an American tradition as Thanksgiving.
A little love and understanding goes a long way, as they say. And God knows we can use all we can get. To the person at the gas station or the transfer station or the park who feels compelled to tell a perfect stranger to put on a mask: Perhaps the stranger has asthma or anxiety or is more than 6 feet away.
Perhaps it’s time to make a pie. You know, count your blessings.
Perhaps to judge others is to judge ourselves. And my pies have been judged lately as heavenly. That giving is something to be thankful for. And, of course, receiving is also a thing for which to be grateful. And even with the reality of COVID, a virus that is much more dangerous to the frail and elderly than the young and healthy, I’m thankful knowing it’s sparing our children, for the most part, and that brings peace. I’m thankful for the freedoms we enjoy, for my family, my friends, a roof over my head and food on the table.
No matter how simple your gathering will be this year, there is a certain gathering of thanks in sharing feelings and ideas with the people you trust and love. There is a fulfilling gratefulness in the act of sharing something homemade with a friend.
Today, it’s apple pie.
The apples are peeled. The flour and butter are cut in with a pastry cutter, and tablespoons of cold water added. As the mixture becomes pea-sized and before the dough ball is formed, I think of who’ll be eating a slice of pie after it’s cooled and the apples are nestled in soft layers between the buttery crust sprinkled with cinnamon, sugar and a pinch of nutmeg and browned to delicious flakiness. Another apple sliced into a fruited layer. A pat of butter falls. Droplets of fresh lemon trickle down. A spoonful of sugar and spices cast. Each step repeated until the slices of apples are a mountain of nutritious and delicious goodness.
The pastry can be finicky, and the second dough ball waits under a damp towel until it, too, is rolled out as the first, folded in half and then thirds and manageable lifted onto the dressed apples. It is a crowning step to treat with patience and kindness and a certain degree of hopefulness for good things to come, even if they abound in the act of giving a small package like a sole pie.
Humidity and floury surface working together with the maker’s intent and perseverance, even when the pastry tears or crumbles and has to be sometimes coaxed. It’s a reminder to be easy with the process, let the pastry lead the way and allow for imperfection, which is forgivable and more beautiful for its humble offering.
The milk brushed on afterward, a milky baptism to receive the remaining miniature hail of sugar crystals and biblical spices. Sometimes the edges are precise with the impression of even tines, the way I learned to finish off the edges, rounding in pressed tine patterns, the wheel of deliciousness turned until the circle is completed.
Today, I allow my fingers to roll and pinch the rim of crust and, in doing so, the work becomes more organic and less uniform, an art inside the pie making that feels comforting to the touch and gratifying to the heart, knowing the special someone intended for the crusted creation will soon taste the labor you’ve imparted as loving baker.
It’s not so much the end result, though the fork of buttery, spicy and sweetened pie brings with it a response that can only be described as gratitude and then joy for having been the recipient of such work.
Perhaps gratitude is the state of being that we all crave, and when it’s absent, life seems cold, frightful, even bitterly unfair. The pie making helps to bring those we care for, and our own gratitude for being able to do so, into simple focus. Somehow, life is a bit more sweet with the promise of one simple act held in the making of one small pie.
The oven hums softly. I turn from the table where I work to see the pie in the glow of the oven light, its crust glistening with sugary crystals each clinging to a milk-laden hat dusted with cinnamon and nutmeg. Halfway done the pie begins to emit a lovely aroma. I’ll take it out of the oven soon.
Sometime tomorrow, the apple pie will find its way down the road where it will be served up, perhaps after driving lessons and with cups of tea to a couple of young boys, grandsons who I’m told, enjoyed leftover slices of an apple pie brought to dinner there not too long ago, and grandsons, unlike mine, who live next door and often visit their grandparents.
Making the pie makes me grateful for the times I’ve shared in the pie making with my children and their spouses and my grandchildren, the dogs underfoot, nosing and scouring the kitchen floor for errant balls of crumbly dough.
I reach for the pot holders and open the oven door. The smell of cooked Macintosh and Cortland empties into the kitchen. The pie is set to cool. But the intoxicating aroma draws me back. The apple comestible beckons, and I breathe in the rising tide of cinnamon, tangy, delightful warmth, the pie itself an iconic symbol of bountiful goodness associated with holidays.
The pie seems to take on a life of its own as the baking process slows to completion. A stillness and a moment of thankfulness in the giving happens. As I return to the table, I can already hear the sound of the whisk as the whipping cream forms its vanilla peaks, a ritual I like to share with my kids and grandkids.
It’s not so much the material things, like pie, that we are thankful for. It’s the people we love and care for in our lives and the relationships we are constantly making and strengthening through the rituals we share and need, like baking and cooking and sitting down together around a bountiful table of food.
And no matter how small the gathering this year, the spirit of love and sharing and even forgiveness for those who’ve wronged us or for those with whom we disagree begins to melt away with the first hopeful bites.
My grandchildren remind me how the memory of taste and smell is so strong that certain baked treats or savory dishes have become a euphemism for the love we share, a kind of code that cannot be stamped out because I know those practiced recipes will be passed down through the ages. The very prayerful acts of making Scottish oat farls in the morning or homemade hot cocoa together after a hike are the very markers that keep us thankful that we get this time together for the time being.
And a pie makes it that much sweeter.
Bonnie Toomey taught writing at Plymouth State University and writes about life and learning in the 21st century. Follow Parent Forward on Twitter at https://ift.tt/2UMo2Bz. Her latest work is featured in “Deep Beauty” https://ift.tt/2IVLjya.
The Link LonkNovember 22, 2020 at 06:23PM
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Thanks is giving pie - Sentinel & Enterprise
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Pie
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