Pie Time

Sis makes my favorite pumpkin pie, and I have some chilling in the fridge right now.
 Image from makefive.com.

I have lots of rich pie stories. I really don't know where to begin, so I guess I'll just slice right into it with a list.

• Pie throwing. We have a Garbarini family story. My paternal grandma from Italy, Rosie, lived with each of her three sons for a third of the year [for maybe a year or two] once she was too old to live alone. One night, my mother was mad at her because she didn't want to eat the dinner she made, just the store-bought coconut custard pie we were having for dessert. Throw it out, my mom said, as the tension rose. So my brother Will opened the kitchen door and out the pie went into the snow. It's kind of painful to remember. Actually, I kind of laugh about it, but Will is troubled by it.
• Spinach pie. Both Dad and Sis have made this--I think it's based on what Rosie made, except she called hers torta. Sis baked this often for parties she threw as a single woman in her apartment on East 82nd Street between Second and Third avenues. Dad made it for holidays.
• Chocolate cream pie. Our beloved Uncle Anthony's wife, Claire, made a chocolate cream pie in graham cracker crust. They married later in life and had no kids, and she spoiled me with that pie when we went to visit her in the Bronx or later, in Connecticut. Aunt Claire is now in heaven. I hope the whipped-cream clouds there are as fluffy as her pie topping was.
• Cheesecake pie. This recipe was from a Bisquick booklet that my college boyfriend's mom gave me. I made it frequently for Moey's birthday, before I graduated to Ed's Cheesecake, an awesome recipe [made with whipped cream cheese and butter, and a springform pan] garnered while working at Good Housekeeping.
• Dutch apple pie. In magazine offices, there are lots of perks and giveaways--from shoes at Seventeen [in large sizes, b/c models are tall and have bigger feet] to books. As a young assistant at Woman's Day, I picked up a soft-cover cookbook called Sweets for Saints and Sinners. It was one of my first cookbooks, and for years, I made the Dutch apple pie every Thanksgiving. It has a nice streusel topping, and I liked it, too, because I didn't know how to make a crust back then. But now I've left it behind like a high school sweetheart, and give my love to a double-crust apple pie made with a butter crust recipe from Fine Cooking.
• Pie thief. Well, I was accused of being one. I was writing a story for Woman's Day that involved apple pie recipes inspired by celebrated bakeries in NYC. When I called one of them, on the Upper East Side [I think to verify some facts], the lady shouted at me, I know what you want to do. You want to get our recipe and publish it. You want to steal it.  Red-faced, I said no, I didn't want to do that, but our conversation was over.
• Apple pie in a bag. Mildred Ying, food editor at GH, really favored this method. You bake the pie in a brown paper grocery bag.
• Pie perfect. I've never seen a more beautiful pie crust than the ones my friend Debby makes. Formally known as Susan Deborah Goldsmith, she was associate food editor at GH for decades. She knows how to pinch and crimp the crust around the edges so that it looks absolutely picture-perfect. If you remember ideal pies on the pages of GH years past, Debby may have made them.
• Rolling on a counter. My friend Sharon Franke, a GH editor, was doing a comparison report on rolling pins for the magazine. She asked staffers who baked to come up to the Good Housekeeping Institute to roll some dough and let her know what we thought of the rolling pins. Until that day maybe 13 years ago, I didn't know the secret of rolling. Sharon told me that you have to roll from the center and up, from the center and right, from the center and down, from the center and left. You do not roll straight across the dough circle.
• Heirloom rolling pin. I have my maternal grandmother Alice's wood rolling pin. The handles were red, but the paint is worn away now after years of use. Sis and I don't remember Granny ever making a pie, but maybe she did before our time. Our mother never made one, either, that I can recall. I do remember eating store-bought apple pie at my grandparents' apartment in Dumont. Your grandmother always leaves the best part, my grandpa said, that Irish twinkle in his eye. The crust. And then either he or I proceeded to eat the crimped remains on her plate.
• I like pie. Figgy wrote that message on my cell phone screen. It makes me laugh. I had a little tart business for eight months in 2009 and there were small pies everywhere. Actually, they were fancier tarts, made in pans with removable bottoms, but Figgy and friends liked to call them pies.

Pie is not easy, or humble, or in your face. It's just fabulous and fun and filling. Artwork at its finest, emerging from your kitchen and made with your own two hands. I hope you had a nice slice this weekend.