Apple Pie

Several weeks ago, we posted a "story" about Chocolate Bourbon Pecan pie...a fictionalized look at how it was created and the emotions and circumstances surrounding that creation.  You can find it here if you missed it the first time:  Because we very much like the notion of being storytellers through the art of baking and sharing an experience through our skills, I put some thought into other of our most favored types of pie.  Here are some thoughts about Apple pie...enjoy!

The late afternoon sun filtering through the trees made her miss everything.  Everything that he was to her, everything that she had been when she was his, everything she thought might be true about her life when she loved him.  Now she was nothing.  And she was alone.  And what can you say when you feel like nothing?  She sipped her coffee and sat on the ground at the edge of the orchard at the edge of her property he had left her.  It was all she could do. 

Days passed.  She could feel nothing but emptiness.  She tried to ignore it.  If she dislodged the emptiness from the pit of her stomach, she wasn't sure what else would come out with it and that was frightening.  It was unsettling and being unsettled was her second least favorite emotion (lonely was her least favorite).  He knew that about her long before he left her. 

One fall afternoon, she had a bottle of white wine.   She drank it straight from the bottle and still, she felt nothing.  She felt only that if someone turned her inside out suddenly, perhaps vanilla pudding would fall out…the cheap instant pudding made from a mix and skim milk.   Her insides felt over-mixed and runny and without much flavor, with only a little sweet of her old life left.   A little drunk, she wondered into the orchard, into the overgrown trees where ripened apples fell from the branches onto the hard ground and laid there uncollected.  She too was an overripe apple that had fallen and had nowhere to go.  She smiled at the irony.  It was her first smile in months.  

She collected the best apples, rolling them into a pile at the edge of the orchard with little thought or plan.  She took some inside the house and left them on the counter, bruised.  Because her heart was bruised as well, she went to bed. 

The next morning, she needed to do something.  She could hear a whisper in the air to get up and to do something bigger than nothing.  She thought of the pie dough recipe that her grandmother had taught her and she began to mix the ingredients with little thought.  Finally, something occupied her.  When her tears fell onto the dough, she didn't mind.  When she pushed her rolling pin right through the dough and ripped it apart, she fixed her mistake and carried on.  She placed the dough in the pie plate and gently crimped the edges like her mother had taught her.  The pie plate was covered in beige dough that fell apart if you weren't careful.  It was just like her...her emotions were beige.  And she too was so fragile; she feared she would break with any pressure. 

She sliced apples and mixed them with what felt right…flour, sugar, butter, spices.  She poured the mixture into the pie crust, but it barely fit.  She guessed she had put a gallon of apples into the pie plate.  She thought it may be too much for a crust to hold, but she knew her own spirit was more than her body could hold on most days, yet she continued to exist.  The top crust strained and pulled as it covered the heap of apples.   She slid the pie into the oven.  She waited for an explosion.  Or an implosion.  Or at the least, a mess of sweet juices dripping to the floor of her oven.  But instead, an hour later, she had the perfect pie.  And she smiled a bit, the second time in a long time.  The crust was indeed strong enough for the filling inside.  She appreciated that. 

After ten or so pies, she took one to town.  The small grocery on the corner proclaimed her pie beautiful and placed it on a counter with a handwritten tag: ”Local Homemade Apple Pie.  $10.”  It sold and she made more.  Those sold.  She spent her days making dough and rolling out dough and thinking about dough.  She began to make the crust more attractive, spending more time finding the right consistency and thickness…making intricate designs on the crust that covered a gallon of apples…sealing it in just the right way to hold the sweet juice of the apples.  Her once beige crust that once meant nothing to her started to mean something.  She went to the orchard every morning to find the best apples to pull from the branches and place in her basket. 

She didn't know why, but people liked her homemade pies.  They began to talk.  People began to call.  They began to ask if they could order an apple pie for a birthday party, for a reunion, for a retirement dinner, for a dinner party.  She almost laughed at every order.  She had almost forgotten that people celebrated such things and that they were calling her, the saddest woman she knew, to bake their celebratory dessert…well, she wasn't lost by the irony. 

So she said yes to the orders.  She picked apples, peeled apples, and cored apples.  She mixed the dry filling by the pounds.  She pushed her rolling pin so hard she feared the table would break.  She didn't have time to be sad.  And when night came, she could only wash the flour from her face and fall asleep and she forgot to think of him before she closed her eyes.  The apple pie had given her a gift.  And she was thankful.