Page 11 - United States of Pie

rivulets of juice creeping out over the crust, both made with fruit my
grandma froze at the peak of the season. Classic apple pie sat next
to rich pumpkin, its custard cracked during baking from the heat of

the oven. We carried the pies to the laundry room—the only place
with room to house these numerous desserts—and covered them
with cotton dish towels. Throughout Thanksgiving dinner, my
appetite wandered to what waited for me at the end of the meal. The
turkey was just a precursor to the main event.

With one woman’s stellar baking skills so readily at hand, there
was little need for me to learn how to bake a pie myself. My grandma
was generous with her sugar—if I hankered for a pie, I had only to

ask. And many times I kept her company as she made her famous
pies. I watched her cut fats into flour; I watched her peel and slice
apples with the same dull paring knife; I watched her crimp her
crusts and vent her pies. But for all that, until I moved to Connecticut,
I had never baked a pie of my own. My entrance into pie making
wasn’t totally smooth. My crusts were patchy, my fluting uneven.

Meringues wept and custards refused to set. But, just like speaking a
foreign language, the more I practiced, the better I got.
Making a new home is as much about becoming acquainted with
your new environment as it is about getting settled. So, those first
months in Connecticut, when I wasn’t braising a pot roast or rolling
out rounds of dough, I found myself wandering the stacks of Sterling
Memorial Library at Yale University. We had moved to New Haven

because Brian had been offered a teaching job at Yale. Although I
wasn’t a student, his job meant that I had access to the libraries, and
the only other activity that distracted me from my homesickness as
much as baking was reading. At first I just wandered the stacks,
thumbing the spines of dusty books. The stacks reminded me of a

morgue, or at least how I imagined a morgue would look and feel: