Easy As Pie

            I can make a pie crust in two minutes flat. That includes taking the Cuisinart out of the cupboard, assembling it, measuring two cups of flour and a dash of salt, cutting butter and shortening into cubes, pulsing a couple times, then letting her rip while dribbling ice water through the feed-tube. Voila! The machine even forms the dough into a ball before my eyes.

            My skill at this particular exercise has become a family legend of sorts, and modesty doesn’t prevent me from enjoying the resulting holiday adulation. The flip side, of course, is that you-know-who gets the call every Thanksgiving and Christmas. But let’s be honest, did Pavarotti decline Yuletide entreaties for “O Holy Night” `round the Steinway?

            Last Christmas saw us over the river and through airport security to grandmother’s house. My mom, my sister, her husband, various progeny and significant others would reunite after too much absence. Chilly walks, nourishing conversations by a comfy fire (burning wood someone else has chopped), Scrabble games, and the tangy aroma of hot cider lay ahead.

            “Sure, Mom, I’ll make the pies,” I said over the phone. How could it be otherwise?

            Reality jabbed its cold finger into my chest moments before we left the house for the airport. Mom doesn’t own a Cuisinart!

            I rifled my cupboards for a bent pastry cutter. I scribbled out the Joy of Cooking recipe for Basic Pie Dough. I told myself that pioneer wives on the Oregon Trail made pies on a wagon plank with month-old flour, rancid lard, and branch water while Pa kept a lookout for grizzlies and unhappy Sioux.

            We arrived at Mom’s amid hugs and smiles and lugging of suitcases -- and how many times did I hear the word “pie”?

            The next morning, we played golf. It’s a tradition. At eighty-three, Mom’s remarkable. Plays twice a week, breaks a hundred as often as not, and has four holes-in-one to her credit. My retired brother-in-law plays golf eight days a week and shoots to a six handicap. I play six times a year.

            The competition on the links wasn’t what ruffled my concentration that morning, however. I walked eighteen gorgeous fairways plotting how to make stealth run to Safeway and somehow decant two pumpkin pies into Mom’s pie plates unnoticed.

            About now you’re thinking “ridiculous.” But childhood family-of-origin issues die hard, don’t they?

            We returned home. The time had come. I banished the curious from the kitchen, surveyed the Operating Theater, and quelled momentary panic.

            You know what cooking in someone else’s kitchen is like: Rubik's Cubes are child’s play compared to finding in one’s mother’s kitchen a rolling pin (vintage Eisenhower administration), Lilliputian tins of ground spices, plus requisite bowls, measuring cups and spoons, cutting board, eggs, salt, butter, Crisco, and flour.

            Out came the instructions from Joy: “Cut half of the shortening into the flour mixture with a pastry blender until it has the grain of cornmeal.” Uhhh…. Right!!

            It worked! Miracle of the Antique Pastry Cutter. Cornmeal you shall have.

            Next: “Cut the remaining half coarsely into the dough until it is pea size.” Done! Move over, Betsy Prairie-Schooner!

            Then: “Sprinkle the dough with four tablespoons water. Blend the water lightly into the dough. You may lift the ingredients with a fork, allowing moisture to spread.”

            Hold it! Water does not “lightly blend” into dough. It falls in the usual way, in droplets which land randomly. Despite Joy’s permission to lift said ingredients with a fork, the result is crumbly dough, soggy here, dry there. Undaunted, I reached in to form a ball only to have it just as quickly exfoliate into tiny shards, the Law of Entropy being what it is. Maybe folks would settle for scones.

            I will spare the reader the rest of the details. Two hours later, I lifted out of Mom’s oven two glorious pumpkin pies, their gold and russet sheen a culinary vision.

            Christmas dinner was fabulous. The turkey sizzled, stuffing was stuffed, my son pretended to eat some creamed onions, and I pretended to enjoy an aspic of uncertain provenance his girlfriend brought. A football game murmured in the background. Family chatter and the clink of silver and glassware hid the sound of the cocker spaniel finishing off the bowl of assorted nuts on the coffee table.

            The pies? They disappeared faster than you can say “Oregon Trail.” I basked in my annual glow. I added Cuisinart to my mom’s Christmas list.

            I also remembered to hide the Safeway grocery receipt.