Pie

Some people bring house gifts like a bottle of wine, a box of candy, a succulent plant. Mom made pie. Whenever we’d be invited to someone’s home for dinner, Mom would hang up the phone and say, “I’ll bake a pie.” She’d pick up fruit for the filling: blueberries or apples; or strawberries and rhubarb; peaches if they were in season. Then, she’d wake up early the morning of the dinner party and make the dough for the crust since it would need to be refrigerated for several hours before rolling it out. Later, in the afternoon, she’d take out the dough and the rest of the ingredients, set the pastry cloth on the counter and before I could even offer to help, she’d start rolling out the bottom crust.

Mom’s pies were art: the delicate, thin crust glistening and shiny; the perfectly crimped edges; the fruit peeking out of little half moon vents; the wisps of steam spiraling into the air. I can smell the buttery, flaky crust, blueberries warm and bubbling and fragrant as she took it from the oven.

Whether she was baking the pie to take to someone else’s house or making one to serve to her own dinner guests, she loved the look on the faces of those who were about to eat it. They’d ooh and aah as she brought the pie to the table on a round silver platter, and then watch as she’d cut into her creation and joyfully serve it to them. Mom would never think of purchasing a pie. We would browse through the bakery section of Kings Supermarket or at local bakeries or farmer’s markets to see what other people were baking and what they were charging for their pies. But we always made our own. There’s a unique hospitality in serving homemade pie – handmade from scratch. It says: mi casa es su casa. It feels like home, wherever you are when you eat it.

Mom didn’t look at a recipe as she made her pies. Her skills were innate. My mother, Marilyn, learned to make pie from her mother, my grandmother Bess Lenox, and Bess learned pie making from her mother Rae, my great grandmother. These women passed down the tradition to the next generation through their recipes. Well, in theory that is. The recipes were in their heads. I have Grandma’s “recipes,” handwritten in script on 3 x 5 index cards, the ink fading with age and stored in a small yellow metal card file box. Each card is merely a list of ingredients. Mom wrote out her fruit pie recipe for me, translating the process she knew by heart into a formal list of ingredients and baking steps. Like her mother’s and grandmother’s recipes, the actual recipe on paper was not for amateurs -- it assumed vast pie making knowledge between the lines.

When Mom retired a few years ago, she decided to type up some of her handwritten recipe cards. She got a ring-bound book from a Hallmark store and filled the plastic sleeves with her favorite family recipes. She made a duplicate book for my sister-in-law, Lisa, and gave it to her as a birthday present. We kept the original handwritten cards. On Mom’s computer, I found the letter she wrote to Lisa to accompany the recipe book gift. In it she admits the family recipes were more of an oral tradition and legacy. She wrote: “My mom would often give me a recipe that she knew I had made a few times and would indicate directions in a cryptic way, e.g., ‘Prepare as you would make a rhubarb pie…’” After Mom died, the idea of baking without her was too painful and I couldn’t even look at her recipes. The book sat where I’d placed it when I unpacked all my cookbooks, using one of the dining room sideboards as a bookshelf.

But last year, to mark her birthday in March, and also in April, on the first anniversary of her passing, I wanted to bake something, hoping it would feel like she was near me. For her birthday, I chose a simple marble cake and right away I found errors in the recipe – typos that made me question the amounts of ingredients and question all the other recipes. I had to refer to the original recipe cards and check the correct measurements. Maybe I should have offered to proofread while she was making the book, but she was so intent on her project that I didn’t want to interfere.

Pies For Every Season

There was always pie. Apple and pumpkin in the fall. Glorious blueberry or peach pies in the summer. Variations on lemon: chiffon, meringue, coconut. Strawberry with rhubarb. Fancy spiked dessert pies. Even savory pies.

There was a delicious meat pie Mom would make for midweek suppers when I was an elementary school kid – back when I still ate meat. No doubt it was a fancy alternative to hamburgers, but simple enough that she made it often for dinner, since she could prepare it ahead of time and then bake it in the evening. It had the same flakey double pastry crust like her fruit pies and she made it in a glass pie plate and served it by the slice. We ate it like burgers, with ketchup. It was good heated up the next day too.

I wondered about the recipe, so I searched through the accordion file folder where she catalogued her favorite dishes. In the 7” x 10” file, bound with a faded red ribbon, its cover decorated with colorful graphics of vegetables and herbs, under the heading “main dishes,” I found a 3x5 scrap of now crumbling paper torn from a note pad. Mom had written: “Meat Pie.” And, this: “grind cooked meat; brown onion in spry – three chopper [sic] with fat; salt; fry [?]; 1 egg; bread crumbs; 35 min 425 oven.”

That’s it. No other instructions. Plus, a very questionable ingredient list. Maybe Grandma’s recipe had a more detailed account.

I flipped through her yellow recipe box. There’s a little tabbed section for meat with one recipe card. Aha. “Meat Pie.” On the card are two lists of ingredients. One says: “par boil meat [and …some word I can’t make out… clumps?]; 2 [tbs …tablespoons?] fat; 1 egg; m. meal [pretty sure this is matzoh meal]; onion; salt & pepper.” The other list says: “2 [tbs?] fat; ½ c water; 1 egg; 1 tsp [l po? …I have no idea what that means]; 1 tsp sugar; 1 tsp salt; flour.”

What do you do with all that? It isn’t any more helpful than Mom’s. So I will not be re-creating the family meat pie any time soon, unless I improvise and make my own version with ground turkey or chicken.

Dinner Party Dessert Pies

In the middle of the 1970’s, people were making Jell-O molds in Tupperware to take to pot luck suppers.  I remember the dinner parties in our house. Mom and Dad invited their friends from the PTA or maybe Mom’s friends from the League of Women Voters, or the leadership of the synagogue where she was the first woman president of the congregation. I was 14 or so and David was about 11. We were not too interested in socializing with my parents’ friends, but we knew them and we’d say hi to the guests and then go off to do homework or watch TV or go to bed depending on the time, while the party went on into the evening. Earlier in the day, Mom would prepare appetizers she’d serve in the living room, a main dish for the dinner to accompany the side dishes others would bring, and then she’d make a show-stopping dessert to cap off the meal.

There was something pastel green in a chocolate pastry shell. It was creamy like mousse and fluffy and beautiful and topped with shaved chocolate. It was a grasshopper pie.

I knew it had crème de menthe in it. Dad used to store after dinner cordials on the antique bar cart they kept in the living room next to the fireplace. The bottle was opaque white and a unique shape with sharp angles and a pointed top.

I couldn’t find the recipe in the book Mom made for me. So back I went to her trusty accordion file in search of that grasshopper pie. Under the dessert heading, I found a yellowed page from the New York Times Magazine, from August 3, 1975.  It was an article by long-time food editor Craig Claiborne and food columnist Pierre Franny, who often co-authored food pieces for the newspaper. The story, entitled, “Pie, Spiked” was about using liqueurs to make boozy desserts.

The article had a basic recipe for a cordial pie made with a crumbled cookie crust, gelatin, whipped cream and liqueur flavoring. It included a chart with a list of 20 options for liquors or liqueurs, cookies, and garnishes. There’s Mom’s grasshopper pie, number three on the list. It calls for crème de menthe and crème de cacao, crumbled chocolate cookies for the shell, whipped cream and chocolate curls on top. I had no idea there were so many variations.

There were other pies for holidays, family celebrations, reconnecting with friends, or just gatherings as an excuse to eat pie. I always expected pies for dessert – or homemade cookies – at my grandmother’s house in nearby West Orange. For Thanksgivings at our house, Mom made her own pumpkin pie. Or we’d go to Nettie Ochs Cider Mill on Cedar Street and select apples and make apple pie. We’d spend Memorial Day and the Fourth of July with Johanna and Arnie Bauer and their two daughters, Lisa and Nancy. We’d go to their home in Livingston for a backyard barbeque and Mom would bring her blueberry pie.

Everyone Gets a Pie

After Grandma and Dad died (one after the other in 1989 and 1990) for nearly decade, until the early 2000s, we started celebrating holidays with Mom’s friends Roz and Mel Levin and their extended family at their home in West Orange. Roz and Mom had become close friends when they worked together at Oheb Shalom synagogue, when Mom was the executive director. The Levins were like grandparents to me since mine were gone. We’d join them for Rosh Hashanah in the fall and Passover in the spring, when Roz’s daughter Amy, who had become a rabbi, would lead the seder. Roz would make the dinners and Mom would bring an apple pie for a sweet new year, complimenting the traditional honey cake.

Roz’s sister Gladys and her husband Allen Schwartz had a summer cabin at Lake Hopatcong, New Jersey. It sat high up amid the trees and had a screened porch with a picnic table. We’d go there for Fourth of July, driving up just for the day. I’d hold onto Mom’s freshly baked blueberry pie, wrapped in tin foil and ready to be popped back in the oven after dinner so we could eat it warm. Gladys would serve a light lunch out on the porch and then we’d walk down to the dock to sunbathe or just relax in lawn chairs. Allen would take us for a ride in his motorboat and we’d tool around the lake for a while, dodging the larger boats as they passed by. Then, we’d all go back up to the house and have grilled burgers and pickles and potato salad, and, naturally, Mom’s pie for dessert. We drove back home sated with the warm embrace of friends and pie.

Our good friends Sonnie and Herb Yefsky lived around the corner from our house on Scotland Drive. Their daughters lived in other states and Mom and I were alone, so we adopted each other as family. We started celebrating Jewish holidays and milestone events together, alternating dinner locations between our two homes. There were countless meals with so many blueberry or apple pies. If it was a small group for the meal, we’d only eat part of the pie and Sonnie would bring back the pie plate a few days later after she and Herb finished it off.

In the summers, in late August, Naomi and Barry Karetnick, also long-time family friends, would invite us to outdoor gatherings at their country house in Green Township. The property had been a horse farm and there was still an old barn that sometimes served as a dining area. There was also an expansive deck by the pool, perfect for dining al fresco in the warm summer evenings. Naomi loved cooking for crowds as much as Mom loved baking pie. We’d drive up to rural Sussex County with the Yefskys, passing farms with cows, farm stands with local tomatoes and corn, and picturesque country churches. Naomi would serve a late afternoon dinner with chicken or fish, salads, side dishes and then a dessert buffet, including Mom’s stunning peach pie with a lattice top. How’d she do that?

My running group, the Essex Running Club, would hold series of “hosted runs” where a member would map out a short route for a run in their neighborhood and club members would come for the group run and then return to the person’s house for brunch. It was a way for runners to get to know each other and explore new running areas. I was new to the club in 2012, and I decided to host an event. Some hosts simply served bagels or oatmeal. I saw it as an opportunity to cook my favorite brunch dishes for some new people. I made a frittata with tomato, zucchini, cheddar cheese and thyme; a pizza on naan with pear, gorgonzola and ricotta cheese and a balsamic and fig glaze; spinach pie in phylo; and mini popovers. Mom offered to make blueberry pie and she made two of them! She took delight in serving the pie to my running friends and those two pies were devoured in seconds by hungry runners.

If It’s Not on Film, It Didn’t Happen

Over the years, I documented Mom making pies, often photographing each step: the rolled out dough; how she folded it to place it in the pie plate; the amount of butter she dabbed on top of the berries. I took close-ups of her hands crimping the edges of the crust and used a black and white filter on the image.

I wanted to find the pictures of her pies. I searched through the photo library on my computer. Those files start in 2002, when I first got a digital camera. Later I transferred all the photos from my smart phones. Before digital photography, there were scores of photos taken with film cameras and printed out, stored in deep plastic bins in the garage. There are photo albums filled with the tiny 2½ x 3½ photos printed from Kodachrome slides. Dad took thousands of pictures with his Leica camera. Mostly they were of us as little kids, but some showed our birthday parties in the downstairs den where Mom is bringing out a decorated birthday cake she made. It’s got marshmello-white frosting with light pink flowers. I don’t know if Dad photographed her pies. People weren’t exactly documenting their food to share on social media. But some of Mom’s creations were Instagram-worthy.

Amid the still photos depicting the steps of pie making, I came across a 10-minute video of Mom making pie - start to finish. I didn’t remember that I filmed it. It’s Monday, May 27, 2013 – early morning on Memorial Day seven years ago and Mom is making pie in the kitchen of our house on Scotland Drive. In the background CBS news is on the radio and they are talking about Memorial Day. We always listened to that station because it was the only one we could tune in on the clock radio we kept on a corner shelf unit by the kitchen table.  I’m quietly filming and she silently rolls out the chilled dough for the bottom crust. I catch details in the video that aren’t mentioned in her recipe. She butters the glass pie plate and also flours it. She expertly rolls the dough to the perfect size and deftly places in the plate. She adds in the mound of blueberries. She rolls out the top crust and crimps the edges to create a seal and perfect-looking pie crust ready for baking.  I’ve been filming the process and focusing on the pie-making and her hands. She uses a pastry brush to paint the top crust with milk (it makes it shiny). With the last stroke of the brush, I hear Mom’s voice, familiar, yet absent for the last two years. But here, we’re talking in the kitchen as we usually did. She says, “hmm, okey-dokey….ready to go.” She puts the pie in the bottom oven off camera and then says, “can I use that thing?” pointing at the kitchen timer on the counter – the one we got when the clock built in to the old free standing double oven stopped working. I say, “for how long,” asking about the timer. The pie bakes at a hotter temperature first and then you turn the temperature down. She says, “give it um…” She picks up the box of tapioca which thickens the filling and looks at the chart on the back. “45 minutes.” The surprise at hearing her voice was all it took and I am sobbing and sobbing as I watch the end of the video.

That Memorial Day she was baking pie. Two weeks later she was back in the hospital.

David, Lisa and the kids had come east for a visit. Olivia’s 8th birthday was June 6, so we’d be celebrating it while they were in New Jersey. I was planning out meals to make for all of us. I baked cupcakes. One night we could have a barbeque and I made a pasta salad in advance. She was tired that week. Despite the family traveling across the country to see her, she had no energy. One day they wanted to go to the beach and she didn’t want to go but urged me to go with the family. She just wanted to rest. When I got back home that evening, I found her still lying in bed, too tired to get up. We called her doctor and got an appointment for the next day. The cancer had come back and she was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma for the second time.

The treatment couldn’t wait and she was admitted to the hospital immediately. I had a houseful of guests and Mom had cancer again. I would go to see her and then come home and cook some food for the family. We grilled the food I had gotten for the barbeque, celebrated Olivia’s birthday with the cupcakes I’d made. Mom started chemo and by July her hair was falling out and, once again, she was in a wig. Then she was in remission for the next 5 years. In between, there was pie.

Pies For All the Moments

There’s an apple pie for the Jewish New Year that September at the Yefskys. We’re at their table and the pie is served on Sonnie’s white china plates. In October, they’re at our house for dinner and there is apple pie again. For Thanksgiving, we’re in California and Mom makes an apple pie in Lisa’s kitchen so we can bring it to her parents’ house where we all gather to celebrate the holiday.

The following summer, we’re back in California and it’s peach season. Olivia, Will and Ben pick the peaches from the tree in their Willow Glen backyard and ask Mom to make a peach pie. We had to improvise ingredients but it turned out perfect. Now there was a stretch with nothing but peach pies for months until the fall when apple pie took over again.

Each year, in the spring, The Sister Rose Thering Fund, the non-profit organization Mom ran for Seton Hall University, would hold its annual fund raising event called The Evening of Roses. There was usually a VIP gathering for large donors and a dinner for board members. In 2015, the event was in May and Mom invited 10 board members to a dinner at our home. On the menu was Mom’s favorite meal: a salad with watermelon, cucumber, jicama and goat cheese as a starter; Cornish hens as the entrée, with haricots verts; a French potato salad; and fresh cranberry sauce alongside. Of course, Mom had made an apple pie early in the morning. I took care of preparing, cooking and serving the entire meal so she didn’t have to do anything but socialize with her guests. In the photo I found of the group at the table, Mom is at far end, near the living room, smiling and just enjoying the meal with her colleagues.

We sold the house on Scotland Drive in 2016 in the fall. We packed up all the pie plates, the rolling pin and pastry cloth and all the baking utensils, along with 50+ years worth of belongings and the contents of our 3 bedroom house in Livingston. We moved less than 10 minutes away to a large townhouse in West Orange, just up the road from the neighborhood where Mom lived as a child. The townhouse had a huge kitchen and we dedicated a whole section of it for baking. There was enough counter space and cabinets in that kitchen to accommodate cooking for extravagant multi-course meals that could feed many guests.

The Last Pie

In that last year and a half, there was just one more pie. We had discovered that Mom’s old friends from the synagogue, Janice and Abe Bunis, also lived in the development. Janice welcomed us immediately, stopping by on the day we moved in to bring us lunch as we unpacked, and Mom and Janice rekindled their friendship. We had several visits at each other’s town homes as we got to know our new community.

One day in early December 2017, we invited Janice and Abe for dinner.  In the dining room, under the hideous bulky chandelier that hung from the cathedral ceiling, the table is elegantly set with Grandma’s English china and her silverware, cloth napkins with lace trim secured in silver napkin rings, and colorful frosted wine glasses a friend gave us.  I made the meal (salmon) and Mom baked a pie (blueberry) in the spacious kitchen. The aroma filled that cold, cavernous townhouse with the hominess it was missing. It was the only pie Mom made when we lived in the townhouse; the last pie she ever made.

The Training Wheels Come Off and I Solo

As the second anniversary of her passing approached at the end of April, 2020, in the middle of the Coronavirus pandemic, while we sheltered-in-place and I sheltered in solitary confinement, everyone was quarantine cooking and baking sourdough bread, creating cookies out of the discards. I knew I wanted to bake a pie. I could think of no better way to honor my mother than by diving in and attempting my very first solo pie.

Throughout my life, I had watched the master pie maker at work. I was her student, observing, helping with parts of the process like washing the berries, peeling, coring and cutting up apples, slicing peaches. I was her pastry sous chef measuring out a cup of sugar or pouring a bit of milk into a dish. Did enough of that sink in?

I open the folder of photos with Mom’s pies and the pie making process (I hadn’t found that video yet.) I look through the pictures trying to imbed the images in my head so I can refer to them as I make the pie. Each photo brings back the memory of the day we ate the pie and I’m crying missing her and her pies. My photo viewing turns into a teary blur and I can’t even look any more.

In the recipe binder, there’s a recipe card for the pie crust and a separate one for the pie fillings, showing the variations for different types of berries and fruits. I carefully read through both cards. I wish the pie crust recipe was written out for a neophyte. Even though Mom wrote out the steps, the recipe is still shorthand only a pie making pro would understand. I have to read between the lines to understand each step, calling up the photos I just leafed through and drawing upon my observations as she baked to grasp what she meant. The recipe is for a 9-inch pie. It also says you can make a 10-inch one, but doesn’t show the amounts of ingredients for scaling it up. I opt for the 9-inch version.

I decide to make the dough on Tuesday, April 21, so it can sit in the refrigerator overnight and I can make my pie tribute on the April 22 anniversary.

I had most of the ingredients already. I had purchased a bag of flour when I found it on the intermittently empty shelves at the grocery. I still needed blueberries and a small container of milk and that would require another trip to a store, masked and gloved and ready for a surgical strike on a grocery aisle. Once I bought the blueberries, I’d made the commitment to make the pie and there was no turning back.

I carefully measure out the ingredients and try to follow the recipe to the letter. To make the dough, you cut the cold butter into the flour until it forms little pea size clumps. She used a pastry blender and mixed it by hand. But I remember she also used the food processor. Talking to a picture of Mom that’s sitting on the dining room table, I ask, “should I do it by hand or machine?” I imagine she says, go with the pastry blender. I find it in a kitchen drawer I’d assigned to the baking utensils. Have I added enough ice cold water? Is it too dry? Should I add another tablespoon? I decide it’s okay and I scoop out the rough blob of dough onto a sheet of wax paper as I’d seen her do, pressing the dough with my hands into a tighter mound and wrapping it up and putting it in the fridge to chill.

With my pie dough chilling, I texted the three women who have become my close friends in the short time I’ve lived in San Jose. I told Felicia, Victoria and Parul about my pie making plan and that I would need pie eaters. Would they each like to share some pie once I made it? I’d drive over to their homes and drop it off. We are all nervous around each other, wearing our masks and social distancing. But they each say they’d love some pie.

I take out everything else I’ll need to assemble the pie so on Wednesday the set up will be organized and I can focus on the pie making process itself. The rolling pin is in a cabinet where I keep Mom’s classic, now vintage, corning ware (white with blue flowers), the flour sifter, and a no-brand-name food processor. The glass pie plates are in the storage closet just off the balcony, so I have to go outside to get a 9-inch plate. I keep my set of Williams Sonoma melamine nesting mixing bowls on top of the refrigerator and they get dusty, so I have to wash the large green one before I can use it for the berries. I get out a large metal colander I’ll use to wash them. I’ve hardly cooked or baked in the not quite two years I’ve lived in the apartment so I still don’t know where I put everything.

Wednesday morning, I wake up remembering it is the anniversary day and I will face it alone – in lockdown. I take out the yartzeit candle and set it up near the framed picture I keep in my bedroom. In it, Mom is a young woman in her late 20’s holding her ginger and cream Persian kitten, Teddy, the one who was naughty and broke a lamp in Grandma’s bedroom in their newly-built house.

I start with the pie crust. I have to clear off everything from the small countertop near the kitchen sink so I’ll have room to lay out the pastry cloth. It’s just enough space. The countertop has 1980’s 3-inch square tiles and isn’t a smooth surface. I cut the dough into two pieces. Then I start rolling out the bottom crust. The day before, I’d made a round template on parchment paper so I’d have a size guide as I rolled out the dough. Is it big enough, thin enough? It seems to fit in the pie plate. I pour out the blueberries into the crust and then roll out the top piece of dough. My scalloped edges don’t look exactly like Mom’s. I’m pulling up those photos in my head. How did she do that edge crimping? The pie is finished and ready for baking and I put it in the oven. I think it looks good.

I document my own pie making session, taking photos on my phone, which is nearly out of memory. While the pie is baking, I prepare 4 foil-covered plates so I can share the pie with my friends. I also type up instructions on how to reheat it to serve it warm.

In the early evening, Felicia comes by my apartment on her way home from work to pick up her pie. We’re all wearing masks and afraid of the air we breathe on each other. There’s so much anxiety, yet the need to be near people supersedes the fear. After Fe leaves, I drive to Victoria’s house and then to Parul’s to drop off their portions. They live near each other in South San Jose.

After I return from my deliveries, I come back to the apartment and I post the pictures of my pie on my Facebook page with the story of my tribute to Mom.

I cut the portion of pie I’ve saved for myself in two (saving the other piece for the next day), wrap a slice in foil and warm it in the oven. 15 minutes later, I take out the pie, open the foil packet and put the slice, oozing with blueberries, on a white plate with pink flower trim. I pick up my fork and take a bite, delighting in the warm, sweet berries and the flaky crust. It’s a little Zen moment with Mom. I think she’d approve.

It tastes like home.