we'll always be your sugar

"bodies are so smart.  if they notice something isn't being used, they'll use it for something else." - my roommate's physical therapist, on the atrophying of the muscles in her injured leg

cute shoes, stranger on the subway!

“what it’s like to bake a pie crust”

if you are baking pie, and you aren’t making your own pie crust, you’re not really baking pie.  you’re baking half a pie.  baking a pie crust is not that difficult and the only ingredients a basic crust requires are things that you probably already have in your house.  my mom says that using a store-bought pie crust is the same.  it’s not.

baking a pie crust is all about setting yourself up for success. 

to start, be sure to make a double recipe (a one-point-five-times recipe is actually better, but i was trying to avoid having to figure out a way to articulate that fraction).  if you make a single recipe, you are going to roll it out and realize that it is not big enough to fill the pie pan.  there is nothing you can do to fix this problem once you have it, so avoid falling into this trap by making more than enough dough.  now, why don’t pie crust recipes account for this and make a single serving of pie crust the quantity of a one-point-five-times recipe?  no one knows for sure.  i think that it is because the authors of pie crust recipes want you to fail so you get frustrated and vow to only use store-bought pie crusts in the future (because the authors of pie crust recipes have ties to the store-bought pie crust conglomerate). 

in any case, the recipe you are using may tell you to use both butter and vegetable shortening in your pie crust.  you can use butter in place of the shortening. i usually do this, because i have no idea what vegetable shortening is, and instead of educating myself so i feel more comfortable using it, i just use more butter.  plus butter is cheaper and doesn’t have the word “vegetable” in it, which is not a word i love to associate with pie crust.

you’ll probably be asked to mix together some flour, sugar, and salt, then add the tablespoons of butter (and “vegetable shortening”).  it will stay to mix it until the dough forms together and resembles crumbles the size of large peas. you will think to yourself that this will never happen, because the butter (and “vegetable shortening”) is so hard and the dry ingredients are so much like sand.  you will also think that you don’t have much of point of reference for what a large pea looks like.  this is the part of the recipe where you will surprise yourself: the dough will form together, and you will accurately identify the point at which the clumps resemble the size of large peas! you just will. 

the recipe will the probably to tell you to add a few tablespoons of ice cold water to make the large peas form together into one big dough ball.  you will think that there is no possible way that a few tablespoons of water could unite so many large pea-shaped clumps into one dough ball, but it will.  you will also ask yourself why the water has to be ice cold, but this is a waste of energy because no one in the history of world has ever or will ever know the answer to this question.

after you add the tiniest possible amount of ice water and the large pea clumps form a large dough ball in the bowl, you’ll take it out, wrap it in some parchment paper, and chill the it so that it is easier to roll.  the recipe will probably tell you to chill the dough for at least an hour.  you’ll want to do it for a little less than an hour, because an hour is an annoying amount of time to wait.  you really should wait at least an hour, but don’t beat yourself up when you don’t wait the full amount of time, because no one in the history of the world has ever or will ever wait a whole hour for the dough to chill.  when about thirty-eight minutes has elapsed and you decide that you can’t take it anymore, you’ll take the dough out and place it on a flat surface that is dusted with flour.  it is as this point that you will start to roll out the dough and think that you should have waited the whole hour because the dough will be a little too sticky to work with.  you’ll tell yourself that, next time, you’ll wait the whole hour.  but next time you won’t.  you’ll probably put a little extra flour on the dough to make it less sticky.  this is something of band-aid solution—it will make the dough less sticky in the present but will affect the consistency a bit once it is baked.  luckily, you are making a homemade pie crust where as everyone else in the world buys them from the store.  this means that, even though the consistency of your crust will be a little off, no one will say anything because they will be so impressed that you made it at all.

on the note of people: after you roll out the pie dough so that it is about an eighth of an inch thick (which, again, you will think you’ll have an impossible time estimating), and you pick it up off the flat work surface and place it into the pie tin (which is the most terrifying and exciting thing that a human has ever done), and you cut away the excess pie crust that is hanging off the edge of the pie tin (which you will be happy that you have because you made a one-point-five-times recipe), you get to fold the edges of the crust so that they make those pretty little wave things that all the pictures of pie crusts on google image have.  this is the most fun part of the process.  it is fun because you will naturally be able to make these waves with your fingers.  you’ll think to yourself that you wont be able to make them look exactly like they do on google image because you’ve never done it before, but your fingers will naturally know how to do it. it really isn’t difficult.  it is also the most fun part of the process because, more than anything else, those little waves things are the things that people are most impressed by when you display your pie crust.  if you are making a pie crust, you are probably doing it in the service of some group of people.  and if you are doing it in the service of some group of people, you are going to want positive affirmation.  (the need for positive affirmation from groups of people is a human thing, not a pie crust thing).  these little wave things are your key to positive affirmation! 

if you screw up the little waves things, don’t worry.  people will still be impressed by your pie crust.  but, without a doubt, they will be less impressed than if you didn’t screw up the little wave things.  however, if it is your first time making a pie crust and you screw up the little wave things, you’ll have no point of reference for how impressed the group of people would have been if you didn’t screw them up, so it shouldn’t be too upsetting.  and anyway, as i’ve mentioned, it’s really pretty natural and easy, so i doubt you’ll mess it up.  and, as i’ve also mentioned, you are already winning because you didn’t buy your crust from a store.

after you’ve rolled out the dough and placed it in the pie tin and cut off the excess dough and made the little wave things along the edge with your fingers, it’s time to pre-bake the crust.  this step will seem like a total wild card, but you’ll learn when you bake your own pie crust that you have to bake it a little bit on it’s own before you bake it as the whole pie.  (that is a pie crust thing).  the recipe will probably tell you to place tin foil over the unbaked crust, and then put pie weights on the tin foil before you put it in the oven so the dough doesn’t bubble and stays flat while it is baking.  no one in the history of the world has ever or will ever own pie weights. (they are too unifunctional).  you can pretty much use whatever you want to stand in for them, as long as whatever it is a) heavy, b) can fit in the pie crust, and c) okay to put in a four hundred degree oven.  you’ll find that the number of things that fit all three of these criteria is surprisingly small.  i like to use uncooked sushi rice, because we always have a lot of it in my apartment for some reason, and i know that no one will miss it when it’s gone.

you bake the crust in the oven along with the tin foil and small, heavy, heat proof thing.  after about fifteen minutes, you take the pie crust out, remove the tin foil, and are ready to learn the most important and most difficult lesson that baking your own pie crust has to offer: the pie crust will look significantly worse coming out of the oven than it did going in.  before it is baked, it will be even and smooth with perfect little waved edges and no abnormal coloring.  when you take it will have sunk in some places, there will be bubbles, parts of it will be darker than other parts, some or all of the little wave things will have come unwaved.  it is an inevitable part of pie crust-baking—who knows what that pie crust is doing in the oven by itself.  alone in your kitchen, you witness the perfection of what the pie crust was and could have been, but once it has baked into the thing it will be when you present it to your group of people, it will be okay-looking at best. 

you will blame yourself—you’ll think if only you made a double recipe instead of a one-point-five-times recipe, or weren’t too creeped out to use vegetable shortening, or made the large pea-shaped clumps larger and more pea-shaped, or let the crust chill for the full hour, or was better at estimating one eighth of an inch thick, or watched at least on online tutorial about how to make little wave things, or bought real pie weights, or any number of things that the pie crust would have come out of the oven looking as beautiful as it did going in.  and you’re right—any combination of those factors are why your pie crust does not look as perfect as you want it to look.  what’s worse, you are the only one to blame.  you made the crust from scratch by yourself.  without you, that pie crust would still be flour, sugar, salt, butter, sometimes vegetable shortening, and (for some reason) ice water, set separately on a table.  it is like having a child.  it’s baked now and there is nothing left you can do to change it. now all you can do is watch it as it grows up and starts to drive, drink your alcohol, and have sex with other pie crusts.

But you can’t the let lack of absolute success get you down.  There is work to be done.  You still have the whole rest of the pie to make. 

--

today i tried to skype my roommate who is in california.  but skype wasn't working so we tried facebook video chat.  but facebook video chat wasn't working so we tried google video chat.  but google video chat wasn't working so we tried to facetime.  who knew there were so many ways to do that?