Pie Heaven

O.K. Last month I said we would come home from I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change to an ooey-gooey mud pie or some similarly decadent confection, but that just didn't happen tonight.

I'm proud to say we did, indeed, have our pick-apart-the-show pie at home, but it wasn't really decadent. Instead it was light, fluffy, sweet, and crumbly. My original intention was to cheat a little (I know; who would believe it of me?) and pick up a pie at a specialty shop. My husband received a gift certificate to Croshaw's Gourmet Pies, and browsing their website certainly made my mouth water. But I guess that will have to wait for next month's show. The plan was to run some errands and pick up the pie early in the day. I even voiced this intention to my mom when I hung up the phone at 10 a.m. But it just didn't happen. I think my two favorite Roberts (Frost and Burns) said it best when describing "how way leads on to way" sort of diverts "the best laid plans of mice and men." By 1 p.m. it was clear we weren't getting out of the house anytime soon, and I decided I'd better make a pie. After all, theater night without pie might be sacrilegious.

Upon rummaging through refrigerator and pantry I came up with several choices for the required dessert. Cream pies (vanilla, chocolate, butterscotch, or banana) were definitely in the running. I had a hankering for banana cream with raisins, but I couldn't find a shriveled grape in the house. How disappointing! Since my first choice was so cruelly struck from the list, I moved on to other kinds of pie - chiffons to be exact. Before today I had never made a chiffon pie, and the flavor choice du jour was strawberry, which I thought I would make quick work of, but that, too, was not meant to be.

Normally I keep store bought pie crust in the fridge. I know pie crusts are easy to make, but the others are just so convenient it's hard to give up the habit. However, I was out of that today, too. (Did I mention I went grocery shopping yesterday? I wondered how I could actually be missing these things.) So I made my own crust, which tastes much better anyway since it always comes out light and slightly crispy/crumbly. Unfortunately, the lovely twisted edge I added fell off during baking, so my pie shell, while tasty, was not particularly attractive.

While the shell baked (and the edge fell) I moved on to the filling which begins with crushing strawberries. This sounds like an easy task, but I assure you, it is not. Strawberries were on sale yesterday, so I purchased a carton. However, since they aren't really in season they are not of the super luscious variety, nor have they been sitting in the fridge for a week getting soft. Instead, today's berries were sweet, but very firm. I thought perhaps my potato masher would be the best tool for this crushing business, but it was in the dishwasher which had 70 minutes left on the cycle. My next choice was a large fork. I reasoned the tines could effectively imitate my friend the masher, just on a smaller scale. They did not. The strawberries merely skittered away around the bowl. The next implement I pulled out of the gadget drawer was an ice cream scoop. This doesn't sound like a likely candidate, but I have one that is a solid piece of die cast metal, which makes it a good facsimile for a pestle. Alas, this did not work either. The strawberries continued to slip right out from under the thing. (Yes, I tried the handle end and the scoop end.) Digging through the kitchen drawers, I didn't see anything of better use, so I resorted to my hands. Actually, this was pretty fun because the berries squishing between my fingers reminded me of bare feet in summer mud puddles.

With the strawberries thoroughly crushed and my skin stained pink, I finally moved on to the next step of dissolving the gelatin, mixing it with the berries, and waiting for the mixture to be partially set but still pourable. This didn't take terribly long, but I did have to check it every 10 minutes or so. When the gelatin had reached the correct stage, I whipped egg whites and sugar until stiff peaks formed and folded their airiness into the fruit. Again, the mixture chilled until it was partially set, at which point I mounded it into my flaky, but ugly, pie shell and returned it to the fridge until after the show.

Arriving home tonight, we were all eager to taste the pie. It was smooth and creamy, sweet and fruity. The crust was tender, light, and slightly crisp. It was the kind of pie you could just keep eating. The pale pink dreaminess of it denied that it could be bad for you in any way. It was pie heaven, so fluffy light and cloudlike floating across the palate. Late though it is, a second piece is beckoning to me even now.