A Family Secret for the Best Pies
Photo by Kelsey Weinkauf on Unsplash
Have you seen the film or musical Waitress? It's a sweet story about a talented piemaker named Jenna with an awful husband. Oh, how I wished I had her talent (nobody wants her husband Earl, believe me). I loved that show and its creative pies. Alas, I'm a mediocre baker, so I was quite happy to hand over the responsibility of those important Thanksgiving desserts to my mother and daughter.
They started their pie-making tradition 16 years ago, and they were a dream team: one an energetic, recently retired teacher in her mid-60s, the other an industrious five-year-old wanting to try everything and eager to soak up instruction. Unlike Waitress, which featured creative pies with names like “I don’t want Earl’s baby pie,” our family’s pies were always the straightforward apple and pumpkin, prepared in my parents’ galley kitchen the day before Thanksgiving.
My mom was in charge, but she was the sort to let her granddaughter do as much as she could. Anna helped her grandma measure out flour, butter, salt and water; the two of them would knead and roll out dough, mix chunks of apples with sugars and spice, assemble the pumpkin filling, and check the oven, telling stories and tasting along the way. The pies were always presented by the proud young baker and exclaimed over with great fanfare. Their sugary sweetness, aided by piles of whipped cream or vanilla ice cream, was matched only by the sweetness of the bond between their co-creators.
A decade later, my teenage daughter noticed some changes. Grandma’s measurements were off; on occasion she'd miss a key ingredient. Anna would make adjustments to the dough, fix a spice, leave her grandma to stir and direct. There was never a thought of not making the pies together; they just needed to do it a little differently. Some crusts were less flaky than years past; no matter--the joyful gathering and sharing of pies continued, enjoyed by an array of cousins, aunts, uncles, and two additional sets of grandparents.
Then the pandemic hit. We stayed out of each other’s kitchens November 2020; my daughter and I made the pies at our home. Our great treat was an unseasonably warm Thanksgiving day in Maryland; my parents joined us outside to share in the meal. We had a smaller crowd, but the pies were the same as always.
We had our big Thanksgiving gathering the next year—except for Anna, who was studying abroad. We facetimed so she could admire the pies: her aunt’s cranberry creation, nana’s pecan and chocolate cream pies, and the familiar staples. I’d been dreading my solitary baking, but my wonderful mother-in-law came to the rescue: we had our own pie-making day, store-bought crust and all. And while she wasn’t up for baking, my mom was there to enjoy every bite, while her granddaughter shared photos with her travel pals digging into Danish pies.
A pandemic, travels, my mom’s memory loss … sometimes it felt like the world was conspiring to upend our family pie-making tradition. And yet on we went, year after year, adjusting as needed. And lucky us, Anna is home this year; no doubt she’ll instruct her other grandmother and me on how to properly make a pie. There have even been texts about a pumpkin cheesecake!
I’ll probably tear up a little at some point, overcome with that wave of emotion that can hit during Thanksgiving, that gratitude for what we have, as well as some sadness for that which we can’t get back. Then I’ll get back to the business of relishing every bite of our feast and this wonderful multi-generational family gathering of ours.
As for that special family ingredient that makes the pies so memorable? As the character Jenna sings to her daughter in Waitress, "baby, don't you cry, gonna make a pie with a heart in the middle." That’s our constant in a sea of change: that heart in the middle, these generations of mothers, daughters and granddaughters who take turns feeding, baking and caring for each other, our circle round as a pie and just as filling.
Gluten-free, pecan, chocolate, pumpkin, apple, sweet potato… no matter the kind, may you savor your pie with people you love.
Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.