Friday, November 26, 2010

How to Make an Apple Pie

When I lived in DC, I used to make a full-on Thanksgiving dinner for 15-20 people. For five years in a row, I baked and boiled and chopped and mashed. I soon realized that being a control freak was only going to send me to an early grave and learned to let other people help me.

Behold my 22-pound masterpiece!

So when my mother tasked me with making a pie, I recognized it for what it was: a desperate cry for help. But being me, I put it off until the last minute.

I got to leave work early on Wednesday, and after a quick stop at home, I headed to Mike's. I had everything for the apple pie in a bag: measured out ingredients for the crust as well as the interior spices. I would pick out apples at the grocery store. It was a perfect plan!

Here are the steps to making an apple pie for your family on Thanksgiving:

1. Go to the grocery store on Thanksgiving Eve. Curse everyone and everything that gets in your way. All you want to buy is apples and beer, goddammit! Wait in self-checkout line for twenty minutes as people lose their shit and forget how to do ANYTHING and clearly shouldn't be allowed out of the house, let alone near machines with lasers.

2. Arrive at your boyfriend's house and prepare for the baking of the blessed, blessed pie.

3. Realize that you have absolutely everything to make the pie except for the rolling pin.

4. ...

5. Refrain from punching boyfriend in the throat when he suggests that you use your arm as a rolling pin.

6. Call mother. Bitch and moan. Tell her that you will NOT cave in and just bring a store-bought pie, because that would be giving up! And though you are a self-confessed lazy ass, there is NO WAY you will give up. Fucking pie.

7. Debate with the imp in the back of your mind. Does your family really need an apple pie? Can't they just eat pumpkin pie and be happy with that? Won't they just get over it?

8. Call mother again. Announce that she'll be getting an apple crisp instead and will LIKE IT.

9. Realize that you are lacking the ingredients for an apple crisp, including oats, brown sugar, and spices. You have spices at home, of course, but your boyfriend's pantry is positively lacking in baking staples, and you can't make apple crisp with cheez-itz. Well, you could, but maybe just the one time.

10. Go to Target. Hope upon hope that you won't have to go back to the grocery store where the dregs of society are buying up Stovetop Stuffing and canned cranberry sauce and writing checks at the checkout and slowly driving others to murder.

11. Bask in the general emptiness of Target. Practically prance with happiness to the grocery area. Find everything necessary for apple crisp.

12. Also buy toothpaste.

13. Arrive back at boyfriend's place. Prepare delicious topping. Refrain from eating it. Have beer.

14. Remove apple peels with knife, as boyfriend does not have a peeler (Is it called a peeler? Yes, I guess so). Realize that you are wasting a good amount of each apple.

15. Sigh audibly. Have more beer.

16. Bake apple crisp at wrong temperature. Alter temperature. Cook longer. Beer.

17. Realize apple crisp is now perfect. Set aside for evening.

18. Take apple crisp to Thanksgiving Dinner at parents' house and graciously accept praise for apple crisp even though it's a little too sweet for people's tastes and an apple pie would have been just delightful, but this is nice, too.

19. Sigh audibly. Have more beer.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

6 comments:

Deals On Wheels said...

Please don't kill me, but why didn't you just buy a rolling pin at Target?

Just curious. Please don't yell.

Deals On Wheels said...

P.S. Sure your Apple Crisp was delicious!

Heather said...

deals - Valid question. I didn't buy a rolling pin at Target (even though I considered it) because Kristen got me a genuine Nigella Lawson rolling pin in London, and I really didn't see the need in having two.

Now that I look back on it, spending $9.99 on a fucking rolling pin at Target would have been a good idea.

But the apple crisp was brilliant.

Deals On Wheels said...

This is neither here nor there, but Trevor just announced that he thinks that you, "look like the alien mother on The Event". Which is the same actor that used to be on ER. Take that as you will...

lem said...

I had the same question as Deals.

Heather said...

deals - Thanks, Trevor. No idea who you're talking about, but thanks :)

lem - Because it's like I NEED to make things more difficult. But also because that Nigella Lawson rolling pin is freaking brilliant and I love it. But since I've pretty much had to restock Mike's kitchen with cooking items and knives and such that actually work, I should have just bitten the bullet and bought the $9.99 rolling pin at Target.