August 17, 2008
An affinity for pie dough
I’ve been baking pie all summer, having decided it was a very good way to honour summer fruit (and keep some around for the dead of winter), and also because it has never once been so hot that turning on the oven has been ridiculous. (I was also inspired by watching Waitress.)
This summer I’ve made strawberry rhubarb pie, strawberry pie, raspberry pie, peach pie and blueberry pie. Each of these pies has also had its filling run into the bottom of my oven (which I never clean) and so a smoke-filled kitchen has become the usual. Each time the pastry has been delicious.
As you can see by the photo, when I bake I make a mess. I do clean it up afterwards, of course, but what you can also see by the photo is my grandmother’s rolling pin. I know very little about the origins of said rolling pin, and it is quite likely she picked it up at Zellers in 1998, so it is probably not a valuable heirloom. But I find that I like that it was hers, I like that I roll out my piecrust with it, the pin she would have rolled her own piecrust out with. Genetics aside, my grandmother and I never had a whole lot in common, and so I appreciate the connection that is this.
In my family, people like to take one another apart to figure out how we were constructed. My mania for pie-making, for instance, my mother wonders about, for she’s never had much of an instinct for pastry. I think she wonders if I was a changeling, and so it brings her some comfort to attribute it to an atavistic pie gene instead. To tie it back to my grandmother, but I resist this. Mostly because I am twenty nine years old and would like to believe that I am a singular creation, not the product of anything, nor susceptible. I am ME, and I bake pie because I do, and also because I really like to eat it.
My grandmother was good at all grandmotherly things, very dutiful and I’ve saved the notes she wrote me when I was younger, admonishments, some of them, to be a good girl. Never a demonstrative woman, it was through these gestures, like her pies and like her cookies, that my grandmother showed her love. And so it is unfortunate that I, in addition to pie-baking, have always had a talent for delightedly irritating people of my grandmother’s sensibility. For asking questions like, “So, if your name is Helen, then your nickname must be “Hell”, right?” You can see that I’ve always been adorable.
I took my grandmother’s rolling pin when we cleaned out her kitchen after she died, mostly because I didn’t have a nice one. I didn’t think much of it, pie after pie, for such a long time– that my hands, like her hands did, are rolling out the dough. That object, the rolling pin, had been in her cupboard and that it lives in mine now. I never suspected that we’d come to have this much in common, this affinity for pie dough, and it took me awhile to admit it was anything in common at all.
These things creep up on us, I think, the innumerable ways we can be wrong about ourselves, who we are, and the whole wide the world around us. The connections discovered, too late it seems, but maybe not. The bits and pieces we carry, how they can become invested with meaning, continuing life on and on.
June 26, 2008
Poem in the Post
Kawaii. Today in the post was a “Hello Kitty Everywhere! Haiku Postcard” from my sister. Haiku as follows:
Peeking through the soil,
The flowers shyly emerge.
I am their first friend.
May 13, 2008
Same jeans
Things are mad here. We would suggest that when you’re organizing your mother’s surprise 60th birthday party, you actually bring the bag filled with those party things you’ve spent weeks preparing to the party. This way you don’t leave them in your backyard, discover this after driving two hours to the party venue, and then have to drive all the way back to Toronto (and then back to the venue again) which means you’d drive about 600 km in one Saturday afternoon. This would probably also ensure that you’re not insane at said party, spearheading its descent into rampant debauchery. Who would ever have thought a 60th birthday party could get so out of control? It really truly did, my mother perfectly surprised, particularly to see my sister who lives on the other side of the country. A house full of bright lights, loud music and garish prints, and full of friends, and full of family, and we’re truly fortunate these last two are one and the same. (I would post pictures, but they’re unsightly).
March 21, 2008
Remembering Days
The book I’m reading at the moment, which I’m absolutely in love with, contains that quotation, “We do not remember days, we remember moments.” Which I don’t buy actually, and I never have, because like Albert from Behind the Scenes at the Museum, I “collect good days the way other people collected coins or sets of postcards.” I can remember so many glorious ones, right down to very details, and though today wasn’t exactly glorious, it was definitely very fine.
The finest thing about today being happiness arriving in the post the very week I decide to stop looking for it there. And isn’t there something about a surprise package when you’re expecting nothing? The surprise turned out to be from Sayaka (who has a blog, by the way). She’s our friend from Japan, she stayed with us for a few marvelous days last summer, and now she’s seen fit to surprise me with a gift that blends two of my favourite things: tea and Miffy. Indeed, I do miss living in a land where Miffy kitchenware was so easy to to come by, but it’s nice of Sayaka to ease my yearning. How positively splendid.
In other fortune, another friend gave us our wedding present a few weeks ago, nearly three years late but perfectly on time actually, as it was an HBC giftcard, and I have to buy wares for our new apartment. So I spent the early part of this evening buying new towels and bathroom accessories, and it was fun to spend spend spend (though not so fun to carry the bags home). And then I spent two hours with Rebecca, which is some of the best company I know.
The list goes on: that work has been good of late, but that today I left early, we move in a week and a half and a farmer’s market is starting up in our new neighbourhood, our Easter treats from our English Mum and Dad, going home for the weekend to the Canadian ones, that tomorrow we’re doing nothing at all, the stack of good books to be read, the one that I’m reading, that March sunshine, and that all I want at the moment is a cheese sandwich, and in a matter of moments I will have one.
December 28, 2007
Indulged
This Christmas my bookishness certainly benefited from my proximity to my husband. Or in particular, from my husband’s office’s close proximity to Ben McNally Books, which meant that by listening to me carefully, he was able to satisfy my heart’s desire with remarkable ease. Which was how I came to receive Kate Sutherland’s All In Together Girls and Eleanor Wachtel’s Random Illuminations this year. Stuart is also the reason I am finally going to get my mitts on a copy of The Gathering, as he needed to tack another book on his own online order-via-gift-cards to go postage-free– hurrah! Though I have my dear Bronwyn to thank for delivering me The Uncommon Reader, which is truly a book most extraordinary. From my parents I received George Street Stories, The Annex: Story of a Toronto Neighbourhood, and a gorgeous book of Czech Fairy Tales.
Though of course my heart’s desire can extend beyond books, and some know this very well. Which is how I received a Miffy calendar and Marks and Spencer’s things from my English family. And how I got an elephant tin of tea from the Banff Tea Co. (via my sister). Lots of other lovely things from my friends, family and husband. Oh–and the print by Michael Sowa of flying penguins that I’ve been long long longing for. Am I ever indulged?
Amidst the manic gift receiving, I did manage to give some too, and moreover to have a lovely couple of days with friends and family. I do hope that you experienced something very much the same.
December 27, 2007
When we're both in the same room
“I do like presents. No particular thing, just stuff for me you know. I think what I like best about gifts, letters, anything in the mail, really, is that it is evidence that someone thought about me when I wasn’t around. Something about the image of a loved one standing in a card shop, glaring at one of those Shoebox-silliness cards, thinking really hard–‘Would RR laugh at this?’ That just kills me.”– Rebecca Rosenblum
October 8, 2007
Thanks
Tropical Thanksgiving went on a brief hiatus yesterday, and we even got to put coats on. Took an autumn walk over to Riverdale Farm, because it’s never a holiday until you’ve talked to a goat. We even saw autumn leaves, which are scarce this year. And so a successful weekend, even if it was thirty five degrees today. Even if I got sprayed by the garden hose and it was nothing but a pleasure. We saw plenty of family inc. cousins, read books, reclined. Ate our leftovers, and even finished them tonight. There are two slices of apple pie left, and we intend to savour them.
