Why Pie?
Yes, I am going to proselytize. I literally found redemption through pie, and like any earnest convert, I feel the need to share this irreverent odyssey. And, because I live in Seattle, where everything is as close to virtual as possible, except the omnipresent Starbucks and the rain showers, I opted to start a blog.
Savior Fork tells the story of my journey from amateur baker to pie auteur, and how I drafted the Beleaguered Apprentice to be a most unwilling acolyte. He’s the hairnet-wearing Sancho Panza to my flour-covered Don Quixote. The recipes are primarily of my own creation, and they are all inspired by people, places and things that I love.
The stories are mostly true (most of the time) and with the exception of semi-famous and truly infamous folks, the names have been changed to protect the innocent and shield the guilty. On the off chance that we ever want to assume normal lives, the Beleaguered Apprentice and I opted to remain as close to anonymous as possible.
You can call me Katie Baker. With an ego bordering on massive, I refer to myself as “the Baker.” The Beleaguered Apprentice prefers to refer to me as an epithet that also begins with a “B”, but I take it in stride.
I was named for my Mother, Katie Sr., who, upon marrying my Dad, Bob, renounced all things domestic, so don’t think for a minute I was raised standing by the stove on a chair helping in the kitchen. Bob did the grocery shopping and Katie Sr. “cooked.” Meat that started pink ended up black. Canned green vegetables were boiled until gray. I looked forward to school lunches and when I got to college, it was a culinary revelation – I’d never had avocado, Chinese food or raw broccoli.
Combine the aforementioned self-confidence with my kitchen ignorance and you have a woman who decided that if the ones at the bagel deli were good, hers would be better. Have you ever made a bagel (or 6 dozen) from scratch? That was my first real foray into baking, and I ran screaming from the kitchen. I returned to the kitchen and became a mediocre home cook who made exceptional cocktails.
Older, but not necessarily wiser, I stopped baking until my friend Nick got necrotizing fasciitis (didn’t see that coming, did you?!) After weeks in the hospital, he returned home to Nora, his long-suffering girlfriend (and now lovely wife). To cheer him up, I offered to bake him a pie a month. I made him 11 pecan pies in a row, god help me, each with a prepared Pillsbury crust. Nora finally confessed a yen for a lemon pie.
Savior Fork tells the story of my journey from amateur baker to pie auteur, and how I drafted the Beleaguered Apprentice to be a most unwilling acolyte. He’s the hairnet-wearing Sancho Panza to my flour-covered Don Quixote. The recipes are primarily of my own creation, and they are all inspired by people, places and things that I love.
The stories are mostly true (most of the time) and with the exception of semi-famous and truly infamous folks, the names have been changed to protect the innocent and shield the guilty. On the off chance that we ever want to assume normal lives, the Beleaguered Apprentice and I opted to remain as close to anonymous as possible.
You can call me Katie Baker. With an ego bordering on massive, I refer to myself as “the Baker.” The Beleaguered Apprentice prefers to refer to me as an epithet that also begins with a “B”, but I take it in stride.
I was named for my Mother, Katie Sr., who, upon marrying my Dad, Bob, renounced all things domestic, so don’t think for a minute I was raised standing by the stove on a chair helping in the kitchen. Bob did the grocery shopping and Katie Sr. “cooked.” Meat that started pink ended up black. Canned green vegetables were boiled until gray. I looked forward to school lunches and when I got to college, it was a culinary revelation – I’d never had avocado, Chinese food or raw broccoli.
Combine the aforementioned self-confidence with my kitchen ignorance and you have a woman who decided that if the ones at the bagel deli were good, hers would be better. Have you ever made a bagel (or 6 dozen) from scratch? That was my first real foray into baking, and I ran screaming from the kitchen. I returned to the kitchen and became a mediocre home cook who made exceptional cocktails.
Older, but not necessarily wiser, I stopped baking until my friend Nick got necrotizing fasciitis (didn’t see that coming, did you?!) After weeks in the hospital, he returned home to Nora, his long-suffering girlfriend (and now lovely wife). To cheer him up, I offered to bake him a pie a month. I made him 11 pecan pies in a row, god help me, each with a prepared Pillsbury crust. Nora finally confessed a yen for a lemon pie.
Nick & Nora on their wedding day.
Making that lemon curd stirred something deep within me (beyond the very weak pun which I just couldn’t resist) that would finally be unleashed last year, on March 29, at the Larchmont Hotel. I woke up in the middle of the night with a vicious hangover and a hazy memory of what had happened at the Bowery Ballroom. Like any 21st century woman, I turned to my iPhone and checked my test message history.
And there it was: a brief exchange between he-who-would-become the Beleaguered Apprentice and me.
Him: I think I hugged Megafaun last night.
Me: I invited them to my house for Thanksgiving.
I immediately thought: what the hell kind of pie was I going to make? Not stuffing, not brining vs. dry rub, not let’s-finally-try-Turducken, not maybe they like Brussels sprouts. No, my thoughts turned pie.
As it turns out, we didn’t spend Thanksgiving together, but we did have pie in Nashville in November. And that was better than the pie we had in Portland in October.
And these are the stories of how I found redemption though pie.
And there it was: a brief exchange between he-who-would-become the Beleaguered Apprentice and me.
Him: I think I hugged Megafaun last night.
Me: I invited them to my house for Thanksgiving.
I immediately thought: what the hell kind of pie was I going to make? Not stuffing, not brining vs. dry rub, not let’s-finally-try-Turducken, not maybe they like Brussels sprouts. No, my thoughts turned pie.
As it turns out, we didn’t spend Thanksgiving together, but we did have pie in Nashville in November. And that was better than the pie we had in Portland in October.
And these are the stories of how I found redemption though pie.
