Hexagonal

November 27, 2020

I mentioned how Melissa and I have tried to attend holiday celebrations for both sides of the family in the past.  This year we spent Thanksgiving Day on our own.  We had made some of the traditional trappings (green bean casserole and cornbread dressing) that we intended to go with snow crab and peel-and-eat shrimp.  After preparing everything else, we decided the shrimp looked so good we would save the crab for later.  I also ate my tiny pie.  When mom read my blog on Dessert, she called to tell me the four-inch pie she had ordered was the same size pie I wrote about.  Rather than eating it herself, she was planning on sharing it.  Good luck with that.

When I was joking about this to my sister, it reminded me of the pies we used to eat when I was a boy.  We did not eat a lot of pies, but I do remember the commotion it caused when we did.  My younger brother and I would argue over who got the biggest slice of pie (i.e., who was closest to the tin when it was put on the table, so they got to choose first).   Mom tried to alleviate the arguments by letting one of us cut the pie.  This still caused friction, so the rule became, “If you cut the pie, the other could choose their slice first.”  While this worked for a while, the disputes returned.  Finally, mom found a hexagonal pie tin (there were six in our family).   I am not sure if this resolved the problem or we just grew out of our phase, but that seemed to lessen the conflict.

I think one of the reasons we did not have pie often was because mom did not like to make them.  My dad loved pie, and he finally decided if he wanted to eat pie, he would have to make it.  Dad was not known as the baker in the family, but he did learn to make pies.  One day he realized how much work it was to pare all the apples for a pie, and instead just cut them up and mixed them in the pie.  This was the birth of his “famous” Apple Skin Pie.  This was surprisingly good.  Over the years he experimented with pie crusts and became particularly good at creating flakey pies.  When I looked at the box my 3-inch pie came in, it said the pie was 390 calories.  I may have been better off throwing away the majority of the Italian Wedding Cake.

Thoughts:  I am sure we will all have stories to share on the odd Thanksgiving celebrations we went through this year.  Some will be about the different foods we saw as essential and how a 20-pound turkey made sense for a family of three.  Others will be on how to keep masked and distanced, or gathering in small family gatherings trying to keep others safe.  I know there will also be stories of how nothing changed.  Stories of how we flew thousands of miles through crowded airports to attend large gatherings.  We will know in two weeks how well we handled this test.  Follow the science.  Change is coming and it starts with you.