Me Oh My, I Love Pie

I'll go back to describing The Submarine in a day or two, once I get some photos taken to show y'all. In the meantime, I'd like to say a few words about pie. Is there, or can there be, anything more perfect than a nice slice of warm pie with a bit of whipped cream or vanilla ice cream on the side? No, there cannot. Is it any accident that the dessert we know as pie (and it's not only a dessert! No, no - there's chicken pot pie, fish pie, shepherd's pie, a whole host of pies that can be consumed any time of day or night) is homophonic with the mathematical number pi, used to calculate the perimeter and area of a circle, that most perfect of shapes? No, it is not an accident.

Here's what Andie MacDowell, in the otherwise execrable movie Michael, has to say on the subject: sing it, Andie!

In the past two months, I have consumed a tremendous quantity of pie. It all began when I visited the Family Pie Shop in De Valls Bluff, Arkansas, a cinderblock and tar-paper shack (pictured above) rumored to be frequented by former governors Mike Huckabee and Bill Clinton. The two might not see eye to eye on political matters, but man do they know a thing or two about pie. Indeed, if the half-custard and half-sweet potato pie I purchased at the Family Pie Shop is any indication, pie could very well be the answer to most (if not all) of the divisive political wrangling that's tearing this great country apart.

Since I visited the Family Pie Shop in August, I've had numerous pies, all of them special in their own way. For my birthday my mother made a peach and caramel pie that was absolutely divine. Then, in Perry, OK, at a place called the Kumback Lunch (once visited by famous Oklahoma outlaw Pretty Boy Floyd, who, when he stormed into the place fully armed, assured the patrons that he wasn't there to rob them, just to have a bit of lunch), I had perhaps the perfect accompaniment to the sort of juicy onion burger that one can only find in the Sooner State: a tidy slice of tart cherry pie that I can still taste if I concentrate really hard and tilt my head way back, mouth open. Peanut butter pie at my father's was a bright spot in a pretty depressing week in early September, as was the pre-rodeo, post-onion-burger banana pie in El Reno, OK. And just this weekend Jill's apple pie provided just the right level of sustenance to see me through to the wee, wee hours.

I have just finished my last slice of my first pumpkin pie of the year. This on a day in which I have also had pumpkin ice cream and pumpkin ravioli. Pumpkin is probably going to get its own post here very, very soon.

By now you're probably saying, "Wow, Dr Nuffin must think pie is perfect! Is there anything he doesn't like about pie?" Yes, there is. And it's a doozy. I don't like crust. Unless it's light and flaky, like that of my mother's peach-caramel pie, or made out of chocolate, I generally find it dry and uninteresting, getting stuck way up behind my teeth and at the top and bottom of my gums. I will frequently leave the last piece of crust, that which forms around the rim of the pan, on my plate after eating the rest of the pie. When I was younger, I would normally eat out all the filling and leave the entire crust intact. But as I've gotten older, I've learned something: the crust, as uninspiring as it is on its own, is necessary in making pie as wonderful as it is. It's like the yin to the filling's yang, a standard of comparison by which to judge everything else about the pie, the slight imperfection in a loved one that makes you love them all the more. Crust, quite simply, makes pie, pie. And there's a very important lesson in there. If we all had pie filling all the time, sans crust - sheer, unimpeded bliss - we'd forget ourselves entirely, we'd become wedded to the instant sweet gratification of the filling without appreciating what not-filling tastes like. And the filling itself would lose its appeal. We'd come to expect everything to be filling, and become upset and impatient with things that were not filling. Pie crust, I believe, makes us responsible human beings, conscious of our limitations and appreciative of those morsels of enjoyment that we do manage to sqeeze out of life. Even that store-bought crap.

Me Oh My.