After my son reminded me several times today that it
was PI Day (March 14 or 3.14), I thought I’d surprise him and make pie. It seemed like a good idea at the time, and I
decided on banana cream (because everyone likes banana cream), and pecan
because there was a never ending bag of pecans from Costco in my fridge.
I’m an experienced baker. I’m not a novice. I know how to cook. But pies…well, pies…
It began with my oven catching on fire. Not the oven itself exactly, but a piece of
crust from the shell I was baking for the banana cream pie. This was not an unusual event in our house, I’m
sad to say. We ended up with a house
full of smoke the last time I attempted pie as well. I don’t know why I expected this time to be
any different.
Due to the unique configuration of my new oven
(which reminds me of a Klingon death trap), there was no way I could get the
little piece of burning pie crust out of the bottom. I tried and ended up burning my hand almost
immediately. And it was emitting so much
smoke that my youngest started to keep watch outside for fire trucks.
I decided to abandon all hope and set the oven for
self-clean. It burned the heck out of
that bit of pie. I was unable to open
the door to the oven for about an hour, but eventually all was well and my pie
shell was back in the oven.
The banana cream filling turned out perfectly. The pecan was a bit of a challenge due to
some very sticky corn syrup (think Chevy Chase with sap on his hands in
Christmas Vacation). Thankfully the weather
was warm today. We were able to open all
of our windows and a strong spring breeze blew through our house, taking away
all remnants of my kitchen mishap. We
were back to normal. But I should have
known better. Every time I try to make
pies it ends up like this, and there is a very good reason.
I was cursed by a gypsy.
I’m not making this up. It really happened. When we were newly married and living in
Istanbul, we hosted a Thanksgiving dinner for our ex-pat friends. It was a potluck, I was pregnant, and I was
put in charge of pies, because pies were my forte. I was good
at making pies back then.
The day began with a near disaster. We had two cats (Thelma and Louise), who
liked to get a breath of fresh air every morning on our balcony. We lived on the 4th floor, which
was actually the 5th floor by American standards. That morning, I let Thelma and Louise out,
but only Thelma came back. Louise had
fallen off the balcony, landed in the parking lot, and broken her leg.
We had thirteen guests coming for dinner (bad number
– what was I thinking??), and my husband had to take Louise to the vet to get a
cast. I was home alone, and when the
doorbell rang, I thought it was my husband.
It wasn’t. It was a gypsy.
She was an old lady, selling scarves. I pretended I couldn’t speak Turkish and
attempted to close the door. I didn't have time for this. I was in the middle of making pies. She stuck
her hand in the door to stop me and asked me over and over again to buy one of
her scarves. I was kind of scared. I continued to pretend I couldn’t understand
her, and that is when it happened. She
muttered something in a language I’d never heard before and spat on my
doorstep.
I closed the door, a little shaken by the encounter,
and went back to making my pie crusts.
It was a horrible failure. The dough
crumbled in my hands and no matter what I did, it would not stick
together. I started again, with fresh
ingredients, and the same thing happened.
The clock was ticking, our guests were about to arrive, and I had no
pies. I found a box of puffed pastry in
the fridge and used it for the crust instead.
It was a horrible failure. The
pumpkin filling was perfect, but the crust was awful.
I’d been cursed by that gypsy. She had doomed my pies to failure.
This went on for ten solid years. Finally, I decided I was going to break the
gypsy pie curse. I measured carefully,
kept my cold ingredients cold and worked quickly. The results were marvelous. I created a pie crust that was flakey and
buttery and absolutely perfect. The curse
had been broken…or so I thought.
The fourth book I wrote is called Traveller, and it
is about gypsies. Granted, it is sci-fi
and my gypsies are alien mercenaries battling monsters to save the earth, but they
are gypsies nonetheless. I noticed
something as soon as I finished writing the book. I think I must have offended the ghost of
that old gypsy woman who surely was long dead by now. The curse was back. Once again, I couldn’t make pie.
At Thanksgiving my pies were a failure (and I may
have had 13 guests once again - never a good idea). At Christmas I didn’t even try (because I had
pneumonia, not because of the curse).
Today, on PI Day, it was my final attempt to overcome the curse. It didn’t work.
I guess I’ll wait until the final edit is finished,
buy a scarf from a gypsy when I visit Istanbul again this summer, and hope that
is all it takes to lift the curse once and for all. It couldn’t hurt…right?
