There'll Be Pie In The Sky By & By When I Die

It'll Be Alright, It'll Be Alright

I am a self-taught baker. I spent 15 months living in Portland, Oregon, 2000-2001, cooking in a bar. I thought maybe the left coast was the answer to my life, so I drove from Chicago past Iowa City, the previous furthest west I had ever been, to that corner of the Pacific Northwest. It was not the answer. It is not the coast for me.

One day out there, I cracked open my roommate’s old James Beard cookbook and decided to try my hand at pie crust. And that’s how it began. I chased the very vague recipe, what indeed does “work the butter in”¹ really mean, for years. Cooking was work but it wasn’t a passion. That word passion, it’s just too much sometimes and simultaneously insufficient. It’s for those who consider their lives precious, another over/under/whelming word. I took to baking pies, having a puzzle to solve, something tactile to do over and over again, the beginning of a practice. One of my roommates sold pot, so there was often a welcoming audience in the house for whatever I baked. I started to have a glimpse into the power of baking. I followed the thread when I moved back to Chicago, and then to Brooklyn in 2005, where I became the de facto dessert person in many of the small restaurants I worked in.

Years ago, I lived down the street from a great wine shop in Greenpoint, Dandelion Wine. I became friends with Lily, the owner and Meg, the manager. I’d stop in and say hello, and we’d hang out a bit and they would try to recruit me into their Beyoncé fandom. At one of these pop-ins, I asked if I could sell pies through the shop for the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday. They agreed, letting me use the shop as a pick-up spot and even taking orders for me.

And thus began my first year of making pies in my apartment to sell for this infernal holiday. I offered apple pie with a cheddar cheese crust, sweet potato with a sesame praline, classic pecan and chocolate chess pie, because let there be chocolate. I ordered as much as possible through my friends’ sandwich shop, Saltie, because let there be wholesale. Did you know that a pound of butter from a restaurant supply is wrapped in one single piece of wax paper, opposed to 4 individually-wrapped sticks of butter packaged in a box? The sanity such efficiency grants alone is life-changing.

So much of this color story. Roasting sweet potatoes in salt is so good. You can save the salt and reuse.

Working for myself felt good, in my apartment, in my neighborhood, following my instincts, being my own boss. I rushed orders over to the wine shop for pick-up and some folks picked up at my apartment. My kitchen was just a regular apartment kitchen, nothing fancy, totally not outfitted for any endeavor like this. There was a constant shuffle for space, between the kitchen table and butcher block and wire shelf I picked up from the street. A fan lived permanently in the window to suck out all the smoke from the dripping butter. The hallway smelled of sugar and fat, lingering for days after, not great, not terrible. I lived on a diet of cheddar cheese scraps, bits of apple and sweet potato, raw pie crust, Cafe Bustelo and nips of Old Overholt, both beverages with similar tasting notes.

I sold pies out of my apartment for four years. The second year I applied everything I learned from the first, prepping more efficiently, applying everything I would do in a restaurant to my apartment kitchen, getting ahead as much as possible without sacrificing quality. And the third year I got even better. Say yes to every order, no matter how late. Volume is how money is made. Maybe forty bucks, the price of one pie, seems like a lot, it’s not. I had to buy boxes and tins, nuts are expensive, butter and eggs aren’t cheap. I was systematic, but still just one person. Each and every pie requires moments of individual attention, from rolling out to crimping the crust and pre-baking, if necessary.

Apple pie with a cheddar crust. Me not in my kitchen but with many pies. Another lifetime.

I wrote the Soundtrack to your Pie on every box, scribbled in Sharpie, usually the Band, Freakwater, Creedence, Gillian Welch and Dave Rawlings, Black Sabbath, Sleep, ELO, Neil Young, the Wipers, Come, Dead Moon, Lungfish, Led Zeppelin…I made the time to do it because it was important to me. In 2016, I added the number for the Justice Department in the collective mad desperate scandal to alter the outcome of that presidential election. I loved working the way I wanted to work, I wasn’t under anyone’s thumb, I could do it my way, listen to my records playlists friends made, binge-watch Peaky Blinders during epic crust rolls out. I baked pies for four years in my apartment. Then I moved into a new apartment in a different neighborhood, a neighborhood known for having a lot of rats, a rat reservoir. A marathon bake like this would just tempt fate. And also possibly raccoons. I lost it, the drive, the fever, the mania. Something like this requires a lot of determination and will. And when it’s gone, it is gone. And it is done. Finished.

Project Thanksgiving Pies Over and Out.

1. Fold in the cheese, akin to work the butter in