Pie! Pie! Unknit That Threatening Unkind Brow...

It actually went like this in The Taming Of The Shrew: "Fie! Fie! Unknit That Threatening Unkind Brow..."

...but my husband bought cherries and they were from California which he says were not as sweet as the cherries from Michigan. So we had a lot of cherries and they did not taste sweet. I told him two days ago I will bake a cherry pie. GULP! What did I say? And then I proceeded to remove the pit of every cherry with my cherry pitter. What have I done? I really got myself into a jam now.

Then I got sick. I have a cold. Probably from not resting, not eating and having my circadian rhythm disrupted by my night shift.

I stayed in bed all day yesterday and mostly today but I am oncall so I have to work and my pager keeps beeping. I took a hot shower and got dressed at noon. Then my husband came home from the grocery store where he bought me a peach pie because he could not find peach ice cream. He is so sweet, really, he is a sweet and thoughtful man and I love him dearly. He is also very cute especially when he is asleep.

I was not feeling well but I tried not to look the part so he thought I was just being lazy especially that I was on my laptop all morning (never mind that I was working and solving problems) he thinks that every time I am on my laptop I am emailing or blogging. I don't feel well. He was watching reruns of "Leave it to Beaver" and he mentioned why I can't be like June Cleaver, wearing my pearl necklace and high heels and keep a clean house. I just laugh because I know he was joking. Then he asked me "How was your cherry pie?" knowing full well that I have not baked it because I am sick. So I told him that I am not well but I wanted to be well and I told him that I did not want to cook because I did not want them to get sick. He replied that the pie will be baked in the oven and it will kill whatever germs I may accidentally sneeze into it. He was really insistent on having that cherry pie. It's his favorite. He also reminded me to take medication and offered me a drink to hydrate me.

I finally went to the kitchen and decided to bake the pie. When was the last time I baked a pie? three years ago? So I gathered all my equipment and it took mean hour to find everything. In the meantime I could not find my dough mat, I think I may have thrown it away.

As I was gathering my equipment I found my son's hot cheese curls so I poured some on a bowl and started eating it but my mouth was burning so I poured myself a glass of diet coke on ice. Then I looked for the vegetable shortening. I had an unopened can of it but when I checked the expiration date, I decided I had to use butter. In the meantime, Daisy just rested her head on my lap as I sat on the chair. This took about 45 mins.

Then I found some butter and I weighed the required portion but when I put it in the mixing bowl it looked like a lot so I read the recipe again and discovered that I was reading the amount for the flour. So now I had an extra unwrapped stick of butter and I could not find any of my four butter dishes but I finally found one with the glass vases. That took about 15 minutes. I put away the scale but not really, I put it right next to the knife rack and coffee maker where I saw some leftover coffee.

So I decided to pour myself a cup of coffee except now I remember I still had the coke on ice. Now I have two drinks. That took about another 30 minutes because I am really dragging and sometimes would stop to talk to Daisy.

Then my daughter came into the kitchen and wanted to help me. So I told her she can sift the flour. Wait! I did not need to sift the flour. I only did that when I bake cookies. We were listening to Abba and Catherine Deneuve, Virginie Ledoyen, Ludivine Sagnier, Emmanuelle Beart, Isabelle Hupert, Danielle Darrieux, Fanny Ardant and Firmine Richard in Huit Femme. I like this one:

But we did not watch that because this is what we watched which was more appropriate for her:

So several minutes later we have the pie ready and I was too lazy to make a lattice top so I just made a solid top and punched some vents and used a milk wash instead of egg wash and sprinkled it with demerara sugar. Then I put it in the oven for 25 or was it 35 minutes but I got paged...and forgot about the pie!

I could smell the pie from the bedrooms and when I checked I didn't know how long it had been baking on that high temperature, so I decided to estimate the remaining baking minutes. I stayed in the kitchen. So here are some things in my kitchen: my husband cooked dinner - barbecued pork chops on the crock pot, that is a painting of my cobalt and sapphire Fiesta dishes on the wall and that's a sapphire Fiesta wall clock stuck on 8:45.

That's a Viking ship which is actually a salt tray, it measures 2 inches long, those are some Bauer cake stands and a sucky cup, I mean a sake cup that I picked up in Japan.

So more than four hours later, we have a pie.

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Fie! Fie!, I mean Pie! Pie!

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Oh my gosh! homebaked pie tastes so much better.

I can bake, I can dance, having the time of my life...