{"id":161,"date":"2015-06-12T21:01:10","date_gmt":"2015-06-13T02:01:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/darrickdudley.com\/?p=161"},"modified":"2015-06-12T21:01:10","modified_gmt":"2015-06-13T02:01:10","slug":"pie-my-third-favorite-garbage-food","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/darrickdudley.com\/?p=161","title":{"rendered":"Pie: My Third-Favorite Garbage Food"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"IMG_0319\"<\/a>Our youngest daughter, the light of our lives, wanted to have some friends and their parents over for dinner and a sleepover a few weekends ago. (To clarify, the friends would sleep over, not the parents. That would have been weird for all involved.) My lovely wife Jen and I discussed the menu for the evening, and my daughter interrupted: “Why didn’t I hear you say ‘pie’ when you talked about dessert?” I said, “Because we’re having ice cream, cookies, and fruit; that should be enough.” She said, “But we’re known<\/em> for our pies!”<\/p>\n

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Apple pie. Clever, eh?<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It is not exactly true that we are known for our pies. But we do like to bake pies. Or rather, we tolerate the baking of the pies because we love to eat pies. The four most popular pies in our household, spanning our own personal pie season (May to December) are strawberry-rhubarb, blueberry, apple, and pumpkin.<\/p>\n

I wonder who was the first person to pick a rhubarb stalk, eat it, spit it out, and say, “This is horrible! It would taste great with 7 cups of sugar!”<\/p>\n

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Something went horribly wrong with this crust. It was still tasty.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The only things my family likes more than pie are chocolate and ice cream. This has nothing to do with the rest of the blog post; it’s just that I am hungry and thinking about chocolate. And ice cream. (Part of the reason that I run marathons is so that I can eat garbage food as a reward. That’s probably what separates me from the elites.)<\/p>\n

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“Hi, I’m a pie with a man’s face on it. Please eat me and put me out of my misery.”<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Growing up, pie was not a big thing in my family. I don’t ever recall having a homemade pie at any time in our house. I did, however, spend a lot of time at a Poppin’ Fresh Pies restaurant in our hometown, which became a Bakers Square right around when I entered junior high. I mention this because the first two dates that I went on in eighth grade involved taking girls out to Poppin’ Fresh\/Bakers Square. I’m surprised those relationships didn’t last more than a week or two: I knew exactly what ordering pie “a la mode” meant and used it correctly to our server. (Something about ice cream, right? I’m still hungry.)<\/p>\n

My mother-in-law is a great pie baker. I don’t try to compete with her. Her pies are elaborate, delicious, and have a high degree of difficulty. If Jen requests an apple pie for her birthday, I let the mother-in-law do it. I know my place in the pecking order.<\/p>\n

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It’s an image of a pie on a pie. How meta of me.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

My pies, on the other hand, are humble. (Humble pie; see what I did there?) I make the crust from scratch with a little butter, some whole-wheat flour, salt, and water. For the fruit pies, I mix as few ingredients as is necessary to impart the flavor of the main ingredient (example: blueberry pie filling has blueberries, sugar, tapioca, a splash of lemon juice, and maybe a little cinnamon). I overfill the pie pan, then I put the top layer of crust on it and make a creative or goofy design. Usually the latter.<\/p>\n

Then we eat the pie. Then my kids complain that the pie went way too fast.<\/p>\n

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This was a summer pie.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I selflessly cut my pieces smaller to help the rest of the family out. I do this knowing that at least one person (Jen) doesn’t like to finish the crust, so I eat the leftovers to make up the caloric difference. I get all the glory of being selfless without the actual selflessness.<\/p>\n

A few weeks ago, I was so desperate for rhubarb that I convinced my neighbor to let me cut down some of hers. I had already cut mine down for a pie the previous week. I felt guilty about that for a while. Then I ate some pie and felt better.<\/p>\n

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Step 1: Harvest rhubarb and strawberries. Or guilt neighbor into giving you some. Or buy it; I don’t really care.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Step 2: Make the dough by hand. This is the hardest part. I’m sure you can use electric kitchen equipment for this, but I like to feel all old-timey.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

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Step 3: Mix chopped rhubarb, sliced strawberries, sugar, and tapioca together. Let sit for 15 minutes. Sneak many pieces of sugar-covered strawberries while letting it sit.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Step 4: Roll crust out. I prefer to use a cylinder of marble that used to be a rolling pin but was dropped on its handles so many times that the handles broke off. One of my children is mostly to blame, but I won’t call him out by name. Except that he’s my only male child, so I guess I just did.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Step 5: Press crust into pie pan. Cut off excess at edges. Eat excess. Or fill with extra fruit filling and make a little mini-pie that you can sneak into your pie hole while the kids aren’t looking.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Step 6: Extreme close-up! This is what the hipsters call “food porn.”<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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This was in honor of my middle child, the patient one, graduating eighth grade. It was either this or take her to Bakers Square, but I didn’t have much luck taking the ladies to Bakers Square in eighth grade.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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That’s supposed to be a strawberry image.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"IMG_1859\"<\/a>
This was for some friends from another country who were visiting our home.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Celebrating my release from prison. Kidding! It was an anniversary pie.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Our youngest daughter, the light of our lives, wanted to have some friends and their parents over for dinner and a sleepover a few weekends ago. (To clarify, the friends would sleep over, not the parents. That would have been weird for all involved.) My lovely wife Jen and I discussed the menu for the … Continue reading Pie: My Third-Favorite Garbage Food<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,20,26,41],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-161","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dessert","category-food","category-holiday","category-pie"],"featured_image_src":null,"featured_image_src_square":null,"author_info":{"display_name":"darrickdudlstg","author_link":"https:\/\/darrickdudley.com\/?author=1"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/darrickdudley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/darrickdudley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/darrickdudley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/darrickdudley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/darrickdudley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=161"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/darrickdudley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/darrickdudley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=161"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/darrickdudley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=161"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/darrickdudley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=161"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}