Birthday Pie

Just after I posted yesterday the summer cold struck Elphine and left her curled uncomfortably on the couch, too listless even to draw or do anything. So instead of packing her and everyone into the car for a fun outing, I spent the rest of the day making Meat Pies and Cobbler. She is snoaring loudly next to me now, and it looks like I will make her stay here for another whole day, flat, with small children patting her cheeks and shouting at her.

Meat Pie

I sauté an onion and a garlic gently until translucent, and then add a couple of diced carrots, some baby sweat peppers and mushrooms and let it go a while longer. Then six or seven diced tomatoes go in. The best thing, at that point, is meatloaf mix, if you can get it. I couldn't so I did a pound of sweet Italian sausage and two pounds of good ground beef, browned, and then in with the vegetables. Then you sacrifice your glass of wine, right into the pot, some thyme from the garden, and let it mellow gently all day. Who am I kidding, that's exactly what I do when I make spaghetti. Only for pie, obviously, you forgo pasta and instead make pie dough. That's 5 cups flour, a tablespoon of salt, stirred together, and then four sticks unsalted butter cut in and worked by hand gently until it's well crumbled together. Then water, gently, to bind. Gently! I tell you, but not with fear. It was humid yesterday, so I had to bung it in the freezer a couple of times as I went along to keep the butter from just collapsing into a puddle. Normally I just do one big pie, but for a birthday, I did six individual ones. When I was ready to roll the dough, I cut the filling with cream and let it cool a little. I filled them all at the last minute and popped their tops on because I didn't want the dough to melt from the heat of the filling before I got it in the oven. 350 or 375, if you're impatient, until golden brown and bubbling.

Cobbler

Meanwhile you have your husband, or someone else standing around, cut up all the available fruit you have because some people were just eating fruit without asking, precipitating a small crisis. So instead of just plum or mango or peach you end up with two mangos, three plums, one apricot, half a nectarine, and two handfuls of blueberries. The dish is not as full as you wanted but there you are. Life is a broken mess. By this time you are tired, so you have another small glass of wine and instead of making the actual cobbler, you roll out the rest of the pie dough and instead of making cinnamon roll ups you put it on top of your cobbler. It's a little too thick, but it's actually totally delicious, and heavy, so that for once in your whole life, by the end of the first episode of the six hour Pride and Prejudice, which has taken two hours to watch because of some tiny devil in the fancy tv, and much frustration and near swearing on the part of your children's father, all six of your children fall back in a stupor of sweet fruit and crust and cream, Full, for once, and not complaining. Then you take a walk around the block and pull some weeds and kill some beetles and decide the kitchen can stay in a spiritual Sheol because it will still be there in the morning.