November 2015 – pruneandpear

I love Thanksgiving. I always have. I love spending a whole day in the kitchen and the way the house smells like turkey at 9 in the morning. I love having the parade/dog show/football on TV in the background as the day progresses. (I actually hate the parade, especially the musical numbers. It is part of the story of the day, though, so I am fond of the idea of it.) I love making hand turkeys to put on the wall and setting the table with flowers and candles. Even though some (most) Thanksgivings, I end up sweaty, crabby, and covered in flour by the time we are actually ready to eat, every year I look forward to all of it: to the prepping, cooking, stirring, baking, drinking, displaying, chatting, laughing, Scrabble playing, and finally, the feasting.

Lucy’s first Thanksgiving was two days ago. We ended up celebrating in mostly non-traditional fashion, walking to my in-laws’ house for midday ham and green-bean casserole and then heading home to cook and eat late-night roasted chicken and potatoes. My family was away, visiting my collegiate sister in Arizona. It was a different year; fitting, maybe, because having a new baby makes everything different. And though it was strange and a little sad to skip the familiar experience in my mom’s kitchen, a song I know so well, it also felt good to do our own thing. We are starting our own rituals as a young family, building on what we know and making new traditions as we go.

And yet! No matter what traditions we start for ourselves, there will always, always be apple pie at Thanksgiving. I know I promised a covered dish when last we spoke, but trust me: this pie is so much better.

I have been making apple pie for Thanksgiving for as long as I can remember. I am pretty awesome at making apple pie. In fact, Mike claims it was my apple pie that won his heart 9 years ago. This year’s pie might have been my best ever. I tried out a new crust recipe and a new apple combination for the filling, and it was perfect.

Apple Pie
adapted from the Betty Crocker cookbook

You will need:

2 pre-made, all-butter pie crusts
I doubled this recipe from Elise Bauer at Simply Recipes. Don’t forget to increase the sugar amount per the instructions for a sweet preparation. Also, this recipe only makes one crust so make sure you double it. This crust was delicate, temperamental, and ugly. It was also perfectly flaky and had great flavor. I am something of a crust snob, and this recipe makes some of the best I’ve had. It’s my new go-to crust.

8 tart, firm-fleshed apples. I used Pink Lady apples, with a couple of Fujis thrown in for sweetness. Granny Smiths are traditional. Gravensteins would be sublime, if you can find them.
1/2 cup white sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup flour
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp nutmeg (freshly grated if you have it)
1/4 tsp ground cloves
Pinch salt

Preheat oven to 425º. Peel and core the apples. Slice them very thinly, as thinly as you can. This is important! If you cut the apples into thick chunks, they won’t cook all the way through. Thin slices give you soft layers of cooked apples and maximize surface area for flavor to cling to.

Put the apples in a large mixing bowl. Add the sugars, flour, spices, and salt to the apples and mix carefully, using a folding motion. Try to avoid breaking the apple slices. The sugars will dissolve in the juice from the apples, leaving a beautiful, cider-flavored syrup coating each slice. Let the apples hang out and get juicy while you roll out the pie crusts.

Line a 10-inch pie plate with one rolled-out crust. Pour in the apple filling. Cover the filling with the other crust. I like to use a whole crust, but a lattice on top would be pretty, too. Seal and flute the edges. Cut several slits in the top crust to allow the filling to vent while baking. Cover the edges of the crust with aluminum foil. Lightly sprinkle sugar over the top of the pie. Bake for 30 minutes. Remove the foil and bake for 15 additional minutes to cook the edges. Allow the pie to cool slightly before serving it. Apple pie is delicious at room temperature, but even better warm with vanilla ice cream. It is also good with coffee for breakfast the next day.

If you’re out there, reading this, thank you, and welcome in. I hope I can share a few recipes with you, or tell you a story that makes you laugh. I have a baby girl. Her name is Lucy, and she is everything. This blog is for her. It’s about love.

Lucy is almost five months old, and now that we’ve emerged, red-eyed and milk-stained, from the hangover that is the newborn stage, I want to make her something beautiful. I will use this space to curate and polish and preserve the shiny little moments of her childhood. Lucy hasn’t got a baby book, so my collection of ramblings will have to do.

Writing here is a also way for me to get back to writing for myself, after years of scurrying around, chasing careers and trying to figure out what I want to be when I grow up. I want to write for enjoyment, about people and things that make me feel alive. I want to write memories. My mom keeps photo albums in her library at home, shelves of them, chronicling our family’s life. They are the most beautiful jewels. The books start with photos of my parents: long-haired, in cutoff shorts, rocking the seventies. They continue on through marriages and births and parties and recitals and graduations–and then more marriages and births, as the next generation cycles on. I never, ever get tired of looking at them and rereading the stories they tell. Writing here is a way for me to document my family’s story.

And, of course, there will be food. Food weaves its way through our lives, connecting one season to the next, giving structure on which to build traditions. Food is about more than survival. It’s about love.

Love and food put meat on the bones of a family.

So welcome in, to my heart and my kitchen. I’m sorry I didn’t make you a covered dish or something to properly introduce myself. Next time, I promise!