That’s the Way the Crust Crumbles

Yesterday was the birthday of my friend’s husband. He likes apple pie, but she is coping with life-threatening illness and all that goes with it—chemotherapy, heavy-duty pain meds, exhaustion—and doesn’t feel like cooking, so I made him an apple pie.

Bought the apples and two crusts. I am not that good with homemade crust on my best day. The apples made a huge mound, and I had trouble keeping them in the tin as I began to fit the other crust over them. Then, the crust that was supposed to go on top did not come out of the pan like it was supposed to, and a big chunk of it tore off.

I patched it together as best I could on top of the mound of apples. It looked awful.

And then I discovered that one of the apples that was supposed to go in the pie had sprouted legs and walked off. I didn’t see it until after I had cobbled together the pieces of the top crust.

So I put the pie on a cookie sheet and stuck it in the oven and ate the runaway apple.

I managed not to burn the pie. However, once the pie had cooled, the crust on top collapsed and broke because apples underneath had shrunk (and a lot of the juice had bubbled out onto the cookie sheet).

I am sure the pie tasted just fine, but it looked terrible. I did not take a picture of the pie to memorialize the occasion.

I was rather embarrassed when I knocked on their door to deliver it, but deliver it I did.

While her husband got ready to go out for a celebratory late lunch with their son, I had a nice visit with her at the kitchen island while she ate some pineapple and cottage cheese for her own lunch, tiny and frail, her face still beautiful and her greenish eyes luminous, looking very Sinead O’Connor-ish with her nearly bald head, but I noticed the silvery peach fuzz was a bit longer than it was two weeks ago when I saw her last.

Richard said he admired me for continuing to plod on in the face of ongoing cooking disasters—biscuits like hockey pucks, baguettes that turned out like truncheons—and yesterday, a pie that looked like someone stepped on it. 

Sometimes I think the thought really does count, even if the result isn't quite what one expected. I hope they enjoy the pie.