Jaki Jean on making a pie . . . and wishing I could create text outside the written word

Today I decided to make a blueberry pie.

Now, there are many things I can do in the kitchen.  I can make a soufflé, I can make a mousse, I can make a fabulous country pate. 

I can create a scrumptious rack of lamb, fierce ribs, amazing sauces.  My tamales are to die for, my chili rellenos are without equal.  I can make a moist turkey.

My challah bread is wonderful & was always a huge hit.  I am really fabulous at muffins & cookies. 

My gingerbread cookies & gingerbread houses are legendary.

But I cannot bake a pie.

My sister Janet Ettinger Douglas is the pie maker in our family unit.  My friend of over five decades, Sue McLauchlan Faulkner, bakes pies as gifts.  My friend Andres M. Dominquez bakes delectable pies for his family.

I cannot bake a pie.

Since Sam Luciano, a really cool English professor, posted about an Italian pie kind of thing that one could serve for breakfast, I have been obsessed with blueberry pie.

A pie with nothing but blueberries.

So, the Food section of the New York Times posted this: 

The Perfect Imperfections of Blueberry Pie

I do not follow instructions well.  This has been a problem for me for over sixty years.  (One only has to speak to my family & former teachers & professors to verify this).

But I follow a recipe the first time.  Except (there is always an exception) that I cannot be trusted to create a worthy pie crust.  So I bought Pillsbury.

The recipe calls for 8 cups of blueberries.  So, since I was used to buying blueberries in six ounce containers, I went on Excel & decided how many six ounce containers constituted a cup.

I then went to the store that was selling blueberries at a much lower price than my nearest store.  The containers were pint containers.

No one told me that a pint is two cups.  I bought eight pints.  All I needed were four.

I kept following the recipe, except for the crust.  I put the crust in the pie plate in the freezer for the required minutes.

(I really do want to follow instructions – I am just not always adept at it).

Eventually the pie came together – even with my refusal to make a homemade pie crust.

In Virginia Woolf’s To The Lighthouse, Lily Briscoe remembers Mr. Tansley, who, by the way, is an ass, whispering in her ear: 

“Women can’t paint, women can’t write ...”

I cannot knit, I cannot sew, I cannot create a quilt – I can do none of the textile things so connected to the written word & to my concept of text.

But, I can paint.  I can write.

And today, I baked a pie. 

Jaki Jean on the Color Purple, the Color, not the novel . . .

A few days ago, my friend of five & a half decades, Sue Ann McLauchlan Faulkner, posted about the color purple.  The mix of red & blue color, not the wonderful novel by Alice Walker, the amazing film by Stephen Spielberg or the Tony award winning musical on Broadway.

I told her I had a story about the color purple.

During one of the times I lost my mind in my youth & got married when I was not even a month old 20-year-old, I shared a young niece with my husband.  I think she was four when we got married & one of two flower girls at our wedding.

She was fiercely possessive of her uncle – calling him “My Donnie.”  She called her parents by their first names, because that was how they addressed one another when my brother-in-law was not referring to his wife as “Clyde.”

Because she was blue eyed & blonde haired like her beloved Donnie & her parents had much darker hair & eyes, she insisted that Donnie was her real daddy.

The first time I met this little girl, she was in her purple room.  My sister-in-law was a talented interior decorator & her only child’s favorite color was purple.

My future niece crossed her four year old arms over her chest & confronted me:

Do you like frogs?  I like frogs.

When I assured her that I was very fond of frogs, she uncrossed her arms & declared, without words, a truce between her fiercest rival for her beloved uncle’s attention.

At some point, after our marriage, my brother-in-law presented his wife Clyde with the deed to a new house, a house she had never seen.  Using her natural & cultivated talent, she turned it into a showpiece.

With a purple room for their daughter.

When our niece was six or seven, her mother Clyde’s talents were displayed in a national magazine – “Better Homes & Gardens.”  Her daughter’s purple room was not part of the photo shoot.

My niece was furious – a precocious child (to say the least), she wanted her space in a magazine shoot.  Her mother explained that if she wanted her bedroom to be in a magazine, she would need to consent to a different color theme.

I suppose in the seventies, purple as a color theme was not an interior decorator’s ideal.

My niece consented to a change & sure enough, her bedroom was featured in another magazine a few months later.

But that precocious child had not given up on the color purple. 

Not long after Clyde created a stunning showpiece out of a dated house, my brother-in-law went into partnership with & invested in some jewelers.

He was already a successful player into the oil industry in a big way – investing in land oil rigs & reaping the profits.  I am not sure if his new jewelry partners created the Texas shaped belt buckle he wore – with a diamond marking the location of each of his wells. 

It drew a lot of attention – where ever he went.

The new partnership emphasized customizing Rolex watches.  Lot’s of diamond bezels & custom faces were involved.  The jewelers made my niece a necklace spelling out her name – with a diamond over the “i”.  Like most adults who encountered the bright, precocious little girl, the jewelers were fond of her.  She was very charming, in a seven year old way.

They also had Rolex create a special child’s watch – with a purple face.

My niece opened the gift, thanked the jewelers & asked, her enormous blue eyes displaying disappointment & confusion:

Where’s my diamond bezel?

The precocious, privileged child, who received so many Christmas gifts every year that every new Christmas season her mother Clyde opened a closet piled with unused toys & games & explained it was time to share with children who had very different Christmas memories, grew up to be a lawyer like her father. 

I always wonder if she still has that watch with a purple face.  And when she got her first diamond bezel.