I’ve been making a pumpkin pie. As usual not measuring, I ended up with too much crust, and as usual I rolled those remainders out and baked them with sugar and cinnamon on top. Pieces of this in a bowl on our table will provide an unhealthy snack for days. My teenage daughter, Kari, is off with friends today and I feel a little lonely doing this without her. She has helped me make pies since she was small, as I helped my mother make pies. Early on with my mother, my grandmother Mary was there too, peeling the apples or washing the bowls and knives as soon as we used them. Those are good memories, because in this family most of our kids arrive late in our lives, with one grand generation about to tip over by the time the little guys are old enough to lick the bowl.
I had to try and remember what went into a pumpkin pie. I am making the pie from the nose and eye and grinning mouth pieces of this year’s jack-o’-lantern. Even though I cut those holes extra big, I was surprised to see the pieces—the delicious negative spaces—cook down to enough for a pie. I’m pretty sure I remembered the rest of the ingredients: evaporated milk, white and brown sugar to taste, two eggs, then cinnamon, ginger, salt, and cloves in descending amounts. Twenty years ago I stood beside my mother as her still-quick hands put all these ingredients together and smoothed them to sweet velvet with an eggbeater, then poured the spicy orange deliciousness into the waiting crusts. In spite of all the Thanksgivings and Christmases of watching her, I still asked about the ingredients every time I made the pies in my own house. “It’s on the back of the Libby’s can,” she’d tell me. “You don’t have to remember it.”
Now without the Libby’s can or my mother, I think I’ve got it pretty close. What I’d really like is to have my mom and my daughter making pie together, with a few of the aunts there too, so that I could listen to those long-ago people get to know Kari as a young adult as we cook and joke around together before some big family dinner. I’d like to hear the pot lid rattle on the boiling potatoes. And just before the potatoes are done, it will be time to put the peas on. We’ll use a little of the potato water we’re pouring off to mix with the cream and the flour for the peas. The rolls will be “up enough” to stick in the oven so they’ll come out at the same time we are ready to sit down at the table. We can make the gravy now.