2216. Blackberry pie for Herb

Blackberry pie was Patricia’s thing. It wasn’t really blackberry pie; it was more a custard pie with a handful of blackberries scattered on top. She had made it for years, and for every occasion. Only once, when fresh or frozen blackberries were not available, had she resorted to blueberries. It was not the same. She vowed to make blackberry pie or nothing.

 Patricia’s husband Herb wasn’t overly fond of blackberry pie. He used to like it, especially in the first flushes of love, but now after quite a few years the novelty had worn thin and he craved variety. He would still eat a slice when the occasion called for it. And he knew how to pretend delight.

 It was this attribute of Herb’s that Patricia was relying on. He was sure to devour with fake enthusiasm the slice she had poisoned.

1745. Just like Granny used to make

There they were! Sitting on the supermarket shelf like they were a common everyday thing! And so cheap! Fergus couldn’t believe his eyes. He hadn’t seen gooseberries since his grandmother passed away about forty years earlier. Gooseberries! Memories of granny and gooseberry pie flooded back. Fergus grabbed the sole remaining package of the gooseberries and purchased them.

“I haven’t seen these in over forty years,” exclaimed Fergus to the checkout lady. “My granny used to make gooseberry pie, and since she died I’ve not tasted a crumb of gooseberry pie. I’m going straight home and going to look up on the internet how to bake a real homemade gooseberry pie just like granny used to make. This is a dream come true.”

“Plastic or paper?” asked the checkout lady.

“A paper bag please,” said Fergus. “I don’t want the gooseberries sweating and going flat-out mouldy in a plastic bag. I live a good hour and a half away and by the time I get home in this hot weather the gooseberries could be cooked. Have you ever eaten gooseberry pie?”

“I can’t say I have,” said the checkout lady.

“You haven’t lived until you have,” said Fergus. “My grandmother used to…”

“That’ll be a grand total of forty-eight dollars and twenty-seven cents for all your groceries,” said the checkout lady. “You paying with cash or…?”

“And worth every penny,” said Fergus. “My granny used to make a gooseberry pie – only when they were in season you understand. Back in those days people never had a freezer. Or at least most people didn’t have a freezer. Only the rich had freezers and they were hardly the type of people that would spend time out in the garden growing their own gooseberries.”

“Enjoy the rest of your day,” said the checkout lady.

“The gooseberry plants are very prickly I seem to remember. Granny used to send me out to the garden to…”

“Excuse me,” said the lady in the long line waiting behind Fergus, “but would you mind shutting up and getting a move on. You’re holding up the works.”

“Oh I’m sorry,” said Fergus picking up his several bags of groceries and making a hasty exit.

When he got home he discovered that in his haste he had left the gooseberries on the supermarket counter.

Repeat of Story 330: Blueberry-persimmon pie

(This is the third story in a week or so of repeats. “Blueberry-persimmon pie” first appeared on this blog on 5 September 2014.)

I’ve just spent all morning making a pie. It’s a blueberry-persimmon pie. I’ve never put those two things together before, and haven’t read of it. I hope it tastes okay.

It’s the persimmon season, and not the blueberry one. So I’ve bought a packet of blueberries imported from California or somewhere. The persimmons I got from a stall at the side of the road. Some kids selling bags of persimmons for three dollars each. There’s about twenty in each bag.

Making pies is not my thing. First of all, my husband goes crackers at me if I buy pastry.

“Just make the pastry yourself, you dumb idiot,” he says. So I have to sneak the bought pastry into the house, because, quite frankly, I can’t make pastry. In fact, I hide the pastry sheets in my neighbour’s freezer. She’s very good like that. She understands. And then when I need a sheet of pastry, I creep over and grab it out of her freezer. Provided my husband’s not home, of course. I couldn’t think of anything worse than him going ape-shit at me over a sheet of pastry.

So I mixed the blueberries up with slices of persimmon that I cut up. I hope my husband likes it. It’s a taste he might be a bit unfamiliar with, but at least I can say it’s something slightly new, and it doesn’t hurt to try things. Persimmons are as old-fashioned as the hills. I’ll tell him that. I’ll tell him that his great-grandmother would’ve had a persimmon tree. He likes history. He’ll like that. He’ll eat it because of his great-grandmother. Otherwise he’ll hit me and tell me to stop baking foreign shit.

I hope he eats it, and that the new taste will stop him from noticing the other stuff I’ve put in.

1362. Flora’s foul mood

Flora was having a bad day. She lived in a house set on a sharp corner of a busy road. She hadn’t slept a wink. All night, well at least until 3 o’clock, teenage hoons were hooning* with speeding, burnouts, doughnuts, and screeching tyres around the corner next to her house. After that she was so angry she couldn’t sleep.

When she did rise she discovered she was out of toothpaste and cleaned her teeth using salt. She burnt the toast at breakfast, tripped over the cat, and couldn’t find her reading glasses for a good ten minutes.

There was only one thing for it; she would do what she always did when in a foul mood: she would get out her book of recipes from The Australian Women’s Weekly and cook something wonderful that she had never tried before. Flora settled on making an Apricot Sour Cream Pie. She had all the ingredients in the house already, and it looked delicious.

First she made the base with crumbled cookie crumbs and melted butter. While that was cooling in the fridge she prepared the filling – with apricots, sugar, flour, eggs, sour cream and so on. She sprinkled the uncooked masterpiece lightly with nutmeg, and placed it in a moderate oven.

Thirty minutes later she removed the pie and sat it on top of the bench. The smell was glorious! Flora’s foul mood had disappeared.

That was when a hoon’s car left the road, flew through the air, and plunged onto Flora’s front lawn. Taking the pie, Flora scurried out to investigate. It was the most satisfying pie she had ever baked.

* Hoons and hooning are common Australian/New Zealand terms meaning teenage louts with cars!

1083. Pie in the sky

Simon hated school, and today was his last day at secondary school. Next week he would start his first job at the Industrial Park with an apprenticeship.

On the last day of school, the principal held an assembly. This was to call each leaving student individually to the stage in front of the whole school. He would shake their hand and wish them well. Simon was ready. He hated the principal.

Simon had a cream pie. He didn’t even try to hide it. It wasn’t a proper pie. It was simply whipped cream from a can sprayed into a silver foil dish.

The principal shook Simon’s hand. Simon turned to the audience and shouted, “This school sucks and you can all get stuffed.” He then pushed the cream pie into the principal’s face and left the stage (and the building).

Needless to say, Simon’s future at the school was no longer guaranteed!

That afternoon he got a letter from the workshop where he was to begin his apprenticeship: We seem to be missing a document. Would you mind supplying a written reference from your school?