On the Making of an Apple Pie

Some people are at home with flour, Vanilla Extract, pie plates and all the other paraphernalia necessary for creating a delectable pie. I am a novice. My meager pie credentials pale compared to accomplished bakers, but compared to my mother I am in the advanced class.

My mother didn't bake, didn't care about baking and believed that what came in a box or in cellophane wrapping was an adequate accompaniment to a cup of coffee at the end of a meal. She always kept a box of chocolate cookies or Oreos in the refrigerator.

Living in the Bronx in a small apartment meant always being aware of the possibility of roaches. We never had any because everything on a shelf was in a tin. My father's cereal and my Rice Krispies were safe in their respective tins. My mother's tins ranged from a stock plain gun metal color to containers that once held products. My favorite was a Premium Saltine Cracker container, but I often wished my mother had the tin with a picture of Elvis.

My grandmother baked, but her repertoire was definitely Old World with honey cake a perennial favorite.

If something didn't fit into a containers it went in the fridge.

Not growing up in a kitchen where at the age of three I sat on a stool and helped mix ingredients or spooned cookies onto a cookie sheet put me behind schedule in terms of acquired baking skills.

So when we decided to make an apple pie for Thanksgiving I turned to my Moosewood Cookbook for a recipe. I felt that making a crust was out of the question so I sought another type of "foundation".

Yesterday we purchased organic wheat flour, unbleached white flour,rolled oats, Vanilla extract, nutmeg, cinnamon, nuts, celery seed-- all in small quantities from a health food store. Then we bought apples and a lemon from the produce store. if it hadn't been raining so hard the apples would have been bought at the apple orchard. We also bought local eggs.

" How much white unbleached flour do you need?"

" A cup." Actually all I needed was two tablespoons, but I thought this might be the beginning of my engagement with baking.

According to the directions thirty minutes of preparation and the pie was ready for the oven. Two of us were working, one coring and paring apples, the other parsing out ingredients like a chemist. Forty- five minutes later our pie was ready for the oven. Cleanup took almost the entire baking time. The pie looks perfect with only a few apple edges singed.

^Happy Thanksgiving.