pameladean | Undoomed pies, but a very near thing

As many of you know, I usually make the pies for our family celebrations of Thanksgiving and Christmas. I also sometimes make a lemon meringue pie for David's birthday, but those are usually well-behaved. The holiday pies have always been a bit dicey since I took over from David's mother in the oughts sometime. They are never beautiful except by accident, but they are tasty.

David must have a mince pie for both holidays if at all possible; fortunately, the canonical mincemeat comes in a jar. If Lydy were here she might have made an apple pie, but she is out of town. I've made an apple pie myself quite frequently, and often I've made a vegan pumpkin pie. This has won cautious approval from the omnivores; the tang of the tofu, they say, makes it more like cheesecake, but often they eat some. Cameron and I like the pie quite a lot.

Thanksgiving's pies were fine, if sporting the usual raggedy, somehow distracted look that appears to be the hallmark of my pie crust. I hadn't been able to get my usual brand of silken tofu (Mori-Nu), so with trepidation I used Nasoya. I've had a lot of trouble with Nasoya, but it goes in the other direction: that is, if Nasoya brand tofu claims to be extra firm you can't be sure it won't fall apart in your hands when you try to take it out of the package. But the silken tofu is always silken. All of it is very soft. To my surprise, the pie was really great. Nasoya is less tangy and it was more like a pumpkin custard and less like a cheesecake. Cam and I liked it very much and the rest of them were less cautious in their approval. The only glitch in the Thanksgiving pie preparation was that I absent-mindedly made two two-crust batches rather than one of each. I put the extra dough in the freezer.

With Lydy gone and the core Christmas group being very small because my mother is 90, is very nervous about COVID19, and gets notions, and with my brother being allergic to pumpkin, I decided not to make a pumpkin pie at all. My brother had expressed interest in a tofu chocolate pie, so I decided to do that.

This required one two-crust pie and one one-crust pie. I had the dough for a one-crust pie in the freezer. So I made the two-crust pie recipe. I used the shortening I'd used at Thanksgiving, which claims to be Best By August 2022. I'd put it in the refrigerator after I made the Thanksgiving pies. When I opened the ziploc bag, I got a whiff of, well, shortening, which seemed weird when it was cold, but I don't usually refrigerate shortening. I made the dough. I chilled it. I rolled it out. It behaved really beautifully. I put the bottom crust in the pie plate and started to fold up the top one. Something seemed off. I picked up a scrap of dough and tasted it. It wasn't dramatically awful, but it was off. A sharp, weird taste, not flour or salt or water or shortening.

After quite a lot of yelling -- Cam was out shopping and David was downstairs, so I could be free with my expressions -- I put all the dough into the organics recycling and went downstairs to see if David and Lydy had any shortening. They had an eight-ounce unopened stick, which smelled harmless and proved to be so. I made and rolled out the dough for the second time, after washing such of the dough-making utensils as I had foolishly put in with other used dishes. That was all yesterday. I put the second batch of mince pie crusts in the refrigerator overnight, with the frozen lump of dough left over from Thanksgiving so it could thaw out.

Today I put the mince pie together and put it in the oven, where nothing bad happened to it. I took the thawed lump of dough from the fridge and rolled it out. It behaved badly, but not monstrously. I coaxed it together and put it in the pie plate and smashed the edges with a fork and pricked it all over the bottom. I tasted a scrap, and it tasted fine. The mince pie had ten minutes to go and the cats were piteously reminding me that they had not been fed for a century, so I put Saffron's thyroid medication into a pill pocket abd gave it to her with some Greenies; Cassie just got the Greenies. Then I sat on the sofa waiting for the timer for the mince pie to go off. Cassie sat next to me in case I had any treats in my pockets.

From the kitchen, I heard a thumping sound. I got up and went in. Saffron was standing on the dishwasher, the main work surface in that kitchen, licking the bottom of the pie dough. The cutting board the pie plate was sitting on is slightly warped, so every vigourous lick made the board thump against the top of the dishwasher. Otherwise, had she jumped down quietly enough, I would never have known. I had put all the other phases of the pie dough into the microwave, which is very capacious, to keep cats from messing with them, but I had honestly thought that if any cat did that, it would be Cassie. Saffron was unconcerned to be discovered and got down resignedly when I said, "Get down from there" in a low tone because Cameron was asleep. I put the defiled pie in the microwave.

I knew I would not do this, but I thought, "Well, hey, ten or twelve minutes at 425 F, surely that would sanitize it." I did some internet searches. Cats have licked a lot of pies, but mostly baked ones. Cats, as I know perfectly well, have a vast array of pathogens in their mouths. Cats lick their butts, for heaven's sake. I threw out the dough, washed the cutting board, the rolling pin, the pastry cutter, the top of the dishwasher, and the pie plate, got the last of the downstairs shortening out of the fridge, tossed a lump of margarine in with it, and made another batch of dough. This behaved middlingly, but by then I really did not care. I smashed the edges with a fork, pricked it all over, and shoved it into the oven, whence it emerged not long ago looking all right to be filled with chocolate tofu mixture when I have made it.

My mother is having a reaction to her booster shot, so I will also be making mashed potatoes and two kinds of roasted vegetables. But none of them are likely to cause anything like this amount of trouble, as long as I don't leave anything with olive oil on it sitting where Saffron can find it.

When Cam got up I went into her office, where Saffron was sleeping peacefully in the chair she considers her own, and said, "I'd like to introduce you to your new cat. This is your new cat. I have no cat."

I hope you have no tribulations at all, but that if you do, they are no worse than these.

Pamela

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From:

asakiyume

Those tribulations would have had me throwing a temper tantrum. Ugh!!

Also, what you say about the dough is reminding me of the time I tried to cook with my father's long, long, LONG expired flour. I mean, I have cooked with flour past its expiry date, no problem, but this must have been ancient, because I swear, the resultant item--pancakes? cookies? I can't remember now--tasted like death. It was like eating the ashes from a funeral pyre. I threw everything away, bought my dad new flour, and have been VERY aware of flour expiry dates ever since.

--I don't think that was your crust problem. It's just that your experience reminded me of that experience.

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Undoomed pies, but a very near thing

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