Thanksgiving Pie: A Tale

The afternoon of Thanksgiving Eve I made four pies.  Two pies were going to church.  Two pies were staying home.  Two pies were standard delicious pumpkin pies.  Two pies were an experimental cream pie, which ended up being sweet and edible, but not my favorite, even though they looked kind of pretty in the pan.  None of the pies had nice flakey crusts because I can’t make pie crust.  Instead I made a shortbread pie crust, which actually is tasty, I think, but definitely not flakey.

Thanksgiving Eve is my favorite church service of the year.  I’m sure I’ve written about this before.  At church on Thanksgiving Eve there is singing, and then people from the congregation who would like to say something have time with the microphone to tell about things they are thankful for.  Kids can talk.  Grown ups can talk.  People with disabilities can talk.  I love hearing from people I might not ordinarily have conversations with because I don’t see them very often, and I love hearing from people who talk about things that I didn’t even know they were experiencing.  I love hearing the little people from my Sunday School classes fearlessly get up and tell all the big people what they are thankful for.

After church there is pie.  Everyone likes pie!  It’s fun to see all the different kinds people make for their Thanksgiving feast the next day.

So, because we like to eat pie at church, I was bringing one pumpkin pie and one cream pie to church.

When it was time to get in the car, I handed the pumpkin pie to YaYa with instructions to carry it carefully.  I handed the cream pie to Mr. SP with instructions not to eat it, poke it, or tamper with it in any way, and to carry it carefully, for goodness sake.  I sent the kidlets to the car and got my keys and shoes and coat, and just as I was walking to the car I heard an anguished cry and then dreadful silence.

Not good.

I looked inside the car, and sure enough, in the front seat was Mr. SP, and a cream pie upside down on the center console.

Grouchily I sent him inside for cleaning supplies and snapped that he’d better get every drop of cream.  (He didn’t of course).  I went inside to get the OTHER cream pie to take to church and I put a different kidlet in charge of holding it in the car.  That pie made it safely to the church kitchen.

What was left the first cream pie went in the refrigerator at home. The crust was actually all in tact, and about 2/3 of the filling was still in the pie.  It just looked a little ugly.   I figured it would still work for dessert, since we were only cooking dinner for our immediate family.

Fast forward to the next day.  Thanksgiving.  I cooked all day.  Things went in the fridge.  Things came out of the fridge, and I moved that pie about 47 times in the process.  Carefully.  Of course.  I found a good spot way on the top shelf sitting on top of some containers that weren’t needed as often.  It was sort of a cleverly hidden spot for a pie, which was a blessed thing because there were numerous kidlets around who would not think twice about sticking their fingers in a cream pie.

All was well.  The turkey was done.  The potatoes were at the end of boiling, and Dr. Peds opened the fridge to get out some supplies to mash the potatoes.  He reached up to the top shelf and knocked the cream pie off its perch.  It smashed onto the milk cartons, the door, and finally landed upside down on the floor.

Another third of the pie was missing.  At this point I decided to move the pie to good light and take a picture.

Then I set the pie on the buffet table along with other dishes I was taking out for Thanksgiving dinner.  Sure enough, a kidlet of one sort or another came along and broke off 1/3 of the remaining pie and squirreled away to eat it.  I never did figure out which kidlet it was.

Eventually the kids did get to eat the remains of that cream pie, but I locked up the perfect pumpkin pie and only gave small slivers to the people who were extra nice to me over the next few days.  It was delicious.

Don’t judge.