The biggest proof that America has gone astray is the fact they picked the wrong pie. The whole “motherhood and apple pie” thing is bogus, unhinged, exploded. I’ve never heard anyone go, “APPLE PIE! Well tie me naked to the underbelly of a pig and call me Harold, I’ll take ten slices.” The truth is no-one gives a stuff about apple pie. It’s the fourth Indiana Jones movie; that extra Marx brother no-one can quite remember; Jayden Smith. But people absolutely lose their shit over cherry, blueberry, pecan, or rhubarb.
So you’d think the lesbians would have been a bit more grateful. A lovely couple had invited me over to their place for dinner, and when I asked if I could bring anything they said, “Bring your famous pie!” Because, many years ago, I learned how to make a simple and delicious blueberry pie: Blueberry Pie So Easy It Should Be Called Yo’ Mamma. I got the recipe from Sandra’s web comic “Friendly Hostility”, but I’ve spent long enough dickering with it that I’m ready to own this variation. The lesbians were right to be excited. It’s a damn good pie.
Right before I left home I realized I had no way to transport the pie. I’d just moved into a new flat so I didn’t have all the pie flingers and soufflé wands and Hungarian melon-ballers yet, but I was able to MacGyver the shit out of that pie by placing it on a strip of cardboard to keep it level, wrapping it all in saran wrap, and putting it in an empty garbage bag. It’s amazing I don’t work for the CIA. I proceeded to haul this cardboard-garbage-pie confabulation across the Mississippi from the French Quarter to the New Orleans neighborhood of Algiers. So far the evening had gone reasonably well.
It wasn’t until I got to the lesbians’ house that I realized it didn’t exist. The street number was not physically there. I wandered up and down the road asking everyone in sight about whether this AWOL house might be the other side of a shotgun or an apartment round the back. The street numbers were irregular, so there was every chance it was just hidden somewhere. But after knocking on doors for half an hour and shaking my blueberry pie at every stranger on the dark street, I had to face the music — the lesbians had given me the wrong address.
So I hauled myself back across the river. I was quite hungry by this point so I tried to get dinner out of a vending machine, but my packet of peanut M&Ms got stuck and I didn’t want to give the machine the satisfaction of taking even more of my hard-earned money, so I just swore at it for a bit until the ferry arrived. Once I got back to the Quarter I went straight to my neighborhood bar with the idea of getting something to drink and maybe off-loading this albatross of a pie onto one of the bartenders. I keep thinking of the place as my Cheers, which only leads me to the disturbing corollary that I’m their Frasier. But in my defence, c’mon, I’m Frasier with pie. Were they grateful? Were they buggery. They wouldn’t touch the thing with a barge pole. You’d think it was laced with arsenic. So after I got earbashed by the most tedious drunk in the world and failed to sell three consecutive bartenders on the idea of this ill-fated pie, I resigned myself to eating it on my own.
Unfortunately for me all the martinis I’d had at the bar had been on an empty stomach. I woke up the next morning with a dynamite hangover. My brain was trying to escape out my eyeballs; my heart was beating dangerously erratically; and for some reason the sensation of being so close to death had given me a raging hard-on. But at least I had pie for breakfast.
Recipe
Ingredients
3 Tbs. cold butter
1 c. sugar
1 Tbs. sugar
1 Tbs. lemon juice
5 Tbs. corn starch
4 c. blueberries
2 sheets shortcrust
some unscientific quantity of milk
Instructions
1. Take your pie crusts out of the freezer and leave them on the counter a bit to thaw. Yes, I use pre-made pie crusts. No, no-one else but you has to know you cheated.
2. Wash the blueberries and put them in a big bowl.
3. Pour 1 cup of sugar, the corn starch, and the lemon juice over the blueberries. Mix until the blueberries are coated.
4. Pour the mix into a 9-inch pie shell.
5. Preheat the oven to 375°F.
6. Slice up the butter and dot the blueberries with it.
7. Place the top crust over it, and cut a few vents to let out the steam. I make a face, so when the filling bubbles up it will look like a smiley face vomiting blueberry juice.
8. Brush milk over the crust, then sprinkle it with a tablespoon of sugar.
9. Put some foil around the edges of the pie so they don’t burn. This is EXTREMELY important! Don’t skip this step or your filling will be underdone and your crust will be burntand no lesbians will ever want to be your friend.
10. Stick the pie in the oven for about 50 minutes until the crust is golden and the filling is bubbly.
11. Let the pie cool on the stove for about 45 minutes.
12. Consume with gay abandon.
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St John Karp is a writer and a blogger. You can find his blog and books at https://www.stjo.hn