My Mom has always been known for her pies. In fact, she is a great baker in general. When I was a kid, she’d go crazy at the holidays with baking. Each year in elementary school, she and I would make a gingerbread house for my teacher and it became a thing that was expected. Some years she had a cookie business where people would make orders and despite having 4 kids that needed her attention, she managed to bake up a storm for hours on end, and still manage to produce the gingerbread needed to construct the ranch style edible home for her kids to decorate for their teachers. It was always a highlight of the season, to bring the house in to my teacher that I’d decorated with my favorite candies, knowing that it would be bird food in a week or so, but I didn’t care.
I don’t think she really did pies for Christmas, but in 2020 I started this thing that now has become my little tradition. I think that year I made over 100 mini pies and passed them out to co-workers and delivered them to my friends’ porches on xmas morning, since we couldn’t really interact at that time, and I was also working on a floor that had become a Covid unit. I baked my heart out, wearing a mask and gloves just in case. I was used to the PPE at that point. But it warmed my heart to do it and so now, here I am baking pies because it feels right. My mind kinda wants to skip over last year, as I was addled with radiation and then Covid on top of it. I squeaked out a few oatmeal pies and some homemade caramel, but my energy levels were low. As I bake, all the memories come up, and I think this must be therapeutic. Working with the dough, realizing that it’s hard to just snap back into being a baker on a mass scale. I think of how many people I love and my list gets longer and longer. I think of who we’ve lost the last couple years, and how cold it is out there for people who are unhoused, and I listen to melancholy carols mixed in with traditional favorites and the memories overflow.
So here we are. Each year, different from the one before, and the time goes fast, like so stupid fast. How can it go that fast? And yet, I must move more slowly, because I want to. I want to savor my conversations with you like they are precious mini pies eaten with spicy cocoa. Like the first morning snow. Like the string section in the Nutcracker Suite. I ask, how can I be of service, how can I love more, how can I exude peace when Kroger is crazy? I believe in it. I believe in small acts of kindness. I believe in mini pies. Dutch apple, chocolate ganache oreo, cheese graham cracker, ricotta custard and whatever else my ingredients lead me to. xoxo happy holidays, mp
Here is my ‘Bitchin’ Xmas’ playlist:
You made RANCH STYLE gingerbread houses?!?
Merry Christmas Megan - you are an amazing human being and I am glad that I know you