Patchwork Pie: My Apple Pie Adventure

First let me explain a little about myself; then the rest should fall into place, or so I hope. I grew up in a small town, I would rather have been on my horse than learning things all girls should learn about such as cooking. I still would. Sure, I like to cook, sometimes. As long as it is something easy, or if it's something new that strikes me as really neat. I am not Susie Homemaker and I'm pretty sure I never will be, in fact I would rather be in the barn shoveling horse manure then behind an apron.

So then, what possessed me to try my hand at making an apple pie? I'm not quite sure. However, I know I was possessed to do it. With the help of my four-year-old daughter and her three-year-old boyfriend (they are exactly one year apart), we set out to bake us a pie. First, I needed a recipe for the pie filling. I dug out the two little cookbooks I have, one a book that my oldest son and his classmates made when they were probably four or five. There were no apple pie recipes hiding in there. The other by our Veteran's Homes Employees, I didn't find a recipe in there for the filling either. I did find one for a crust, but I assured myself I wouldn't need it because I bought one of those ready-made crusts from the grocery store. One of those you just add water to. Without being able to find a filling recipe in my two trusty cookbooks, I immediately Googled "apple pie filling". After all, my sister was at work, so I couldn't call her to get our moms recipe. I had two anxious helpers and my youngest son (eight months) was napping, so I needed to take advantage of the time I had. I clicked the first link that popped up in the search and scribbled down the ingredients.

The kids and I washed our hands, this turned into a mild water fight (between the two kids), got out our bowls, ingredients, apples and got to work. By now it's been about half an hour. We quickly sift the flour, cinnamon, sugar and salt together into the large mixing bowl. So far so good, the kids are sitting patiently (as patient as a three and four year olds can be) waiting for something to do. I set the bag of apples in front of them and asked them if they would pick out eight good-sized apples for me. Their eyes lit up like light bulbs, you could see their excitement about such an important role in the pie making process. While the kids picked the apples out, I set the oven at the 425 degrees that I wrote down and pulled the box crust out of the cupboard. I read the directions, which seemed quite simple (well unless you're me that is). Just add water and mix into a ball. OK, I think I can handle this, not hard at all, honestly what can be hard about adding water and mixing it into a ball? I pull the measuring cup out, add the appropriate amount of water and start mixing.

Meanwhile my two little helpers are discussing their future: which schools they'll go to, what they want to be, how many kids THEY will have, who will work, who will stay home and raise the kids while the other works. As you can probably tell my four year old isn't exactly your everyday four year old, she wants to be a doctor and has her goals set very high (don't get me wrong, that's awesome, but someone needs to remind her she's four and not twenty, sigh). She insisted she would be the one working, while he stayed home and was Mr. Mom! As I mix and listen to them chatter away about the future, I begin to wonder why my crust isn't forming like the simple directions said it would. Finally it starts to form and I put some flour on the table so I can roll it out when I remember I don't have a rolling pin! OK, not that big of a deal, I'll just use a glass. I think I saw my mom do that once or twice when I was little. I put some flour on it and start trying to roll the crust out. Problem, it's not working that well.

My little helpers are now arguing over the apples and how he wants to work too when they grow up and I'm getting frustrated with the "not so easy" crust, (I knew it wouldn't be as simple as they made it out to be). I gave up on it and handed it over to the kids who were ecstatic about having it to play with. I pulled out the cookbook by the VAE's and found the crust recipe I saw earlier. I was skeptical about the mixing the vinegar and milk together (icky!) but did it like the recipe said to. I got stuck on the next step, so I phoned one of my girl friends and got her husband who told me she was taking a nap and asked if I wanted him to wake her up. I told him no and asked him if he knew what "cut the shortening into the flour" meant? He didn't know, but they had two ready made crusts if I wanted them. I said sure, if you don't mind. I had an idea on the "cut the shortening" deal but wasn't 100% sure, so I just went with what I thought. My homemade crust wasn't looking very well so I set it aside, when my neighbor showed up with the two crusts, I thanked him, read the directions and set about making the third and fourth crusts. Its now been an hour and 15 minutes since we started this, but I was bound and determined to finish and not give up. However, my patience is running very thin. I have the two little ones with flour and raw dough flying everywhere, laughing up a storm and this certainly wasn't what I had in mind when I started this!

I settle the kids down and am elated to see the two crusts you simply (there's that word again) unroll them, and that's it. I tell myself I can do this. It's easy, women do it everyday. I can too! It starts out alright, and then I notice it's starting to tear apart. Oh no! Just let me finish please! Tears start to fill my eyes because I'm so frustrated and the baby is now starting to wake up. I was hoping to be done by the time he woke. Just as I was ready to give up and throw the dough in the garbage, I hear this little voice pipe up and say, "we'll help you mommy". I wiped the tears away and four little eyes were peering up at me and two big smiles started to spread across the floury faces of the kids. I found myself smiling back at them and telling them " sure". They grabbed the dough in the bowl that I had started to make from scratch, and we started piecing it together with the ready-made dough to make the bottom crust.

Once we got that out of the way, we took a quick break so I could get my son up, change him and get him a bottle. The kids needed potty breaks, then back to the sink we went to wash our hands again. This time no water fights broke out, great! We were going to finish this project. We peeled the apples, and while the kids munched on the peelings, I added the apples to the mixture and poured them into our pie plate. We once again set out to make the top crust and ended up patch-working that one as well. We dotted some margarine on the top and made some slits in it so it could breathe, and slid it into the oven for an hour. Granted it took about three hours all together and it wasn't the prettiest thing to look at, but I gotta tell you our patchwork pie was pretty tasty! I couldn't have done it without the help of my two little helpers. I think it will be sometime before I try my hand at another apple pie though; I'm exhausted and ready to head back to the barn where I belong.

Next on the list is homemade tortillas and salsa. I saw it on Victory Garden. Should be simple, hmmmm. Until then, be safe.