Marissa Flaxbart

Foolproof Holiday Baking

I pulled into my parking spot at 5:30 last night with one item on my to-do list: I had to make a pie.

I've made countless pies in the past, so I knew the steps required: throw together a quick crust dough, chill for an hour; roll it out, chill a bit more. The filling is the easy part, so you can whip that up while the bottom crust is blindbaking; then your just have to put it all together and let it sit in the oven. I knew I might not have a finished product until almost bedtime, but as most of the prep time was marked "chill," I planned to spend a much of the evening doing the same. Netflix might even come into play.

Before I'd even opened my car door to head upstairs, I opened my go-to crust recipe, which lives inside the "How to Cook Everything" app – an interactive, digital version of Mark Bittman's famous cookbook. At least, I attempted to open the recipe. Instead, my phone alerted me that "The developer of this app needs to update it to work with iOS 11." Bittman, you slippery bastard. My ancient version of this app had been outmoded; a fresh new copy of the program was available, but it would cost $9.99, and on principle I couldn't bring myself to re-pay for an app that, to my mind, I already owned. Pie crust recipes are dime a dozen, and my roommates and I have a bookshelf full of cookbooks. Not, like, one shelf: the entire bookcase is full of cookbooks.  

I pulled out my Cook's Illustrated Cookbook, a versatile (if sometimes overly fussy) kitchen treasure. They didn't have one recipe for pie crust. They had three recipes, all broken down further into single- and double-crust versions. Perfect. My eyes gravitated at first to "Classic Pie Crust," but then I noticed the name of the neighboring recipe: FOOLPROOF PIE CRUST. Now, I'm no fool, but I was looking to whip up something quick and easy and forego any unnecessary extra steps. It didn't have to be a culinary masterpiece, it needed to be a finished pie.

This was going to be a piece of cake. As the saying goes.

Pie crust recipes often call for a food processor, which I don't have. Instead, I always opt to cut in the butter myself; this naturally takes a lot more time and effort and doesn't necessarily yield better results. So I had the bright idea to break the recipe into halves and use a handy miniature food processor/blender tool that I often forget is living under my counter. Halving the ingredients was no struggle, but using the processor was; it was only macerating the flour and butter at the bottom of the mixer, and I was making a huge mess. I had to go in with my hands, a knife, and a spatula, just as if I hadn't used the processor at all. At one point, I knocked the thing over and sent a portion of my poorly mixed dough sailing across my stovetop, into all those hard-to-clean nooks and crannies. I had a flash to the previous day, when my roommate, Selah, and I were watching the just-added-to-Netflix season of Great British Baking Show and I'd said aloud, "How can these people be so clumsy?" Oof. To make matters worse, when all was said and done, I knew the dough didn't look right. It was way too dry. I looked back at the recipe.

Fuck. The shortening! I had only added the butter. This kind of rookie omission was abnormal for me, but butter is practically a religion in my maternal lineage, and the addition of shortening to pie crust was not my custom. It had totally slipped my mind after reading the recipe. And the shortening was supposed to be chilled. 

I went back to my shitty little mini Cuisinart and added the shortening I'd hastily chilled – in two batches, of course, as that's all that could fit in the small container. A lot of filling and emptying and spilling and refilling later, I had dirtied two more bowls and created a dough that was wrong in the opposite way – it was almost a paste, way too wet to do anything with, and this was before I had even added any liquid. I messed with it a bit more, prepped it for a deep chill, stuck two dough disks in the freezer, and prayed. Meanwhile, I complained to Selah that my lack of proper equipment was hindering me. She replied (generously, if too late), "do you want to use my food processor?" She then pointed to the full-sized Cuisinart that has been sitting on the bottom shelf of our pantry for, oh, probably 18 months. Goddammit, Marissa. 

Fast-forward one hour. I'd made some headway with bottom crust (incorporating lots of flour during the rolling) and successfully wrangled it into the pie tin. Covered with foil, filled with baking weights, I stuck it into the very hot oven and noticed that I'd forgotten to remove the baking sheets we store in there. They were now too hot to be moved. Oh well. I only needed the bottom shelf. Seven minutes later, our apartment seemed a bit smoky. And after another minute, our smoke alarm went off. Part of the crust edge had fallen onto the oven floor and was blackening into floury charcoal oblivion. I apologized profusely for the smoke and the smell and self-flagellated about my growing list of mistakes. Luckily Selah is a laid-back angel who knows how these things go, so she didn't bat an eye as I threw open every door and window in the place. 

At this point, I decided it was time to chill myself. I rolled out a top crust that I knew would be ugly, and then asked Selah if she was up for the remainder of the Bake Off episode we had to finish. She was. She offered to light a scented candle to distract from the smoky odor and I plopped onto the couch with a considerably sized cocktail. We proceeded to watch 11 of the best home bakers in Britain make an absolute mess of their gingerbread house challenge. Gingerbread walls were destroyed, gingerbread trees were burnt, gingerbread bell towers crumbled under their own weight. Selah cringed at the scrambling contestants – "this is painful to watch" – and normally I'd have been right there with her. But at that moment, watching talented bakers make dumb mistakes felt pretty damn good. 

I returned to my pie. The blind-baked bottom crust seemed acceptably golden and was holding together, even if my carefully fluted edges were smooshed. Those would be covered by the top crust anyway. I prepared the filling while the bottom crust cooled, and powered through a few more minor errors with a shrug. The top crust ripped as I put it in place, but I decided it didn't matter. I even made some last-minute decorative leaves with my paring knife, freehand. I'd never done that before, but I thought some creative flourish was in order. I smiled as I placed the crooked leaves over the crack. They were kind of cute.

Watching Bake Off, it had dawned on me: I wasn't making this pie to impress the judges. I wasn't going to be sent home if it was ugly, or chided by Mary Berry if it had a "soggy bottom." I was making this pie for the guests, mostly homeless, of All Saints' Beverly Hills' Monday Meal, which today was a Thanksgiving feast. The pie didn't need to be at home at in a patisserie window; it needed to be edible, and hopefully tasty. I'd stressed myself out and beaten myself up for turning something "foolproof" into such a shitshow. But now, I was over it. It would be no less, and no more, than an apple pie. Homeless people would eat it for dessert. Maybe it would remind them of their childhoods. Maybe it would be a sloppy mess. But either way, it would be a dessert, and it would be made with love and care. 

This is what we do at this time of year, seasoned chef and kitchen neophyte alike. We take a crack at putting our heart into the food we make. Sometimes, as with putting one's heart into anything, the process is more painful than we bargained for, and the whole business would be much simpler if we cared a little less about how things turned out. But caring is a part of the magic. Wanting to make something for another person, and to make it well, is a prayer and a sacrifice and a blessing...and that's true even if a chunk of what you made falls off and burns up in the oven. 

Anyone who looked at a slice of my craggy, mottled pie would know that it wasn't made in a factory. But when I took it out of the oven at damn near 11pm, I was pleasantly surprised. It was no masterpiece, but it had its own unique, handmade beauty. And it smelled amazing.

I guess the recipe was foolproof after all.

Permission to Take What's Granted (Thoughts on Dad's LA Visit)

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Yesterday my dad flew home to Chicago after a long weekend trip to visit me and read books in the sunshine. While we Angelenos proclaimed the 60-70 degree temps "so fall" and "officially sweater weather," Dad smirked at all the stylish brooders in black knit beanies, slept with the window open, and donned short sleeves. On Monday night, after I left the office, we had a teriffic, one-for-the-memory-books dinner at The Ponte, Stephanie Bombet and Scott Conant's newish, Modern Italian restaurant in the part of town Dad suggested we refer to as "NQBH" -- Not Quite Beverly Hills.

 

And, of course, we dined al fresco. Sure, it was 60 degrees outside, but there were heat lamps and goddammit, we're Chicagoans. If you give us the option to sit outside, we take it.

 

I'd worried about how expensive the meal might be, scheming ways to keep the bill low. Two entrees, no cocktails, no desserts, and suddenly this would be a pretty average tab. My reasoning was simple: I knew my dad would be paying the bill, and I didn't want to drag him to a pricey place willy-nilly. If I could afford it, I'd have tried to pick up the bill myself, but as anyone who's eaten dinner with him can attest, this is easier said than done. I didn't want him to think I was taking advantage of his constant generosity just because it was his last night in town.

 

Dad had his own agenda for dinner though: get what we want. Have a cocktail, because look at this beautiful menu. Have a second cocktail. Have dessert. The plates were small after all. This was a celebration, life is for the living and, thank God, after decades of very hard work he can afford to take his daughter out for nice dinners during their short time together in LA.

 

Dad didn't SAY any of these things out loud. What he said, as I held the cocktail menu close to my face, weighing my many options like so much precious metal, was "you look like you're preparing for your bat mitzvah." And he laughed, and I laughed, because it was really funny and we were having the time of our lives.

 

I've been thinking today about the complex feelings I have around parental support, be it emotional (we talk on the phone nearly every day), moral (he firmly believes in my talent as a writer, reads my work and discusses it with me, and is the single loudest voice rooting for my success), or financial (I would be unable to pursue success in my chosen field without the privelege of a parental safety net). The simple fact is, my father's support and friendship is probably the greatest treasure in my life. Not all my friends can count on stability and sanity from their parents; few if any can count on the level of motivation, wisdom, and friendship I'm lucky enough to receive (and which I try very hard to return). I don’t take it for granted and I thank him for it all the time.

 

But “not taking it for granted” ignores the very beautiful way in which all those things ARE granted. That love and support? It’s not going anywhere. And yet, I let my gratitude morph into a kind of guilt that no one asked for and which is doing no one any good. Guilt that sometimes takes the shape of my deepest insecurity: that if I am not doing it “on my own” I am failing.

 

Where does this come from? Who taught me that I needed to do it all on my own? Is it an American society that teaches us that making it on your own is a necessary part of adulthood? Is it the fact that I'm an only child, and have a lot of learned self-reliance? Is it an inherited self-reliance from my pretty self-reliant parents? Or maybe (because all psychological self-evaluative roads lead back here for me), it has something to do with my mom's death. Some story I made up for myself about not wanting to be a burden.

 

(Don't trust the stories you tell yourself at 15. 15-year-old-you doesn't know shit.)

 

And maybe not. Maybe all this is bullshit psuedopsychology. The good news is, it doesn't really matter. What matters is that I more fully open my heart to the grace of Other People, which I know to be both abudant and only available if you allow yourself to seek it. What matters is that I earnestly try to put the myth of "you have to do it on your own or you're failing" into a box marked "Damaging: Please Incinerate." And with time, gratitude, love, and that open heart, I will set that damn box ablaze.

 

After dinner Monday night, I drove home, the radio tuned to KUSC, the classical station. I told my dad, honestly, that the amount of time we'd spent listening to this station while he was here (a lot) was not representative of how much I usually listened to it (only ocassionally). And then Rachmaninoff's 2nd Piano concerto began, and I proclaimed, just as honestly, that it was one of my favorite pieces of music. The DJ's lead-in had prepared us for a unique and eye-opening rendition of the piece, and that's exactly what it was, so singularly soulful and dramatic that there were passages I barely recognized. I pulled into my parking garage, but the second movement had only just started. Without discussing it, I switched only the engine off, and we sat in the car, trying hard not to hum too loud over the rolling piano highs and lows of a piece that both of us, independently, had chosen as a favorite. And for just a moment, I stepped away from myself, took a look down at the scene from above, and felt exceedingly blessed to have been given so very many things in this world to love.

About This Week's Inspiration: Some of It Came from Horoscopes

A while back, I stumbled across a single, incomplete sentence I’d written in a journal. It was a thought I’d hoped to incorporate into an essay I never got around to completing. I’d written, “the kind of person who puts no stock in horoscopes but still credits her inherent mysticism to the fact that she’s a Pisces.” 

No doubt about it: I was describing myself. Perfectly. 

Few incomplete sentences could sum up the dichotomy of my inner life more succinctly – the tempestuous head-butting between the concrete and the ineffable, the known and the unknowable. The idea that the stars could predict our futures seems patently absurd. And yet, when I first read a detailed description of my star sign’s traits, I was old enough to know what I was like, and wise enough to see that it was a description of me, with few exceptions (I don’t seem to be prone to addiction, thank God, and I don’t run away when I feel unappreciated. Or wait...do I do that? Maybe I DO do that!).

So, it is with no small amount of sheepishness that I confess here that yes, I sometimes peek at my horoscope. I don’t want any predictions about how my week is going to go — I will roll my eyes derisively at such foolishness (unless it predicts something I really want, like when that old Iranian lady read my coffee grounds – something I did NOT ASK HER TO DO, for the record – and made some swell predictions about what my love life would look like in “one month”). But if the astrologer/writer is doing the new-agey thing where she gives each sign vague advice based on their star-prescribed personality, well, I often take some pleasure in those. After all, regardless of whether, as a Pisces, I have in fact traversed all other Star signs at least once in my past lives (I think Linda Goodman says something like that),  there’s no denying that I have a Pisces personality. 

But enough about me. All this is just to say: here is some inspiration I got this week, and don’t hate me just because some of it supposedly comes from the celestial orb. 

1. ) The coffee shop near my house always posts a great horoscope that comes from I-know-not-where. Last week, while pouring half and half in my cold brew, I took a look and laughed out loud. 

This is not a horoscope; this is a succinctly worded summary of my most fundamental existential crisis.

In my college years, when in the throes of an anxiety attack (these could last hours or days or weeks), I would sometimes feel devastated by the specter of an unexpressed thought, for if not voiced now, doesn’t it die forever, unheard by anyone!? Now blissfully free from that level of dramatic angst, I still feel the pull to share and the concern that if I don’t find my medium, if I don’t make the time, if I don’t work hard enough, I will not be living my calling. 

On a less writer-y, more interpersonal level, earlier this week I mentioned in conversation that I often advise friends to address a conflict by opening the lines of communication. That way, they can at least attempt to set the story straight, both in their own minds and in the other party’s. Earlier TODAY I found myself giving just that advice, acknowledging that my perspective might be skewed because to me, absence of communication (and the corresponding absence of control over your own story) is “like torture.” 

This communication imperative manifests different questions depending on which lens of our lives we view it through. 

As a writer: What stories can I tell? What stories can only I tell?  

As a helper: What wisdom do I have to offer the world? Is there something I have to say that might make a positive and lasting impact on even one person? 

As a human being: Am I harming myself by keeping something secret? Or by choosing to say something false, closed-hearted, or judgmental? Who does my silence help? Who does it hurt? 

As a creative: HOW am I going to speak out? How can I share what I’ve seen with the world, be it my own little world or the world at large?

 

2. I have recently become enthralled with The Cut (I have about a million ideas for their wonderful recurring feature, “I Think About This a Lot”). Perusing it this week, in between the fashion pieces and the firebrand editor’s letter about this moment in Feminism, I found what looked like a soothing and ethereal horoscope section, by “Madame Clairevoyant” (Claire Comstock-Gay). I clicked. I was rewarded.

Now these were some horoscopes! Nothing concrete, just some soothing words that tap into our insecurities and seek to hush the sniping of our inner monologues.  I even read some of the others, and while they didn’t feel quite as apt, I still found them to be encouraging. Which is really all I’m asking for from the Internet.

Read me clearly: I do not believe that Madame Clairevoyant knows my inner struggles. But I DO believe that it doesn’t matter how inspiration and fortification come to us as long as we are spurred on by what we’ve seen, ready to accept the magic this world has to show us. Almost as if in answer to my nagging concern about making the most of my every moment and saying all the words all the time, here was something that rang just as true: I can give myself permission — we can all give ourselves permission — to explore, to take our time, and to simply be alive.

Which brings me to…

3. Brian Andreas. The power our words have to inspire a stranger. This stranger, whose art enthralled me from the funky gift shop in Valparaiso, Indiana that we sometimes visited after church; whose books of poetry I bought as graduation gifts for my tight-knit group of nerdy, arty highschool friends; who is still creating art that now comes to my eyeballs via Instagram on my iPhone - a device and an app that were the stuff of science fiction at the time I first lay eyes on his work. The fact that this stranger’s stray thoughts still shake me as if from slumber, 20 years later. I feel like this recent post of his, which had such an effect on me, ties all these ramblings up quite nicely. No stars required.