How to Kill a Spider in Texas
I was writing in my journal– about how I ended up giving the pecan pie to the married man after all, and how he liked it so much, and how I liked him so much, and how it would all just end up badly as these things inevitably do, and how tragic and doomed the […]
Burnt Pecan Pie: It’s an Omen
This (see pic above) is what happens when you bake in a propane oven and you run out of gas thirty minutes into the hour-long baking cycle of your pecan pie – the one where you doubled the recipe, used the expensive organic eggs and emptied the bottle of Karo syrup you brought all the […]
More International Pie Stories (from Costa Rica this time) and Other Rambling Thoughts on a Hot Texas Afternoon
It’s fun – and can be rather helpful – to have a trademark, something that you love that represents you, something that makes it easy for people to buy birthday and Christmas presents for you. My dad has two signature themes: sailing and martinis, so if you see a pair of socks with embroidered sailboats […]
Upstaged by a Rock Star
It seems I’ve grow a bit cocky when it comes to bringing my homemade pies to dinner parties. Upon arrival, my pies – and, subsequently me – tend to become the center of attention – culinary and otherwise – robbing the limelight from the party host. Exclamations like “Wow, you made that?!” from fellow guests […]
Snakes Where You LEAST Expect Them
This past weekend was my parents’ 50th wedding anniversary. I had planned to bake a banana cream pie for the family celebration – as banana cream is the pie my mom made that prompted my dad to propose to her 50 years ago – but I was too tired to bake. I had just driven […]
The Man Who Makes Peach Cobbler
Driving back from the swimming hole on Sunday – where I had spent the afternoon with some new friends seeking refuge from the 108 degree day – we stopped at a small ranch to drop off a borrowed water jug. I had noticed the ranch before, a tidy hillside homestead with a nicely painted sign […]
The World Needs More Pie-rates
Yesterday I went to visit a new friend (and now that I have rented a house here, I can also call her a neighbor) — Cynthia Hood, the yoga teacher who lives a mile down the road. (She and her husband are building a beautiful new yoga studio, which I hope they don’t finish too […]
My Old Neighborhood, My Old Ghosts
I moved back to my old neighborhood in January. For as many times as I’ve tried to move away and stay away I’ve always come back, like a homing pigeon making its way south for the winter to a place familiar, comfortable as an old flip-flop, warm and sunny. I like to think that each […]
A Month of Contrasts, A Month of Pie
(PHOTO: View out of my Monte-Carlo hotel room) It is my last day in Europe after a five-week journey. I was in five countries, spoke five languages, spent money in four currencies, and baked eight pies. My travels started in Mexico and took me to Germany, Switzerland, England, Monaco, and back to Germany. It’s a […]
Stargazy Pie and Other Things I Learned From a London Psychic
Gazing at the stars…in more ways than one. (This picture of STARGAZY PIE was borrowed from the Internet…thanks to whoever took it.) The subject of pie inevitably comes up no matter where I go it seems. “Pie” follows me everywhere, as if I’m wearing a perfume of cinnamon and apples that hangs on me the […]