Before I start on imaginary blackberry pie, I need to say something that isn’t easy to say. The new apartment? The new blog? They’re mine–I made them–because last month I left my boyfriend of five years. We lived together, which is what prompted my father to say “this is like a divorce” when he was trying to help me plan the logistics of the move. As Sugar from the Rumpus would say, “I broke my own heart,” not to mention his, and in respect for what we’re both going through, I won’t get into details here. What I want to talk about is what I needed most after this trauma, even more than food, which doesn’t taste so good when you’re really really sad.
Space.
Not necessarily new space, but more. And how the only way to get more space was for me to move into new ones. This one-bedroom apartment with its good light and built-in bookshelves. Pie-scream, a fresh blog where I can obsess about my favorite subject. I’ve started to say “no” to perfectly wonderful opportunities because being too busy doesn’t allow for the emotional space I need right now. And what I’m least familiar with and most curious about: space within my writing. I’m not talking about a bigger desk. I mean I wonder how this hunger for spaciousness will show up in my poems. Here’s how it shows up in the blog: imaginary blackberry pie.
It’s made from blackberries you find at your new house. Renegade blackberries–the kind that grow in any ignored patch of dirt in Seattle–are in your back patch of dirt, crouching around the weed choked garden and shading the lawn. You wonder if, like fleas, blackberries can sense the presence of humans through vibrations in the ground, but instead of hatching at the sound of footsteps, blackberries wait for all the footsteps to recede before they sneak out and start taking over their little forgotten acre.
You see these blackberries and you hatch a plan: on the day you get your keys to the new apartment, you’ll pick a pie’s worth as a sort of private housewarming, Mary Oliver-style, letting your body “love what it loves.” You’ll use a little of the champagne the previous tenants left you (the discovery of that kindness made you tear up; you tear up a lot lately) and of course sugar and lemon, a little nutmeg, and wrap it all in galette or pie dough, whatever you’re feeling like that day. And when you make the crust, you’ll make a mess, get flour everywhere, throw it around on purpose because no one is going to walk in and say “You’re trying to kill me!” or actually get horribly ill from the grains afloat in the air. Your ex has celiac disease. Blackberry pie is a treat you couldn’t make for him without fifteen different flours, one of which you were always out of. You’d substitute and experiment because you loved him, and you wanted him to be able to eat dessert. Now you need only one flour. Wheat flour. A flour so common that we all know we mean “wheat” when we say “flour.” You’ve heard he’s not feeling well today, something he ate, and you suppress the urge to call and help him suss out the culprit. That’s no business of yours anymore. He’s a grown man. He’ll find his desserts and poisons himself.
The day you move in, you notice the rosebush out front has been pruned drastically back. The dandelions have all lost their heads. Fallen plums have disappeared too fast to blame the birds. And, yes, the blackberries are gone. The last four inches of their canes stick out of the ground like the top branches of drowned trees. The garden service was here. Hey, it’s great that you have a garden service. You thought you’d have to mow the lawn yourself. But you’re sad that the blackberries were cut down in their prime. Without blackberries, you have to invent a new housewarming pie. That’s when imaginary blackberry pie becomes the perfect plan.
Perfect because, if you’re being honest, you have no time to make pie this week. You still have a three bedroom house to clean, an attic to muck out, and a garden to abandon at the old place. At the new place, your kitchen is in order, but every time you unpack a box, two boxes arrive to fill its place. And if you’re still being honest with yourself, your blackberry pie recipe isn’t as great as it could be. Tapioca flour, your usual thickener, can’t quite keep the blackberries in check, so your pie is soupy. Because you usually use frozen berries, they bake in whole shapes. This seems like a good idea when you think about how blackberry pie filling can be as gummy as old jam, but in practice it’s pretty disconcerting when the berries fall out of the crust whole and you have to chase them around the plate with a fork. But these blackberries are imaginary. You can make them do anything you want. Even better, you can ask other people for help–you’ve gotten good practice at that lately. Maybe they’ll know the secret you’ve been searching for. Maybe they’ll share it.
Imaginary Blackberry Pie
To write this recipe, I need your help. What are your secrets to the perfect blackberry pie? What’s your favorite recipe? How do you make it? When do you make it? Who do you make it for? You can answer any or all of these questions by commenting on this post. If you’ve got a full recipe text to share (bigger than a link), send it to kate@pie-scream.com. I’ll pick my favorite and post it in the coming weeks.
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Tags: blackberry pie, foraged foods, moving, pie
Sorry about your breakup, it must be difficult. I can’t imagine breaking up with my girlfriend of 2 3/5 years. 5 years must be even worse. I do however have some tips – use oats in the topping and perhaps some light muscovado sugar. Cinnamon may also be nice, but isn’t necessary.
INSTA-PIE:Walk around September neighborhood. Find blackberry bush least likely to be peed on by dogs, barfed on by drunks, sprayed on by cars. Yank berries free into hand, push into in mouth filled with half-chewed up pop-tart.
I get around the whole-blackberry and too-soupy problems by cooking down the berries in a pot with sugar until they’re the consistency of a thick sauce or thin jam.
My favorite blackberry pie is actually a tart, though–made by pre-baking the tart shell, then baking a lemon layer, and then topping with the stove-cooked berries.
I wrote up the recipe last summer: http://www.teapotsandpolkadots.net/2010/08/blackberry-lemon-tart.html
The best to you in your transitions. I, too, am settling in after a move. Packing everything up and moving it to a new house about a mile away is a lot harder than it probably sounds to most people, but from the sounds of it you can identify. The funny thing is, though, I was dreading packing up all the assorted sauces, flours, nuts, etc. cluttering our fridge. But then in the process of moving, our old fridge gave out and one day we came back to find that everything had come to room temperature and that most needed to be thrown out. It’s a shame to waste food, but in many ways it came as a relief.
As for the perfect blackberry pie, my current answer is to write down the wrong type of berry on the shopping list. That’s what I did on the day I sent my husband grocery shopping for our inaugural meal at the new house. In my harried state, I wrote blueberries instead of blackberries. The pie, though a different type than I had planned to make for our special occasion, still turned out great.