377 Days - Blog #48, The Perfect Day for Pie

Today was the perfect day for pie.

September got cool very quick.  Not cool enough, yet, to light the wood stove.  But cool enough to have to not wear sandals tonight.   A good day to turn on the oven and bake something.

 

 I had to go to a potluck tonight, so even better.

Tonight was the first Barre Players meeting of the season.  In a tradition that is at least as old as the occupancy of the building, that means the meeting starts an hour earlier with a potluck supper.  I remember when I was 19 and first got to go to one of those meetings.  I felt like I was invited to the grownups table.  Although I soon found out.. it wasn’t exactly a grownups table.  Hello, theater politics.  Still, I always enjoyed those September meetings.  Mostly because more people showed up and it was a guarantee to see some of my favorite people of those early days at Barre Players.  Vicki and Russ Hopkins.  Phyllis Stoddard.  Liz Hodgen, who was always so sweet to me because of the summers at S.P.U.R.T.  Bruce and Doug.  I was thinking about Doug’s chowder tonight.  How he would bring a big huge pot… and I think he even used that antiquated stove to heat it up once.  Maybe just once.  Then it was rendered a not so good idea.  Jeannie’s chocolate milk from her farm.  I probably brought some sort of pudding pie with fruit and a manufactured crumb crust.  Because in those days I thought I was a good cook for putting things from a box into things from a box.

Well, tonight I made a pie.  From scratch.  I did use Crisco… but that’s because it’s my grandmother’s recipe.  And for her, I will use Crisco.  And damn, it was a good pie.  At least I think it was, because by the time I got up to the dessert table, there was a sliver of about three bites left.  

I also made jambalaya for dinner.  It’s also from my grandmother’s recipe box.  And you can find the recipe in this blog post.

I like potlucks.  There are always a hodge podge of dishes and blend of flavors.  It’s a group effort to put together a meal… kind of like theater when it is done right.  Everyone contributes an element to the production and it blends together to something different every time.  Even if you have the same dishes on different nights, the chemistry of the outcome is always a different sort of masterpiece.  Sometimes things blend poorly.  And sometimes there is too much of one course and too little of the other.  Sometimes everything comes from a box.  Sometimes it is impressive to see how many different talents people have in creating something on their own.

I really think potlucks are the perfect thing for theater(s) and theater people.  Even if it is followed by a board meeting.