The Life of Pie — the jeri cerutti

A pie that lives forever. If not in our hearts, certainly in a landfill.

In 1992, there was a bonus gift of a pecan pie with our Thanksgiving Honey Baked Ham. My first regret was the small slice of pie we cut to taste. Some things are better left to the imagination.

Feeling bad about tossing almost an entire pie, we opted to, um...share the leftovers, surreptitiously stowing the remaining pie in my sister's car for their three hour drive home. No regrets there.

Imagine our surprise the following month when the beautifully wrapped Christmas gift from my sister was revealed. I’m sure my brother-in-law wasn’t surprised when he opened his birthday gift in February.

And thus the Life of Pie began. It remained unchanged, crust intact, in its aluminum pie plate with the molded plastic cover until the November it was secreted into the wheel well of my sister’s Volvo station wagon as they packed up after the holiday.

After that Thanksgiving, Dan’s birthday and then Christmas came and we naughty kittens received no pie. We said nothing. They said nothing. Like…rest in piece, Pie.

No more pie chart.

That is, until my sister sold her Volvo a few years later. Her surprise while opening up her wheel well to prep the car for sale was exceeded only by my husband’s surprise at his 40th birthday party as he opened his gift. Bewildered guests looked on as he unwrapped the pie, looking much the same as it had when it left our house 6 years earlier.

A legend was born.

One Thanksgiving, just after the turn of the century, there was another bonus-pie-with-ham. We shoved it into my brother’s duffle bag. Knowing us (and our husbands) as he does, he had the forethought to check his bags and vehicle before leaving the house. He was not amused.

The original pie lived on, making the rounds for years. Christmases. Birthdays. Dessert tables at 4th of July picnics. We talked about having it bronzed or cast in acrylic - a culinary Dragonfly in Amber - to mount on a wood plaque and be hung on the wall of the one left holding the bag, as it were. Time passed and our traditional family Thanksgiving celebration become more sporadic as various activities and college kids wanting to stay home dictated travel plans.

My willingness to pay UPS to ship an antique pie also waned. Which is why the pie was sitting on my counter as I packed up the pieces of our 24 years in Massachusetts to move to Albany.

On July 29, 2016, I faced my Waterloo.

Find someplace that can encapsulate the pie for perpetuity? Or slide it into the trash bag and let the legend live on in infamy?

Hey, I had a long list of stuff to get done.

It was a few years before anyone asked after the pie. If I didn’t make quality pumpkin pies and Christmas cookies I would probably still be persona non grata since the day they learned I had unceremoniously dumped the family heirloom in the trash.

But I ask you, is it unceremonious if you take pictures first?

Looks pretty good for a 24 year old pie.