Channeling the Skurka genes

Le 27 novembre   A few weeks ago, we sent a bushel of rhubarb from our garden back with some visiting sisters from Kigali.

“In the US, we make pies out of that. It’s delicious!”

“Well, why don’t you make it for us one day?” Oh my goodness, I hadn’t thought of that. Now I had committed to the community to make this dessert that I’ve never actually made myself! Yes, I’ve bought them from apple orchards. Yes, I’ve made all sorts of pies with my mother. The problem, though? We usually buy the shell. 

I called up my parents this week and together, they dictated a recipe for rhubarb pie through the phone, changing all measurements to the metric system. “Well, I need the recipe for a crust too, please.” (Most Americans take the easy way and just buy a shell, so it wasn’t even a part of the pie recipe.) Mom looked high and low, finally coming across my Grandma Skurka’s pie recipe.

I decided that for Thanksgiving weekend (because we had a full work day like any other non-holiday on Thursday) that I would make the closest thing to an American Thanksgiving dessert that I could – rhubarb pie.

Because today is Saturday, I started off my morning with the usual 6h15 mass, breakfast, and then jumped right into washing my clothes and cleaning my room. Each Saturday, I feel as though I find a place in my room that I’ve not yet cleaned and today as I was on my hands and knees scouring the tile surrounding the shower, for whatever reason I thought to Grandma Skurka. Grandma was said to have had the “cleaning gene,” and my mother always tells me “I sure didn’t get it but Aunt Mary did!” I’m beginning to discover that I not only have my dad’s “organizing gene,” but that my Grandma Skurka “cleaning gene” was just lying dormant.Before lunch, I went to the garden to find only the best rhubarb for my pie. Because we had recently sent a plethora to Kigali, there wasn’t quite “four cups worth.” Determined, I went to the kitchen to start washing and dicing. Sr. Emma saw me chopping up a storm and said “I bought a few apples from the market yesterday, they’re from Kenya. Could you use them?”

Oh, how I’ve longed for an apple the past two months. At home, I eat an apple daily – maybe more. I chop them up in my salads and eat them as a snack, too. I dip them in caramel, I put them in yogurt… you name it. Besides, this time of year apples are in season and it’s traditional “holiday” food to have apple pies, apple tarts, baked apples. So I happily chopped up my two beautiful apples and threw them into the mix – just making 4 cups of fruit.

I threw the other ingredients of the filling together and prepared myself for the tough part. Oh my goodness. Not having Crisco, I substituted butter (which I could only hope would work) but continued with the recipe as written. At each step, as I’ve never made a crust before and it’s far different from making any type of batter or dough, I just had to trust the recipe. I had to trust Grandma Skurka. Alright, Grandma, here goes nothin’.

Thirty minutes later, I took my masterpiece out of the oven. It looked and smelled wonderful. I will have you know, too, that I did document the different stages of preparation with my camera. Some people take pictures of their children at recitals or sports games because they are proud of them. I was proud of my pie, so I took pictures of it.

Good teamwork, Grandma, what a delicious pie we’ve created. Everyone loved it.