This is not a picture of my actual pie! Scroll down for the real deal (photo by Mikkel Vang)
“What is going on with my life?” I asked myself as I nibbled on a piece of spicy tuna roll in the middle of the afternoon. The often melancholic nature of my life was thrown into sharp focus after having all my flaws and all my problems eloquently spelled out in the New York Times (see What Is It About 20-Somethings?), and “What is going on with my life?” continued to be a question with no answer for the better part of my day.
I’ve rarely felt like I have loads in common with my peers, but reading through this piece proved that I am indeed another statistic and, to be honest, I felt a little comfort in that. I mentally checked off all the things that apply to me, ending up with a sizable list: moved back home with parents at least one (check! -after graduating from UCLA in 2008, I spent the next year back in West Covina with mama and papa), spent at least some time living with a romantic partner without being married (check! -currently living with Nicholas sans marriage, as I have negotiated with him that we both need steady jobs and health plans before we get married), gone back to school for lack of better options (check! -holla back, Annenberg!) competing ferociously for unpaid internships (check! -ugh, unpaid internships are like a freaking slap in the face), forstalling the beginning of adult life (check!).
Seven months away from turning 25, I am childless, husbandless, and jobless…but I’m not in any rush to attain any of those things. But would a 1970s Massiel have already attained all that? Statistically speaking, probably. Yet 2000s Massiel still has a long road ahead. I have my Master’s degree to finish. I have to discover the world. I have to convince National Geographic that hiring me would be the best thing they ever did. I have to adopt a beautiful German Shepherd before I can even think of having kids. And I have to get married somewhere in between the dog and the baby.
Yet to a modernly old fashioned amalgam like myself, my “transition to adulthood” is looming all the same. When will I really be able to stand on my own two feet? Will I really have all this transitional mess squared away by 30? How does this whole post go back to cherry pie?
Skip back to my sushi lunch, eaten in tragic hipster fashion as I watched re-runs of “America’s Next Top Model” and fiddled with my MacBook Pro. Somewhere, the urge to eat cherry pie struck. From where, I don’t know, because I’ve never eaten cherry pie before. (I know, but I am my mother’s daughter, and she brought me up in the model of sticking to things we know, i.e. apple pie). Then, drawing inspiration from my morning snack of Pomegranate Cherry NutriGrain bar, I conceived the idea to test my first invented recipe, and make a cherry pomegranate pie entirely from scratch.
I may not have a job. My soon-to-be-over summer was whiled away on my sofa. But damn it, if I can’t make my own pie, then what can I do? So, as a testament to my 20-something will to (eventually) succeed, I set off to the market, collected pitted black cherries, raspberry pomegranate preserves, and a bag of flour. I wanted to prove to myself that, in spite of the sticky post-adolescent funk I currently find myself in, there are some redeeming qualities somewhere in me. Somewhere. Maybe way in the back.
So I made my own pie crust. I pounded and kneaded and made my hands smell like butter. I devotedly made my cherry filling, cleverly mixing the raspberry pomegranate love. I popped my first entirely homemade pie in the oven, crossed my fingers and hoped for the best.
And then, on trying to retrieve my pie from the oven about an hour later (and simultaneously balancing my cell phone while talking to my mom) gravity got the better of me and made my pie wobble dangerously on my oven mit. The pie was saved…but some of the filling punched its way out the side. Figures.
My crust was paler than I wanted. The edge was stained with the blood of wayward cherries. The butter smell seems to have been permanently attached to my fingers. Oh, but the filling. The filling is divinely sweet, robustly cherry, subtly pomegranate, rascally raspberry (especially the seeds that get stuck in your teeth from time to time), and secretly zingy on account of the two tablespoons of orange marmalade I threw in for the hell of it.
My cherry pie is not perfect. It’s not even 100% cherry. But it’s mine and it’s a work in progress. It’ll be perfect eventually, but for a first try, it is pleasantly surprising. And at least the insides are absolutely perfect.
Upon tasting my cherry pie, I came to the following conclusion: filling = delicious, crust = dough-flavored paste. It’s my own fault for using a recipe from a cook book that has consistently failed to impress every time I try to make anything in there. Nicholas suggested I resign myself to using store-bought crust, but something inside me associated buying crust with failure. A phone call to my mother assured me that crusts are tricky to make, and that it’s better to fix a good pie filling with bad crust than good crust with bad filling.
