Inspiration and Motivation

I recently was asked by Sues, the wife o' my life, after making a pie, "Is this your pie crust, or did you buy it?"
Of course I bought it, because two years ago I was living in a fantasy land of thinking my pie crust was great. All flakey and wonderful and enjoyed by all who tasted it. Then my wife told someone, in my hearing, "Oh, Lewis' pie crust is O.K., passable, but not nearly as good as my mom's." Needless to say I have not made a pie crust since. It is a lot of work to go to for mediocrity.

In our recent pie crust conversation the wife o' my life told me, "You should make your own crusts, they are better than these store-bought ones."

How do you like that, a pie crust compliment and a challenge at the same time?

It has been a goal of mine for, well as long as I can remember to be really good at something -- anything.

For a little more background on the inspiration and motivation of this endeavor I was recently, along with Sues, invited to a party. The theme was "Julie and Julia." Each of the guests were to bring an appetizer to share and we watched two or three episodes of old Julia Child cooking shows and then we watched the movie "Julie and Julia." I loved the party. The food, fellowship and the movie were all great.

One more piece of the puzzle: I decided to make a pie every week in order to perfect my skills and also because I am currently not working and it gives me something to look forward to; a challenge. So in week one I made a cherry pie from scratch. Cherries are not in season so I used canned cherries, not pie filling. As a side note, I will never buy cherry pie filling again. It is so easy and the result is far superior. The second week I thought I would try a different fruit so I thought my son David said his favorite was blueberry, but he actually said blackberry, oh, well we are having blueberry pie this week.

I was perusing the cookbooks at the public library while the wife o’ my life was looking at the various magazines and found an interesting book titled “Joy of Cooking; All About Pies and Tarts” by Irma S. Rombauer, Marion Rombauer Becker and Ethan Becker. When we were married back in 1984 we received the Joy of Cooking as a wedding present and that is how I learned to cook. What a great book. So I had to check out this small volume in the All About series of Joy of Cooking.

So here is the challenge. Based on all I have just told you I am going to attempt to make every recipe in Joy of Cooking; All about Pies and Tarts. There are about 61 dessert pies and 13 savory pies in the book so if I double up a few weeks and make the savory pies for dinner I should be able to finish the book in a year. So my goal will be to finish all the recipes in 2010.

I do not pretend to be as good a cook or as good a writer as Julie Powell, but I will be better at both, I hope as a result of this project.