99 New: Extra Creamy

Last night, I reached into the oven to pull out a beautiful pumpkin pie, one with a surface so burnished and glassy you could skate on it, and as I lifted the pie from the rack, it flipped in my toweled hands and the filling slid out onto the oven door.

I screamed, “Shit! Shit,” so loud that my husband woke from his pre-Thanksgiving nap and hurtled himself down the stairs, taking forever, I thought, despite his hurtling which I considered to be slow and perfunctory considering what was happening in our kitchen. He could have gone faster.

I continued the shit litany for some time, staring at the pile on the oven door. It looked like something very unpleasant had happened there, an accident requiring a lot of paper towels. I grabbed a spatula to scrape the pumpkin filling off the oven door and then as I stood there, poised to dump the filling in the sink, the pie spirits took hold and I shoveled it back into the crust.

Yes. I did this.

Then I patted the filling down and put it back in the oven, indulging for a minute in magical thinking that the glossy smooth top would somehow reconstruct like a salamander’s tail. But it did not. The surface stayed lumpy and bumpy, a mistake now arranged in a pie crust. I took the pie out of the oven, cooled it on a rack, and then swathed it in tin foil, tucked fully underneath the pie lest some curious guest lift the foil for a quick peak.

Today, after the plates were cleared from the Thanksgiving table, I came out of the kitchen with the mistake pie held over my head, reminding everyone that we ought not judge a book by its cover and that we shouldn’t just love the beautiful and the flawless. I told them there had been a mishap with the pie short of it falling on the floor or being set upon by the dog but didn’t fully describe the scene since it would have been unappetizing to relive it all.

I set the pie on the table along with a full can of whipped cream.

It took some overcoming for my beloved family members – that time between seeing the naked pie and covering it with whipped cream. It helped that my husband at the other end of the table announced that he couldn’t “wait for a piece of that fine pie.” He is famously loyal that way.

This was, after all, the pumpkin pie we had so it was wise to make the best of it. So we did and I was glad. It made for a happy little Thanksgiving.