In the Robinson family, it is never Thanksgiving without a sweet potato pie. When I was young, I would call my aunts days in advance to make sure they were going to bring one to the annual potluck celebration. This pie could not just be any one; it had to be carefully chosen. It must be gleaned from a grocery store shelf full of quotidian pies, which probably taste more like a simple conglomeration of ingredients than anything that should be served for one of the most important celebrations of the year.
Sweet potato pies are like men. A good one could take a while to find. Good pies usually do not look as appetizing as the bad ones, and that is the trick to finding them. Good sweet potato pies look rough around the edges. The crust is not nicely formed and round, but crumbling. The filling, the most important part, does not look perfect and smooth like the ones in the cookbooks. It is bumpy and rough, but full of sweet, holiday goodness.
Every year, I would hound my aunts about bringing the pies. The year when I was seventeen, however, something changed. On the eve of Thanksgiving, my parents told my sister and me that our extended family would not be having its annual Thanksgiving celebration. I was so upset at the adults in my family, who claimed they did not have money to contribute to such a large meal. They said they all wanted to celebrate separately, in their own homes, with their individual families. I was so incensed about my family members ruining a tradition I had known my entire life that I had forgotten, for a moment, about the pie.
Thanksgiving morning came and I was not happy about it because my favorite part of the holiday, eating the pie, seemed like a distant and unlikely thought. Neither of my parents had the time to take a trip to Publix to satisfy my longing for my favorite Thanksgiving dessert. I had nothing to look forward to that evening. My mother was attempting to make her first Thanksgiving turkey. My dad wanted to help out too, so he called his mom and convinced her to give him the recipe for her special collard greens. The vibrant, unmistakable rainbow of colors and flavorful tastes would be noticeably absent this year. There would be no sweet, sticky cranberry sauce, Aunt Quita’s extra cheesy macaroni, or Grandma’s one- of- a- kind celery infused dressing. I had to do something. I could not sit around on my second favorite holiday of the year and lament. After moping around in the quintessential teenager fashion, I knew what I would do to contribute to our meager, pathetic meal! I was hoping that maybe my favorite food would help me feel better and add a little oomph to our first holiday meal without the loud yelling, laughter, and antics of the extended Robinson family. I would make a sweet potato pie!
I had no idea how difficult the process of making the pie would be. Who knew that it would take sweet potatoes so long to soften? I stuck them in the oven and assumed they only needed a little bit of heat, but thirty minutes later they were fully heated and just as hard as they were when I bought them.
Hoping to start over, I typed “how to soften sweet potatoes” into Google. I learned I needed to boil them and a short while later I had semi- soft sweet potatoes. Once I had finally done enough to make the potatoes somewhat malleable, I mixed in the other ingredients using a wooden spoon. As I observed the blending of the coarse brown sugar with the butter, eggs, and vanilla extract, I began to get excited about my pie. I was beginning to think that maybe I could start a new tradition with my mom, dad and sister. Maybe I could spend a little time every Thanksgiving making a pie; I could spend time making a creation other people would enjoy.As soon as I had mixed all the ingredients for the filling, I dipped my finger in the buttery, fiery, sunset colored fusion of cream and sweetness. I brought my finger to my mouth and reflected on the many Thanksgivings of the past when I had devoured the store bought creations of some food machine in a factory far away. I knew this would be so much more. More satisfying. More enjoyable. This pie would be mine, not something to devour; it was a creation to be savored.
Using my mother’s baby blue spatula, I gently spread the filling in the frozen pie crust I had. I must admit it was a little chunky, a product of my overzealousness when it came to prematurely taking the potatoes out of the boiling water. I was not disappointed about the imperfections, though. They seemed to make the pie uniquely mine. I placed my newest creation in the oven with a sense of accomplishment which was probably too big for the recently completed feat.
After about an hour and a half of baking, I began to smell the sweet aroma of vanilla from the kitchen. As I was taking the pie out of the oven, I got a text message from my best friend, Joya. “Congrats on your first sweet potato pie.” I had to crack a smile. I took my pie out of the oven and showed it to my mom, who hugged me and told me she could not wait to eat it. My father did the opposite. He made a comment about wanting to continue living, so he would skip the pie. I laughed. That night the four of us, my parents, my sister, and I, had our first Thanksgiving in our house without my dad’s ten siblings and their families. We had started a new tradition. My chunky, sweet, homemade creation was part of it all.
No comments:
Post a Comment