Life with Pie

A Northern friend of mine recently visited Nashville, where she tried to absorb the entire Southern experience. Like me, she has a fondness for pie and requested a slice of the “Pie of the Day” at a local restaurant.

The place went quiet. Obviously, my friend had committed a grave gaffe.

The waiter broke the silence: “Ma’am, we don’t serve pie now. When it’s the season, we serve peach and blackberry. Now I suppose some people might use frozen fruit at this time of year, but I don’t know why anybody would want to do that.”

Well for goodness’ sake! Have Nashvillians (Nashvillains in this case?) never heard of CREAM pies? Have they never delighted their palates with pecan, coconut cream, chocolate, pumpkin, or custard pie? At first I was angry on behalf of my friend, but the more I thought about it, I felt sorry for the deprived folks of Nashville.

“If I ran this place, pie charts would be made of actual pie.”
—Author unknown

[Photographer of pie-eating contest unknown.]

Houston, We Have A Pumpkin Problem

If you’ve been reading Lull for any length of time, you probably know that cooking scares me. I keep doing it, and my sister—whose culinary gifts far exceed my limited kitchen imagination—keeps encouraging me.

So I created a simple menu for the holiday and started by baking a pumpkin pie. After using the name-brand canned pumpkin, I noticed that the can was rusty. Just on the outside. However, the expiration date is fine.

Why would the can be rusty? I don’t know. But if you don’t see any new posts on Lull after today, you’ll know why.

Of course, death by pie isn’t a bad way to go…

[Photo: I don’t know who is pictured or who took the picture. For some reason, my whole “Google experience” has dramatically changed today and limited my research capabilities. Oh, Google, why have ye forsaken me?]

Count Down (Up?) to 500: Lull Hits Another Milestone

ull started two years ago with a whisper into the void—and has spluttered and splurched forward until this week, when I’ll be writing the 500th post.

Five hundred is not a hugely impressive number—it’s not infinite like pi and doesn’t come close to our national debt. But it’s substantial enough that I believe something special should occur alongside the 500th entry of Lull.

Maybe we should all eat pie. Mmmmm…

[Here are my top 10 favorite pies: pecan, lemon, coconut cream, chocolate, strawberry-rhubarb, rhubarb cream, blueberry, peach, pumpkin, custard.]