BLUEBERRY PIE

I found my thrill on Blueberry Hill.

Fats Domino

When I sat down to begin compiling this list in December, this was the first thing I wrote down. I’m not quite sure why. Don’t get me wrong; I love blueberry pie.  I mean, what’s not to love? But I wasn’t aware that I loved it so much as to have it be the first thing that leapt to my mind when trying to list 365 things that have influenced/enriched my life, and made me the almost-40-year old I am today (and will be tomorrow).

When I was a kid, my folks didn’t let us have a lot of junk food.  (For example, we never had sugary cereals [except when camping – when I was allowed my belovéd Frosted Flakes and Froot Loops], but usually had an industrial-size bag of Puffed Wheat in the cupboard. That shit tastes like Styrofoam!). Consequently, I would often horde my lunch money so I could buy a chocolate bar or the like on my way home from school. One of my favorite treats was a Vachon Blueberry Pie.  Even now, years later, I can still taste the cornstarchy filling and lardy crust, molded in an individual-sized aluminum dish. Mmmm… Vachon… One fateful afternoon, when I was about 10, I took a different-than-usual bus route home (I could choose from about 4), and was walking from St. Denis and Duluth instead of Sherbrooke and Hôtel-De-Ville (to most of you, this is a superfluous detail).  I stopped at a dépanneur to purchase one of those blueberry pies. I figured I could wolf it down by the corner of Laval and Duluth, thereby having about a half a block to carefully dispose of the evidence (as I always did), wiping the crumbs and sticky purple goo from my lips before I got home, so as not to arose suspicion. Well, just as I was rounding the corner and shoving the last morsel into my mouth, I ran smack dab into my father, who was on his way to the laundromat.  With my mouth full of pie and my eyes full of guilt, I stammered, “It’s not what it looks like!”  I don’t remember what consequences, if any, there were. But it was probably a few years before I had other one.

My late uncle Anthony, my mother’s only brother, loved blueberry pie. Whenever he would come to Montreal from Toronto, Mom would bake him one. I always looked forward to his visits, not only because he was a great guy, but also so I could have some guilt-free blueberry pie. And now, whenever I have a piece, I think of Anthony.

Here’s a yummy recipe

¾ c of sugar

½ c All purpose flour

¾ tsp ground cinnamon

6 cups blueberries, carefully washed and dried

1 tbls lemon juice

1 tbls butter

In a large bowl, mix the sugar, ½ cup of the flour and the cinnamon. Carefully stir in the blueberries. Pour the mixture into a crust-lined pie dish (if you can make your own crust, good for you. Mine is hit and miss – mostly miss, so I use a ready made one). Scrape the remaining sugar mixture from the bowl, and pour it onto the berries. Sprinkle the berries with the lemon juice. Cut the butter into small pieces, and sprinkle it onto the berries. Cover with a disc of crust, and pinch and seal the edges together. Cut slits in the top layer of pastry. You may want to cover the edges with a strip of foil to prevent them from browning too quickly. Bake for 35 – 45 minutes, (removing the foil for the last 15 minutes), or until the crust is golden brown. The berry juice should be seductively bubbling through the slits. Cool on a pie rack for a couple of hours, allowing the juices to set.  Eat with really good vanilla ice cream in one sitting while watching Mad Men.  Yummy.