In Praise of Homemade Pie

As published in the Citizen-Record newspaper on Wednesday, November 1, 2017, by Sara Jewell

Catherine Bussiere stands behind me in her kitchen and dishes about apple pie.

The bag of Cortland apples from Vista Bella Farm in Malagash had been sitting on our kitchen counter for over week. I’d bought them a few days after we’d finished eating the apple pie I’d made in Catherine Bussiere’s pie-making workshop, intending to make another.  

On this particular day, however, my energy was low and I couldn’t face making dough. I had a choice: sit on the couch with a remote in one hand and a bag of chips in the other, or go for a walk. I made the right decision – to be outside – but the walk didn’t lift my mood.

I looked at the bag of apples and decided to bake. Three hours later, an apple crisp and an upside-down apple cake sat cooling on the counter, and I felt happy again. I hadn’t made a pie but my husband wasn’t complaining as he shoved a bite of apple cake into his mouth.

It sounds facetious but for those of us who enjoy cooking and baking, there is nothing more healing than an afternoon surrounded by flour and butter, apples and eggs, glass bowls and wooden spoons.

The restorative power of making pie has been on my mind since I saw Catherine’s short film, Self-Portrait In May, which she created in 2016 on her rural property in Beckwith, and presented at the Atlantic International Film Festival in Halifax. In one scene, Catherine is collecting the first rhubarb of the season from her garden and making a rhubarb pie. She shot the scene showing only her hands mixing the ingredients, heaping it into a deep pie plate and covering it in dough.

“Everybody loves pie,” Catherine said when I asked what it is about pie that makes people happy. “When you create, it not only gives you joy but you’re giving joy to others.”

Even though I know how to make pie from scratch, I didn’t hesitate to sign up for her workshop in mid-November. I love the kitchen in Catherine’s old farmhouse, with its long harvest table her husband made when they first moved into the house with their family twenty years ago.

“We have this great orchard and this great garden, we have all this outdoor space,” Catherine said about why she wanted to offer the workshop. “I like to feed people and I like to cook. I want to use this space more. Let’s have a bunch of people around this table and make things.”

Things like a traditional apple pie we took home to share with our families, and in honour of Catherine’s French Canadian roots, two French apple pies we enjoyed with a cup of tea.

I take to heart the advice Catherine gave us as we mixed the dough: “Hands are the best tools.”

What is it about pie? For one thing, it brackets our winter, with the first pie of the growing season, rhubarb, and the last pie of the season, apple. Secondly, when you cook from scratch, and use what’s in your garden and back yard, when you mix with your hands instead of a spoon, when you create something lovely and tasty from basic ingredients, it becomes both a work of art and nourishment for the spirit.

Nothing banishes a bad mood like a piece of fresh-baked pie.

My mood-altering creations.