I always commit to do too many things on Easter. Why Easter and no other holidays I’m not entirely sure, but I think it’s because of that extra day when I know I’ll be off. I keep thinking that I will be able to churn out food in epic proportions. I inevitably fall short. Except that this year, I didn’t. Much thanks to Brian, who was willing to chop strawberries, cover cookie sheets in tinfoil, and do all of my dishes multiple times so I never ran out of clean measuring cups.
I made 1 tried and true recipe and 2 new kinds of pie.
The Lemon Meringue is a recipe of Brian’s Grandma Tess, and the filling is divine, tart, and lemony. I am still working out the meringue on top. It wants either to sweat, or have a weird layer of candy-flavored water in between the eggs and the filling. I’m told that Grandma Tess was also never completely happy with the meringue, so I know the struggle is real. But it’s never not tasty, and taste is all that matters when you’re feeding people who have to love you because you’re related.
Which is why I also experimented with a couple of new pies. I’ve been looking for a good berry pie recipe for a VERY long time now. The family could not believe I made this one with frozen berries, and insisted that everyone try it despite whether they wanted pie or not. Definitely a keeper and worth perfecting. The third pie I made (I know…) was a fresh strawberry. That one also turned out to be a hit, though I’m not sure how much I can claim credit for that. Mother Nature made me some REALLY good strawberries.
As if that wasn’t enough, I also made molasses ginger cookies for Brian’s Grandpa (who requested them), and deviled eggs.
We never got to eat the Lemon Meringue. I usually hold it in my lap for any drives, to keep the pretty caramelized top from getting mussed. A slow driver pulled out in front of Brian. He slammed on the breaks. The slippery glass pie pan slid out of my hands, hit the dashboard, then the floor, and the filling flew out of its pan and onto the dirty carpet. When we scooped as much of it as we could back into the dish, it was not only a travesty of a jumble of crumb crust and gelled filling, it was also speckled with little bits of black dirt all through. Ugh.
I have found, though, that there is nothing like determination in making sure you have a good day. My dad donated us the ½ of his Mud Pie that his side the family didn’t eat, which I took to my mom’s as a (super-yummy) substitute. I made copious fun of my busted pie, and then I felt alright about it all. Besides, it wasn’t for nothing. I learned that cold pie + room temperature egg whites = weird candy water layer between. That will be useful next year, despite not having tasted any of it. I also learned that I had cooked the mixture right – it all set up to the perfect consistency. Another tidbit for next time.
In other totally non-related news, I have been going on with the Steering The Craft exercises, and have written an Easter one, which I’m going to post below. This one was supposed to be a story where the 1st part repeated the 2nd part, and it’s not actually historically accurate at all, so please forgive me.
Easter:
Aradegi took the reed basket down from the niche in the corner of her mud-walled home. She laid some leaves in the bottom of it, and on top of that she put the eggs she had climbed the trees to get. One of the birds had swooped down and pecked, but she had managed to put them in her pockets and shimmy back down the rough branches with all of them still intact. There were six, speckled and green, in her hands when she took them out. One for each month Eostre would spend in their world. Perfect.
She kissed the eggs and laid them on the wide green leaves. She filled the gaps of the basket with flowers. She laid the fresh offering near her door. Tomorrow, Aradegi would take her basket to the standing stones and watch the dawn rise over the foothills to greet them. She would offer her basket and Eostre would come and melt the snow.
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Jane took the baskets down from the top shelf of the hall closet, trying not to trip on the haphazard pile of shoes beneath. In the back, behind the coats, were the plastic shopping bags of pipe cleaner chickens, paper grass, and plastic eggs. One by one, she cracked the eggs open and filled them with green speckled candies made of malt.
She arranged the things in the bright baskets so that the children would see the toys first thing. She laid the offering on the coffee table downstairs. Tomorrow the children would be up at dawn, waking Jane with a jump into her bed, squealing. They would all go into the living room to see what the Easter Bunny had brought them, and then they would drive to Grandma’s in the snow.
I downloaded Ursula K. LeGuin’s Steering The Craft this weekend. I thought I was getting a little bit of a how-to on writing, some good advice. You know, something like Steven King’s On Writing, or E. M. Forster’s Aspects of the Novel. That wasn’t what I got at all, and it was the best discovery.
, by EM Forster: I guess this book is fairly cliché these days for writing students. Or so says the website I was just on. But having never been exposed to Forster’s essays before, I was floored. He just outlines the decisions you’re making, and the deliberateness with which you have to see everything when you’re writing a novel, in a way that was totally new to me. I learned buckets, and still swear that I need to go back and read it again. It made writing a novel seem like a craft, and not like flailing around in sentences until you hit something that works. Particularly eye-opening were the passages about windows, and the passages about flat characters vs. round characters.
, by Stephen King: the book is ½ memoir, and ½ writing tutorial. It’s interesting, funny, and it has much good advice tucked between the pages. I felt just a bit better about my own trials knowing that he had a stake on the wall to pin all his many rejection letters to, and to know that he was a starving English professor before Carrie was optioned in paperback. It was encouraging to hear that even Stephen King, the most prolific of writers, can have a life crisis that would make him stop writing for a while. And better still to know that writers return to their craft, even if it takes a while. His thoughts on scene description, adverbs, and editing have stuck with me. Perhaps my favorite section is the bit of writing he includes before edits, and after edits. It’s fascinating. Because of the structure of the book, it’s easy to get through. Even the instruction part feels like there’s a caring professor coaching you through it.
, by William Zinsser: I heard once that you could teach someone the rules of writing in about 2 weeks if you had the time. It’s the pacing, the punctuation, the finding your voice that takes the longest, the years of writing. This book is that “rules of writing” crash course, and it gives you tips on how to maximize your use of language at the same time. It’s also written well, with clarity, and is easy to get through. It’s not tied to genre or anything, either, so it’s a good all-around guide. Even if you feel like you already know the rules of writing, I guarantee you will learn something by reading this book, or be told stuff you’ve forgotten.
by Anne Lamott: Another part-memoir, although this one is mostly writing advice. The book is also a writing student cliché, of the worst kind. But hear it out. It’s a cliché for a reason (the reason is, it’s good). I do not know why or how, but for some reason this book was balm for my crazy-writer soul. She outlines all the neuroticism, the certainty that you’re failing, the daily struggle with yourself you have to navigate, and somehow makes it all seem funny. Not just funny, but cathartic. She’s nuts, in every way. But you’re nuts too, and laughing at her feels like you’re laughing at yourself, and suddenly it all seems manageable. Not only that, but it contains a billion good tips for fooling yourself into getting things on paper. And once you’ve learned the rules of writing, that’s your new biggest hurdle: how to get that butt into that chair, and convince your fingers to start typing.
or Francine Prose’s 
. But I don’t find myself constantly thinking of their content as I write as I do with the above 4.
Casey E. Hamilton 