“Delicious pie,” they would all say. “No one has ever made me a pie before.”
And yet, while two did propose (though, sadly, not the billionaire), none of these pies resulted in marriage—well, not until Marcus’s pie, but that didn’t come until much later. In spite of my pie prowess, my love life up to that point was like a greased pie plate—nothing stuck.
It wasn’t until I quit the dot com job in 2001—when I said, “Goodbye, cubicle” (and “Goodbye, big paycheck”)—that I shifted my pie intentions. Pie was no longer a wily attempt to impress guys. Pie became a way to restore balance. To soothe my tired, overworked soul. To get grounded after spending too much time in front of a computer and too little time interacting with people. Pie was a vehicle to transport me back to a time before computers and cell phones, when neighbors still stopped by unannounced for a back-door visit.
Instead of using my nimble fingers to type emails to the coworkers sitting in the cubicles right next to me, I put my hands to use, making something tangible and mouth-watering to be savored and appreciated by others. Just as my dad taught us kids to moan with pleasure over each bite of banana cream pie, I relished the joy with which my pie-loving customers, rich and famous or not, consumed my homemade pies.
My transition from my workaholic life in San Francisco to pie baking in Malibu was surprisingly seamless. Upon my return to L.A., I discovered a new gourmet-food shop had opened in Malibu. The place was called Mary’s Kitchen and an article in the local Surfside News claimed it was known for its outstanding pie made by the café’s namesake, Mary Spellman.
Mary was a transplant from the Hamptons in New York, where she had run the Sagaponak General Store. She had been persuaded by a customer-turned-investor to move West.
And now, in the Cross Creek Shopping Center (your basic L.A. strip mall), wedged between a Starbucks and a swimwear boutique, here she was. The front of her shop was decorated with picket fencing and picnic tables covered in vintage flowered cloths. Entering through the screen door, you were met by the hot deli section displaying a plethora of comfort food—meatloaf, mashed potatoes, macaroni and cheese with the emphasis on the cheese. In the cold deli section, there were countless wedges of white, yellow, blue, gooey and hard cheeses, and an endless row of salamis hanging from the ceiling. In the bakery section, brick-size brownies, cookies as big as dinner plates and zesty-looking lemon bars radiating with California citrusy sunshine all beckoned. There was a lot of good food. But there was no pie.
On my scouting trip, I inquired of the elegant blonde woman working behind the counter, “Where’s the pie? I read that you have great pie.”
She nodded and asked me to wait. “Let me go check with Mary.”
A woman emerged from the kitchen in back, rounding the corner from behind the hot deli case. A six-foot-tall Amazon in a baseball hat, wire-rimmed glasses, black-and-white-checkered chef’s pants and a white apron smeared with various representations of whatever she had been cooking—this was Mary. “Can I help you?” she asked.
“I came for pie,” I said. “But you don’t have any.”
“We’re too busy to make it,” she replied in a brusque Long Island accent. Her voice was as powerful as her presence.
My response popped out like a premature champagne cork. “I’ll make it for you,” I said. When I had quit the dot com job and told my bosses I wanted to make pie, I originally intended the statement to be a symbolic one. I hadn’t actually thought it through. But the opportunity magically presented itself, the genie was here to grant my wish. (Note to self: watch it on the subliminal wishes; they’re always the most powerful ones.)
Mary stifled a chuckle. “What are your qualifications?” she wanted to know, sizing me up to see if I was serious. I hadn’t seen the moment coming, but when it arrived, I realized just how serious I was.
“I’m from Iowa,” I answered. I couldn’t say I was a web producer or a freelance journalist to get this job. “I come from the land of pie.” She just stood there, arms folded across her bosom. So I blathered on. “Actually, I learned how to bake from a pastry chef, a retired merchant marine. He taught me how to make apple pie when I was caught stealing apples from his tree.” Yes, I am fully aware that sometimes I can be a complete bumbling idiot.
“Okay,” she said with the hint of a smile. “Come back tomorrow and we’ll see how you do. Be here at one. Oh, and the pay is $7.50 an hour. Are you okay with that?”
Seven-fifty an hour? To bake pie and not sit in front of a computer sixteen hours a day? To work in a bustling, cozy kitchen by the sea instead of a cavelike cubicle in a hermetically sealed high-rise? Yes, I was totally okay with that.
Looking back, however, I admit it was a miracle that I lasted beyond the first day in Malibu. In spite of all those pies I’d made for boyfriends, I was very much out of practice. Or, in reality, my pie-making skills weren’t that polished in the first place. But Mary was an outstanding teacher.
When I showed up for my Malibu pie audition, Mary walked me over to what would be my work station, a small fluorescent-lit room off to the side of the kitchen packed with refrigerators, an industrial-size Hobart mixer, two convection ovens and a stainless steel table with flour and sugar bins stored underneath. A shelf above the table held a stack of dog-eared, stained cookbooks, and another shelf held a disarray of measuring cups and spice jars. The space was so tight you could almost stand in the middle and touch each appliance without moving.
“Let’s see what you can do,” Mary announced.
I froze. I hadn’t actually made a pie in … Oh, shit, I had no idea when I had made my last pie.
“Let me show you how I do it,” Mary said when it became clear by my catatonic state that I needed help. I stepped aside. She held a two-cup measuring cup in her bear-paw-size hands and scooped out flour into a gray tub, the kind normally used for bussing dishes. I counted along with her as she dumped twenty-two level cupfuls into the tub.
“I learned to bake pies from my mom,” she said, as she pulled several pounds of butter out of the fridge. “She ran a boardinghouse in the Hamptons and cooked for all the guests. Pie was her specialty. She made pies of every kind—coconut cream, chocolate cream, lemon meringue, blackberry, blueberry, peach, apple, you name it.”
She turned back to the refrigerator and pulled out a plastic bag full of something hard, white and greasy—like Crisco, only denser. “This is lard,” she explained when she saw the puzzled look on my face. “My mom used lard. Some people don’t like it, but that’s how we do it here—half butter, half lard.”
Using her bare hands, Mary worked the butter and lard into the flour. My eyes grew wide. “You use your hands?” I asked. “The merchant marine chef taught me to use knives.”
“Hands work better,” she said. “You work the fat into the flour with your fingers until you have the consistency of large peas.” She talked as she mixed. “This is enough dough for ten pies. We’ll just make one now, but you’ll use the rest of the dough later.” Next, she poured ice water into the flour mix. “The key here is to be light and gentle,” she said. Though there was nothing light and gentle about Mary physically, from the way her hands moved through the dough, it was obvious she possessed a tender, loving side. She lifted the flour from underneath, letting it fall from her fingers to let the water blend in without forcing it.
“Don’t overwork the