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The Recipe for a Real Blueberry Pie

Originally published in The Nome Nugget, Summer 1995

Blueberry season is almost over in Nome. It hasn’t been an easy berry-picking season for us Nomeites with weeks and weeks of rain. You could hear it in the murmurs at the post office, you could see it in the listless faces on Front Street. We
were teased with one sunny day and then plunged into dark storm for weeks. Berry buckets hung on nails, berry dreams were dreamt as we tossed and turned. And for me, day after day in a small apartment gets longer and smaller with three small boys.

The first ingredient for a real blueberry pie is to marry someone who appreciates a good pie. My husband appreciates solid, peasant fare like potatoes and beans and tortillas and cornbread. He was also born in Oregon, famous for berries. My mother’s people canned fruit in Michigan, blueberries among them, so I qualified as a berry person.
The second ingredient is a good crust. Back in college I learned an odd crust recipe that you shape into the pan with your hands. No rolling. The person who taught me this recipe lived in a nearby apartment also taught me to crochet and choose jazz records.

Another ingredient is real blueberries. My family went out two times to pick blueberries in the Nome area. Each time was on a Sunday after the paper had been read, the card games played, and the dishes washed. The gun was packed for the bears, the sodas for the car sickness, and the candy bars for the small boy thank-yous of being with their parents and not fighting too much.

The last essential ingredient is the performance art of eating the pie in the presence of the maker. When my husband came home late that night, I left a “do not touch” sign on the cooling pie. I did not want to pack any pie in his lunch the next day, either. I wanted to watch him cut the slice, slide a forkful into his mouth, watch his eyes close, and listen for the “mmmmmm.” That was my payment, and I could wait.

I don’t understand how the makers of homemade pies at diners and truck stops can stand just selling their wares to people who will serve the pies to people they’ll never meet. I want to see the face, hear the animal sounds of appreciation, and taste my creation elbow to elbow with everybody else. Now, that’s a pie.

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