The Pecan Pie Blunder

Whew! I made it through November.  What a crazy month!  I was on Neurology, my home service throughout the entire month of November.  It was good, because it was familiar & I could finally see how far I came, but it was rough, because at some points there were too many patients to see and not enough doctors to go around = I’m exhausted. 

I cannot WAIT for Christmas to get here!  I want to see my parents & my family.  We went to Chris’ parents’ house for Thanksgiving weekend this year, which was nice.  They were already asking & expecting for us to come back to their house for Christmas, too…and I know they are not happy that we are driving (yes, driving) across the country to my parents’ house.  The expectations!! It’s incredible- when you get married, what you are now expected to do. And I’ve obviously got a learning curve when it comes to this brand-new wife-with-a-full-time-job thing.  I don’t want to hurt either of our parents’ feelings, but I don’t like for Chris & I to be ordered around or expected as a matter of course to show up to either parents’ houses for all the holidays (a physical impossibility, since they live across the country from each other).  And don’t even ask when Christmas cards will arrive!!

Also, I was unaware that my new marital status influenced my cooking/baking skill.  Were you?  On Thanksgiving Day, I brought a pie to some wonderful friends for dinner.  It was a brown sugar pecan pie with a cinnamon sugar crust, on which I had planned to dedicate this post.  Everything was from scratch; the crust was hand rolled, the cinnamon and sugar added in exacting amounts, and the pecan filling was prepared with great care.  I popped the pie into the oven, and took it out right on time.  It looked and smelled perfect. 

On Thanksgiving Day, another guest (mom in law of our friends) had also brought 2 pies: apple and pecan.  Everyone had declared jokingly that a competition of the pecan pies was only natural and a side-by-side comparison was necessary to determine the best pie. I took this as an excuse for the usual Thanksgiving gluttony of eating all available desserts.

We sat down for dessert, and when I arrived to the table, I overheard the other guest saying “You know a bride’s cooking….” and thought to myself how odd that saying was.  For example, I am a new bride, but I have been cooking forever and took that saying to mean that a new bride’s cooking cannot be good.  I snapped out of my thoughts and realized my pie was not at the table…so naturally, I rose to go get it.  I was stopped and told that as it was cut into, the filling was still liquid and it could not be served.  Then the guest said again, “You can’t trust a bride’s cooking.” 

I went to look at the pie I brought, and it was quite obvious it only needed to bake a little longer.  It was certainly not a total pecan pie loss…but no one had wanted to put it in the oven to bake right then, so none of my pie was served.  I sat back down at the table, and the other guest started to say how difficult pecan pies are to bake and how you truly needed the experience of years of baking in order to know what you’re doing. 

I was furious.  And yes, I ate her pecan pie, and it was overbaked and dry (and you can’t come back from that).  But when did all of that become so competitive for her???  It’s just pie, and I made it so that everyone could enjoy and share and celebrate Thanksgiving.  Instead, I was made to feel as though my marital status had any bearing on my baking.  Yes, I did cry on the way home.  Maybe it’s stupid, but that’s how I show that I care about people, and I felt rejected.

I was told after the fact that my pie was put back into the oven days later, and it was baked a little longer, and apparently delicious.  Take that, other guest.