marriage pie

Today I came across the story of Engagement Chicken which makes me laugh. Mostly, this is because of an old family joke involving pecan pie.

I've been baking for years. Rough translation: I've been baking since I could reach the counter-top. Pies, for a long time, were a specialty of mine, though I don't do them often anymore. Apple pie, leftover turkey pot pie, cream pie ... I like my pie. Suffice it to say, by the time I was in university my grandma should have tasted a few of my pies. At least.

My second to last year of high school, I went on a band trip to New Orleans. Of course that was just full of awesome. Duh, right? One of my favourite pieces of awesome was this amazing slice of pecan pie I had for dessert one night. I'm a little sad to say that I'd never had pecan pie before. Fast forward a couple of years, and I'm slowly finishing up first year university. In the dessert tray of the cafeteria up pops slices of pecan pie. Good, but not good like New Orleans pecan pie. There began the craving. I needed pecan pie. It was a must. I would stop mid-lecture and find myself drooling, the with the ghost of sweet gooey pie teasing my tastebuds. There would be no stopping me until I got my hands on this pie.

Just before Easter break, I was on the phone to my mother, reminiscing about this beautiful pecan pie. I was determined to recreate it, or at least attempt to.

"I think I'm going to make pecan pie while I'm home."
"Ok. I'll get pecan pie ingredients."
"Thanks Mom."
"Hey, you know pecan pie is a lot like buttertarts, right?"
"Ok???? Where does that come from."
"Your Aunt Lil had a super secret ingredient for buttertarts that made them spectacular. You should try it."

So, of course, I did. I made the pie, I used the super secret ingredient (weird but works SO WELL) and served it up at Easter dinner. Good pie. Great pie even, but I'm not sure it was as good as the New Orleans pie. Nothing special, right? Except for the fact that when my old-world Hungarian grandmother tried my pie she had something to say about it. In Hungarian, of course.

It took me three requests to get my mortified mother to translate. Apparently, I was as of that moment, eligible for marriage in my grandmother's eyes.

I've still yet to make that pie for Bunny. It's become a bit mythical in my family: the suggestion is that me making that pie is akin to a man proposing and Bunny had been informed that he would not be seeing this pie until after he asked. He's still waiting, just based on the fact that that much corn syrup scares me, quite frankly. My brother and an ex had made jokes about this pie, there had been a suggestion that he would have proposed by planting a ring in a pecan pie.