Pie Glog Video

Pie Glog Essay

Grandma’s Pie

Cara Roth

I am a picky eater. I always have been and always will be. But every time we take a trip to my grandparents’ house we end up having pie for dessert. Cherry, apple, blueberry. I don’t like pie. I’m sorry, pie-lovers. I really don’t. So I never eat it; I stick to my ice cream. On every day of the year except one: Thanksgiving. Thomas C. Foster tells us that “breaking bread is an act of sharing and peace” (Foster 8). And what better time to focus on sharing and peace than the holidays? And thanksgiving is certainly the only time when I am at peace with a piece of pie. Pumpkin Pie.

There is no pumpkin pie quite like grandma’s. My mom can’t quite make it and I’m not really sure I can make it either. But my grandmother can’t make it anymore. So the pie I bake is as close as it gets. A little background: a few years ago my grandmother suffered a stroke that paralyzed her entire left side. So she can no longer cook; and the loss of her meals, most noticeably that pie, is what enlightened for me the importance of food. As Kathryn Twiss said, “We are what we eat. We also are where we eat, how we eat, and whom we eat with.” And although the who, where and how are still factors in our annual Thanksgiving meal, losing a part of the “what” means I lose a part of myself. The part of me that loved to visit her grandparents on sundays and holidays. The part that was seven years old, sitting on the couch next to grandma, enjoying the only pie I didn’t gripe and complain about. The only pie that meant my grandparents need not chuckle at my stubbornness and pull out the ice cream and sprinkles for. We find ourselves in food and the relationships that introduced us to those foods. Mervyn Claxton writes that “the techniques utilized to prepare and process foods . . . can have an important influence on social and familial relationships” as they did for me. I can’t say for sure whether I achieved my grandmother’s technique for pie but I found a connection to her and to my family in the process of trying.

Works Cited

Claxton, Mervyn. "Culture, Food, and Identity." N.p., n.d. Web. 4 Dec. 2013.

Foster, Thomas C. "Nice to Eat With You: Acts of Communion." How to Read Literature like a Professor: A Lively and Entertaining Guide to Reading between the Lines. New York: Quill, 2003. 8. Print.

Twiss, Katherine C. "Join Academia.edu & Share Your Research with the World." The Archaeology of Food and Identity. Southern Illinois University, 01 Jan. 2007. Web. 08 Dec. 2013.

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