In a feeble attempt to feign warmth and a devil-may-care attitude towards single digit temps, I ignore the fact that my shoulders have inched up to my ears, refusing to budge. The bakery kitchen is warm, perfumed with butter, offering a respite from January’s cold, cold, heart.
 
There are slim pickins’ in my little corner of the pie world. A case of apples taunting with the word organic are tired and gnarled, almost as depressing as the incessant rain pounding against the cracked skylight above my workbench. Last week’s pears remain about as flavorful as the wooden crate they rode in on. Despite my daily glaring and prodding, they are unmoved, refusing to ripen. Change is hard but the pears are harder. They should be ready around Valentine’s Day.
 
A stack of pie shells doze in the freezer, amidst five pound bags of wild blueberries offering more color than flavor. The tiny berries cannot stand alone in pie and are best left to crumb-topped coffee cakes. Ziploc bags busting with chopped cranberries are frosty beneath a veil of freezer burn. I haven't the heart to  pair them with the  organic apples. I shift my attention from freezer to walk-in.
 
Pie options are limited to a case of lemons, one of oranges, and bottles of tart-tongued key lime juice. Key lime wins, with lemon a close second. The oranges are better suited to cakes, rarely associated with pies, although their fragrant zest is a welcome addition to the pies of summer and anything cranberry. Two of winter’s brightest additions haven’t crossed the walk-in threshold; fragrant Meyer lemons remain elusive and grapefruit never makes the cut. It’s such a shame, because Meyer lemons with their floral sweetness, and grapefruits with their sweet and  sourness provide the perfect antidote to the drab, gray of winter. 
 
Disengaging from a cavernous Cambro tub filled with graham cracker crumbs mixed with sugar and melted butter, I toss my slightly used apron in the laundry bag.   Braving the steady downpour, the car knows its way  to Trader Joe’s. Paying careful attention to any and all display items likely to come crashing to the ground as I breeze past, I  navigate my shopping cart towards the produce aisle.  Wandering amongst the bright pyramids of citrus, I pretend I’m on vacation. Grabbing a bag of Cara Cara oranges and a handful of small but respectable pink grapefruits, I totally bypass the pears, without so much as a sideways glance. I know better.

Based on the number of Amazon delivery truck sightings in and around my neighborhood, it appears much of the world shops online. I prefer to see and handle things up close and personal. On-line shopping gives me pause, unless I’m receiving support from one of the friendly phone operators on the other end of the 1-800 L. L. Bean telephone lines. They understand me, provide guidance, answer my questions, never force me to click that tiny little shopping cart that pops up in the right hand corner of the computer screen. That shopping cart icon causes me anxiety, never willing to accept one single item, always making additions.  It loves to taunt with the promise of express check-out, only to leave me dazed, confused, and exiting the site having purchased 13 baking pans when all I want is one.
 
My housemates will tell you that I will never, ever, need to purchase another baking pan for the remainder of my baking days. From their perspective, they are constantly attempting to free a simple item from a cabinet, or a drawer, or a shelf, only to face an onslaught of bakeware. The pans range in size from diminutive tartlets to individual springforms to cavernous cake pans capable of easily feeding one hundred wedding guests. I have pans with removable bottoms that love to separate and crash to the floor, assorted cupcake pans of varying depths, and more than enough pie plates to satisfy a calendar’s worth of offerings.
 
The same can be said for the cabinet filled with sugars, flours, and extracts. Following a series of
 interventions, it was suggested that my baking items be shifted from the entire kitchen to one substantial cabinet. It is a struggle that I have learned to acknowledge, re-aligning decorative sugars and quirky spices to accommodate various bags of flour and a wide assortment of sweeteners. Although one would think that I couldn’t possibly need to add to this baking pantry, I have recently, and  joyfully, made room for a few additions.
 
A few weeks back, before the holiday craziness breezed through town, I received an extravagant package from the kind folks at Jones and Co. Flavorings. The company prides itself on sourcing vanilla from small-plot vanilla cultivators, local farmers often overlooked by large producers. In addition to vanilla, they offer many wonderful extracts, sugars, and flavorings from all over the world. My work and home kitchen environment is tethered to vanilla extract; it is an integral part of every baker’s pantry. It is the ingredient that is linked to our childhood baking memories, a small, red-capped bottle that when opened, unleashed a flood of baking possibilities.
 
I have made room in my chaotic baking pantry to welcome some beautiful sugars and extracts, just begging to be used. This week’s recipe takes advantage of January’s abundant citrus crop. Before the three-day weekend envelops us in snow, make a stop at your local grocer and pick up some lemons, limes, and oranges. In the midst of winter, we can all use a little sunshine and if you’re lucky, a very good bottle of vanilla.

​January, barely two weeks old, is jam-packed with conflict and contradiction. On my short drive to work, I am assaulted by an abrasive commercial crackling out of the car radio. It seems the only way one can find happiness in 2019 is to contact Dr. L-O-S-E-W-E-I-G-H-T-N-O-W. The overly exuberant radio personality provides me with the 1-800 phone number necessary for connecting with the good doctor. Impatiently turning off the radio, I emancipate my paltry 8 oz. water bottle from the cup holder, adjust my bandana, and trudge down the street to work. Is this persistent commercial a sign to clean up my act, focus solely on fruits, vegetables, and the occasional rice cake? Will Dr. L-O-S-E-W-E-I-G-H-T-N-O-W  be simpatico with my daily dessert intake and more critically, how will the doc feel about my day job? Staying faithful to a profession where the primary focus is filling butter-riddled pie shells with sweetened fruit may not align with the doctor’s orders. Do I follow in the Teva-sandaled, Sorel-booted footsteps of those embarking on a clean eating journey? As I watch my resolutions continue to waver, then falter, it seems unlikely. I’m struggling with my feeble promise to consume less than half a bag of Cheesy Puffs in one sitting. As for skim milk in coffee, that resolution kicked off on January 1st and promptly ended on January 2nd.
 
Contrary to what the general population believes, individuals who spend the months of November and December plying others with holiday treats often feel deprived themselves. It is my belief that professional bakers deserve a sweets pardon, allowing them an extension on sweets consumption. The occasional gingerbread man with the broken arm and the crumbled meringue mushroom abandoned by a Bûche de Noël do not constitute a holiday dessert buffet. While the rest of the world is swearing off sugar, I’m hungry for something sweet, and someone to share it with.
 
How fortunate that Sibling-Sister-of-Toronto is swinging through town this weekend. There is only one woman who will patiently listen as I tick off my ‘Greatest Hits’ list of pies, cookies, and cakes, imploring her opinion, only to disregard her input. As the one driving the dessert cart, it is my job to choose and this weekend, I choose chocolate with a side of strawberry/rhubarb.
 
My week has already been filled with too many pie shells and graham cracker crusts. Taking a step back from my rolling pin feels necessary and restorative. Reaching into the depths of an unruly kitchen cabinet, I unearth my grandmother’s 9” Bake King cake pans and take them for a spin. Lined with parchment circles, they submit to buttering then flouring, then knocking out the excess. There is nothing flashy about these pans; they are steadfast and reliable, not too shallow, not too deep. The pans hold just the right amount of rich, chocolate batter that perfumes the kitchen, announcing ‘clean-test’ just before the oven timer beeps.
 
This particular chocolate cake was originally served at a very long table, in a very small Manhattan restaurant, at a milestone celebration, several milestones ago. It was one of the few times in my life that Jessie didn’t bake my birthday cake, a sobering realization that Jessie’s presence in our kitchen was finite. Jessie taught me the hows and whys of cake baking, defining and demonstrating ‘springy to the touch’ and ‘clean test.’ She preferred dramatic swoops of frosting to buttercream roses coaxed out of piping bags. One year, yielding to elementary school peer pressure, I pleaded for a Barbie doll cake from the Cedarhurst Bake Shop. Behind her black-framed glasses, Jessie raised her salt and pepper eyebrows in disdain. The Barbie doll cake was wildly popular with my fourth grade classmates, but couldn’t hold a candle to Jessie’s towering checkerboard cake with dark chocolate frosting.
 
For decades, Jessie’s vast repertoire of cakes held center stage at our dining room table. Years later, my sister whipped up some of the most exquisite and delicious celebratory cakes. When life-changing cakes were in order, my dearest pal/professional pastry chef, Betsy, outdid herself. We bakers are a strange lot, spending much of our lives turning out cakes (and pies) for people we will never meet. And when it comes time to don the paper crown, some of us whine and complain. Maybe what we’re really saying is, we don’t want someone else to do it.
 
A celebrated pie baker/author once whispered to me, “I don’t want someone else to bake my pie; I want to bake my pie.” I understood exactly what she was saying. Cake, just like pie, creates indelible food memories. We want to get our hands on those memories and re-create them. And we think we are the only one who can do it.
 
So when I head to the kitchen with the intent of baking a very specific, triple layer chocolate cake, it’s because my food memory is telling my brain, this is a proper candle blowing cake. The kind of cake that should be blanketed in great swoops of frosting, crowned with but a single candle to signify celebration. The very cake to slice with a multi-pronged, silver cake breaker that will dot the tablecloth with confetti crumbs. The cake that calls for the very best butter and cocoa the color of midnight and maybe, because it’s January, something that hints at the promise of spring. A cake that will became fixated in one’s food memory, the fragrance of chocolate and flame and candle wax permeating the air, long after the last licks of frosting have been scraped from our plates.

We have reached the tipping point of the holiday season where we teeter closer to January, a month sprinkled with far less tinsel and merriment. The New Year threatens to expose our recently expanded waistlines and our freshly elevated cholesterol levels, sending us scurrying back to the gym. We reacquaint ourselves with treadmills, stationary bikes, and replenished water bottles. For those of us revisiting frozen outdoor running surfaces, we will dodge the empty corrugated Amazon boxes that topple from curbside to sidewalk.
 
Bakers will scratch their heads, dreaming of ways to reconfigure calorie laden treats, aligning with our resolutions to eat healthy. Some will go as far as to swear off sugar, a concept I respect but cannot abide by. I will continue to follow the doctrine of my father who believed in the combination of moderation plus exercise. This translates into baking a 7” cheesecake instead of a 9” and divvying it up into a dozen slices.  Double crusted full size pies will be scaled down to single serving, open-faced chiffons featuring citrus. In a feeble attempt to climb back on the sensible eating bandwagon, I might add frothed skim milk to my morning coffee instead of whole. Seems far more likely that I’ll switch over to tea.
 
I am not sorry to see the holidays end, taking all of their retail insanity with them. My hope is  for a few lingering chestnuts and open fires to stave off the winter chill. Nice knowing you December, but I'm looking forward to the sass of January citrus and cashmere mittens on sale.   Should your New Year’s weekend force you to brave the mall or post office as you return all of your unwanted gifts, find consolation in the words of Charles Schultz, as eloquently spoken by Lucy Van Pelt.
 
Lucy Van Pelt: I know how you feel about all this Christmas business, getting depressed and all that. It happens to me every year. I never get what I really want. I always get a lot of stupid toys or a bicycle or clothes or something like that.

Charlie Brown: What is it you want?

Lucy Van Pelt: Real estate.
 
Chances are real estate will not be in the offing for most of us. Regardless, may your New Year be bright and your dessert plate over-filled with goodness, enjoyed amidst your favorite company.
 
 

​Rummaging through too many out-of-print holiday food magazines, I recently came across a book that was given to me many Decembers ago by Sibling Sister, Barbara. Newly armed with a Masters degree in Historic Preservation and Urban Planning, Barbara casually mentioned that members of her architecturally savvy office team were participating in a holiday bake-off.     One team was creating some sort of baked good suspended in jello, or what I envisioned a Pacific Northwest Gingerbread House competition to resemble. My days were spent running a restaurant in Philadelphia, which often entailed baking, building, and delivering wedding cakes. Barbara thought it might be a good idea for me to take my head out of Martha Stewart’s Tiffany blue hardcover treatise Weddings, and peruse a different kind of book.
 
What It Feels Like To Be A Building, written by professor and architectural virtuoso Forrest Wilson, combined succinct explanation with humorous illustration. A far cry from the approach taken by my art history professors in Ithaca and London, Professor Wilson was speaking my language. Without broaching the topic of Wilton plastic wedding cake dividers and snap-in columns, without uttering the words, ‘royal icing,’ Professor Wilson offered valuable insight to those of us dabbling in wedding cake and gingerbread architecture. What Professor Wilson forgot to mention was that one girl’s gingerbread house was another’s Vintersaga, and yet another’s Hexen Haus.
 
On my once yearly visit to IKEA in search of an odd sized/oversized picture frame, I was drawn to the Vintersaga (Gingerbread) aisle like confectioners’ sugar to pasteurized egg whites. The packaging and sentiment of the pre-fabricated gingerbread house forced me to add the $3.99 item to my cart. How could I resist a product that tempted with italicized signage adjacent to the Swedish meatballs and hot chocolate?
 
  In wintertime, Swedish families gather and make their homes cozy by preparing Christmas decorations while enjoying good things to eat. The home becomes a serene shelter from the winter cold.
 
Instead of gathering up the picture frame that didn’t quite fit in the shopping cart and exiting the building,  I faltered. As someone who has purchased and witnessed the all-too-real-struggle that is assemblage of IKEA home furnishings, I should have known better. I should known the gingerbread house would never be as easy to build as promised. 
 
The house was composed of six pieces plus a four-sided chimney. While I rhapsodized over Swedish families cozying up in front of the fireplace with mugs of steaming hot cocoa and bobbing marshmallows, I didn’t think beyond icy windowpanes. Of course the IKEA instructions promised easy set-up with minimal tools. Of course the packaging taunted with whimsical illustrations. The truth was, upon closer inspection the house was defective. Beyond the cherry red packaging and the step-by-step guide to assembly was a tidy plastic clamshell. Unsnapping the container and gingerly removing each piece, I noticed a huge fault line running diagonally across the western exterior wall of the house. I wanted to cry. Slathering a generous portion of royal icing across the crack in the foundation, I set it aside. The roof was composed of two identical, weighty pieces of gingerbread, whimsically imprinted with a lattice design. The folks at IKEA suggested through illustration that the rooftops should be piped in decorative icing. One of the two roof pieces was also broken, requiring intricate masonry work. Kicking myself for not purchasing two house kits, it was clear that my Vintersaga was  turning into a sad saga. One of the angular pieces of the chimney was broken, making it an unsafe platform for Santa, let alone his tiny reindeer. I was reminded of  a light sconce purchased from IKEA all those years ago,  one that promised to attach to the wall, shedding a beacon of late night reading light.  My Swedish-inspired tabletop cookie house was proving to be as unstable as the light sconce that never attached to the wall,  This was the first, and last time I would purchase a pre-fabricated holiday house.
 
Unwilling to return to the Swedish superstore at the height of the holiday season, I  played the gingerbread hand I was dealt. Rustling up a batch of Home Depot industrial strength royal icing, I slathered the fixative on all of the remaining broken house surfaces. Anxious to utilize European inspired roofing materials, I painstakingly cut miniature stroopwaffels and Belgian butter waffle into roof tiles. The truth was, the design of my little seasonal house was not what I had envisioned. Not only were the windows uninspired, the front door was short and square and pedestrian. I wanted bow windows framing the front of the house, and a generous archway  welcoming compact ginger people through the front door. It was all wrong, all listing horribly to the side, despite a generous application of royal icing coupled with Dr. Oetker’s tube of baking glue. With one hand, I steadied the precarious foundation, adding interior gumdrop support at every buttress, every beam. It occurred to me that the IKEA design team should include additional cookie two by fours in their gingerbread house kits. It would also serve them well to peruse Professor Wilson’s What It Feels Like To Be A Building before embarking on next season’s Vintersaga blueprints.
 
On a side note, Trader Joe’s also offers a build-your-own Gingerbread House kit. Technically, the house is more A-frame than English Colonial, but it provides many accessories their Swedish competitors do not. Trader Joe’s Authentic German Hexen Haus offers brightly colored candies and jovial cookies, including an adorable dog. The sturdy gingerbread base features a cut-out  affording easy (and stable) assembly. Unlike the plastic clamshell that unsuccessfully harbored the IKEA building materials, the Trader Joe’s house is packed in an oversized cardboard box with a deep-sided rim. This provides a safe haven for the house as you build and embellish, catching any wayward icing or runaway candy.  
 
The gingerbread people and woodland creatures housed in and on my Vintersaga fear for their little lives. They would have been safer bobbing around in a bowl of jello. Listening carefully, I can almost hear the fractured wall and roof of the house shifting and settling, causing concern within the small molasses village. Vacuuming up the remnants of royal icing that stubbornly dot the carpet, I remain cautiously optimistic and reach for another sugared gumdrop.
 
 
 

​Seven years ago this week, I started a part-time job at a recently opened bakery in Maplewood, NJ, called The Able Baker. I was hired as a cookie decorator, joining a very small crew around a very long table. Our primary focus at the time was thousands of sugar cookies in varying sizes, sharing the commonality of Christmas.
 
My tenure at Williams-Sonoma and Tabora Farms had provided me with plenty of hours of cookie decorating. I took an open spot around the table at The Able Baker and grabbed a piping bag. In the background, Etta James crooned “At Last” on repeat, occasionally interrupted by Rosemary Clooney and Bing Crosby. The well-seasoned Hobart mixer droned on, beating quarts of egg whites and pounds of powdered sugar into fluffy submission. The ornamental icing was divvied up amongst half-quart plastic tubs. Drops of Christmas Red and Forest Green transformed the stark white royal icing into an instant holiday piping and painting medium. Blank cookie canvases were outlined, then filled, finally embellished with sugar crystals and edible candy pearls. Santas, snowmen, and tiny reindeer stared back from parchment lined sheet trays.
 
In the beginning of my tenure, the color palate remained fairly traditional, reds and greens with one renegade blue reindeer. In time, things changed, as did the faces around the table. More importantly, social media revolutionized our approach to cookie decorating, affording way too many examples and options to snag from the internet and make our own. It felt like cheating in some ways, a far cry from the early days, when cookie inspiration was limited to a handful of examples provided by the cookie cutter manufacturer and one’s imagination. Imagine that.
 
Seven years later, holiday cookies continue to be a mainstay of the bakery’s business. The baker’s racks are presently weighted down from top to bottom with overfilled sheet pans of everything Christmas, making the racks practically immobile, much like a pesky shopping cart with wheels that won’t turn. We have reached capacity around the worktable, with some new faces and a few seasoned worker bees. Thick royal icing spins around the tired Hobart mixer at a furious rate, splashing bits of stubborn meringue on bandanas and fingertips. There are now far too many food color choices to be contained in one oversized plastic tub. The array of sprinkles, edible glitter, and something identified as ‘disco dust,’  is staggering, crossing the line from whimsical to excessive. There remains one constant however; once you walk away from the oven, out of earshot of the oven timer, that is when the cookies will turn from golden to dark brown to burnt. 
 
It seems appropriate this week to share a little background information on my cookie decorating past. From the early days on the blog, December 2013:
 
You Can’t Catch Me, I’m the Gingerbread Man
 
Truth be told, I arrived rather late to the Christmas Cookie/Eggnog party.  The closest our kitchen came to actual holiday cookie baking wasn't a holiday at all.  It knew no specific season, it was simply heralded by Jessie's aluminum Mirro cookie press. Technically, I suppose, you could consider this Christmas cookie-ing, or Spritz cookie-making.  In a somewhat child-like disconnect, it reminded me just a bit of my Play-do Fun Factory, and was infinitely more fun than Mr. Potato Head. The chocolate and vanilla doughs were quick and easy to mix. The challenge was selecting just the right cookie disc. I agonized over the myriad of choices and always gravitated towards the dog, maybe because he shared just the slightest resemblance to the dog in Monopoly.  In hindsight, I must admit that somewhere between going into the oven and twelve minutes later, exiting the oven, the poor doggie looked nothing like the picture in the Mirro-Cookie press recipe pamphlet.  And although Spritz cookies were apparently quite comfortable gussied up for the Christmas holidays, there was nary a green or red sprinkle to be found in our kitchen.

My first foray into the professional Christmas cookie leagues began when I was hired to work at Williams-Sonoma.  I had restaurant experience which plummeted me to the front of the demonstration line.  Whenever a new product or technique was center stage, I had the misfortune of being selected to "demo" the product.  Unpacking cases of holiday cookie decorating kits, I found myself knee-deep in sugars, icings and sprinkles boasting the titles, "Christmas Red" and "Evergreen Green."  To say this was baptism by fire sums it up rather accurately.  Standing at the demo counter, brandishing my piping bags, I had to  dig deep into my Ithaca College acting skills. I promised the decorating novices they, too, could boast their own cookie glitterati that very holiday season.  I piped red bow ties on terrified gingerbread boys.  I sprinkled crystal sanding sugars with great abandon, temporarily blinding a young woman leaning in a little too closely.  The regulation green Williams-Sonoma employee apron tied around my waist resembled a Jackson Pollack canvas of royal icings.  My audience waved farewell,  clutching their decorating kits with the same  fervor mother's had clutched Tickle Me Elmos a few years prior.  The store manager deemed it a very successful afternoon.  I clocked out and ran for my life. 

With every series of culinary jobs that followed, Christmas holidays found me armed with piping bags and literally hundreds of naked cookies waiting to be costumed. I  navigated angels on the wing with gold sugar crystals as they flew perilously close to reindeer sporting   oversized red non pareil noses. Gingerbread families dodged mistrals of confectioners' sugar, while the houses in which they lived fell victim to  asymmetrical window placement  and  slightly toxic gold metallic door knobs.   Every year, as Christmas slid into New Year's, it became easier and easier to understand  why Santa and Mrs. Claus had a penchant for eggnog.

I miss you, Memphis, and have allowed last week’s pie insanity to overshadow my recent trip to your remarkable city. Flour dusted clogs once again firmly planted in the kitchen, Hanukkah taunts, only to be followed by Christmas and New Year’s rockin’ eve. Assaulted by warm spices, chubby gingerbread, and the threat of year-end resolutions, I find myself day dreaming of a city that unfolds along the mighty Mississippi.
 
After three short days in Memphis, it seems there is no such thing as bad cholesterol; it all tastes incredibly good. The chicken fried steak and the crunchy fried chicken, smoking hot hush puppies, and fried green tomatoes, every bite is positively restorative to someone who inhales clouds of confectioners’ sugar on a daily basis. Late night beignets drizzled with dulce de leche and early morning doughnuts oozing Jack Daniels pastry cream should be approached with caution then abandon. Memphis encourages us to bring our soul but forgets to remind us to bring our stretchy pants.
 
Surrounded by new faces that would soon become friends, our formidable hosts from SAVEUR magazine navigated our food travels. Criss-crossing the city, we squeezed into chrome legged chairs and leatherette banquettes, perched on bar stools, resting elbows and cellphones on laminate tabletops, smooth wooden bars, and linen draped banquet tables. We spiked our meals with hot sauce, laced our coffee with cream. Sugar poured freely and so did the local spirits. Three days provided a tapas of a city brimming with history, culture, and distinctive cuisine.
 
Personally, Memphis reminded me that my diet is severely lacking in anything batter-dipped, anything plumped in dangerously hot oil. Reunited with fried food made me realize that we should never have broken up.
 
The festival of lights is mere days away, affording me the opportunity to rekindle my love affair with foods plunged into sizzling oil. Hanukkah is notorious for encouraging copious consumption of latkes and jelly doughnuts. This season, inspiration stems from two Memphis restaurants; The Liquor Store, who introduced me to the genius that is a biscuit beignet, and The Four Way Soul Food Restaurant, serving up the sweetest yams to ever snuggle up alongside a behemoth serving of fried chicken. The marriage of the beignet and the yams resulted in a sweet potato jelly doughnut, which some folks might consider a sensible holiday indulgence.
 
Memphis is a city I hope to return to, although the next go around will be markedly different. SAVEUR brought together globally diverse creatives, affording us the opportunity to share and consider food cultures and traditions beyond our own kitchens. That in itself, is a gift far more lasting than a deep fat fryer and a new pair of pants with a stretchy waistband. Happy Hanukkah.
 
 
 

​The house doesn’t smell like Thanksgiving this year. Absent is the distinctive assault of sweet onions sizzling in butter, the perfume of fresh thyme and sage, the very specific aroma of matzoh stuffing and an oversized turkey fighting for oven space. There’s the slightest hint of caramel in the air from the Wild Nut pie that seeped out of the springform and pooled along the corners of the baking pan. Burnt sugar is stubborn the morning after, refusing to surrender beneath a sponge and scalding water.
 
A little before nine am, the television remote quickly adjusted from CBS to NBC, Al Roker is brandishing a large pair of shears and my holiday begins.  The ribbon is cut for a parade first launched in 1924; Macy’s legendary Thanksgiving Day celebration. Revelers bracing frigid temps line the parade route snaking down from Central Park West and 77th Street to Herald Square. I’m less cold in my kitchen with the oven turned up to 425 degrees. Three hours of marching bands and Broadway show tunes punctuated by the high kicks of the Rockettes and larger-than-life balloons, serve as background accompaniment to my personal pie baking.
 
Drew’s Wild Nut pie dozes on the dining room table, already turned out of its springform and divvied up under the blade of a commercial serrated knife. History has shown that trying to slice through a pound of nuts with a delicate pie server is torturous for the baker and the dessert seekers. I’m waiting for the ice crystals on the rhubarb to dissipate and the excess moisture from the butternut squash to drip through a fine mesh strainer.
 
Looking up from my butcher block table, I catch the eye of the Pillsbury Dough Boy balloon. In my sleep-deprived-over-pied state, I take this as a good sign. Perhaps the Dough Boy is giving me a nod, indicating I’ve made it to the other side of Thanksgiving. It’s time to be grateful.
 
My year has been punctuated by the luxury of travel, affording me the gift of time with some of my favorite people. It has also opened the door to new acquaintances from far-flung parts of the world. The opportunity to feast upon idle time in magnificent cities brimming with history and extraordinary local food, overfills my Thanksgiving gravy boat.
 
This afternoon, faces will circle a holiday table that extends just beyond the dining room to include a child-sized folding table. There will be too much turkey and a hotly debated sweet potato offering and parsley flecked matzoh stuffing. We will struggle to release the requisite blueberry-studded gelatin from my grandmother’s fluted jello mold and cleanse our palates with After Eight mints that have been smuggled in from the UK. Pie will make an entrance, then an exit, only to reappear Friday morning. The patriarch of the family would have approved of pie bookending his favorite holiday. My favorite holiday, too.

Armed with an unwieldy branch of brussel sprouts and a can of organic pumpkin, I watch Friendsgiving cut in line, right in front of Thanksgiving. Someone should ring the crew member bell alerting the store manager, but it won’t be me. I don’t want any trouble. A few years back I had a falling out with Thanksgivukkah over some decorated cookies, and I'm still recovering. The truth is Friendsgiving and I have never met.

While the appeal of a holiday based on assembling your best pals for the sole purpose of consuming festive eats and drinks is understandable, there’s no room on my plate for Friendsgiving. Ask my co-workers and family, and they will tell you I am not feeling particularly friendly on the days leading up to Thanksgiving. Traveling the narrow path between home and bakery and back again, I am in a constant state of simmer, like a stockpot of sweetened condensed milk morphing into dulce de leche. My temper teeters on explosion, making me an unlikely candidate to attend an event based on comraderie. There's a reason for this and it has to do  with pies and people and pressure.
 
The mental and physical pressures of Pie-mageddon are staggering. Tethered to rolling pins and pie plates, I bob and weave against a steady onslaught of pumpkin puree and unruly apples. I am a liaison between pie shells and fresh fruit, an ambassador of sweeteners and spices, a pie traffic controller, guiding and overseeing hundreds of pies as they embark on their oven journey. Armed with a pair of worn oven mitts that are just the slightest bit crunchy on the inside, I march across a battlefield of butter, flour, sugar, fruit, and nuts. Nuts are not limited to pecan halves and pieces, but extend to the occasional retail customer. The one who needs more chocolate lining the bottom of their pecan pie. The one who wants a smaller ratio of cranberries to apples in their cranberry/apple pie. The individual bad mouthing the oatmeal almond crumb, imploring for a crumb pie without the crumb on top. The person who feels the need to go on social media insinuating there must be another bakery in town where she can secure an apple pie. Friendsgiving? I couldn’t possibly and you wouldn’t want me, so please don’t add an extra place setting. You will be better suited inviting someone who is happy to contribute a pie still warm from the oven, melting the plastic of the Tupperware carrier, the lid slightly askew.
 
I haven’t time for Friendsgiving, because I’m too busy worrying. Worrying about the  pies and whether there will be enough room in the ovens and  the walk-in refrigerators, and whether or not the pies will find good homes.  The seven hundred or so individuals swarming into the bakery next Wednesday are  preoccupied  and distracted. From a safe distance in the rear of the kitchen, I’ll witness a blur of windowed pie boxes launched from metro shelving into kraft paper shopping bags.  Shopping bags that barely accommodate the fragile pies. Pies hot enough to burn through your favorite cashmere gloves with the ribbed cuffs. With the free falling finesse of a tilt-a-whirl, double crusted apples and delicate pumpkin custards will land with a not-so-gentle thud, jostled by the next coffee-clutching person in line. My eyes get misty just thinking about it. The nightmare of watching people mistreat your pies by carelessly tossing them into the backseat of their SUV is real. You wouldn’t treat your baby-on-board that way, would you?
 
A Thanksgiving pie maker's dream is a table surrounded by happily  sated guests, leaning back in their chairs, slightly giddy from that last smidgen of pie. The ultimate compliment is learning that pie is the first thought that crosses someone's mind the morning after Thanksgiving. Drowsy from tryptophan, many will pad their way to the kitchen in fleece-lined slippers and flannel pajamas. Struggling with the French press and fumbling for a fork, they will aim for the nearest pie plate leftovers. 
 
Friendsgiving may find you seated on a folding chair in a tiny apartment, balancing a plate on your lap. It might mean the discomfort of whacking your leg against the leg of an expandable IKEA table stretched between two rooms. It may also require a journey on mass transit, promising  an abbreviated holiday schedule. Regardless, be sure to wear something featuring an expandable waistband and tote along a few empty Tupperware containers for leftovers. As for cutting the turkey without me, I insist, Friends, go right ahead.
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