Opening scene:  4 pm Saturday, The Lab*

Every surface, including my face, is covered in flour. I look at the oven clock. It’s 4:00 pm, then suddenly 4:01. Only 44 minutes before I have to depart for the church picnic. I wipe my brow, smudging it with purple goo. I’m trying to seal the edges of the circular hand pie on the counter, but cream cheese filling keeps oozing out around the edges.

I shout, “Damn it, I’m running out of time!”

Then, more softly but with even more desperation: “Oh God. There’s no time. What am I supposed to do?”

The audience** wonders: How did she end up like this?

*A.K.A. my kitchen

** A.K.A. my cat

I know that good recipes are created through a combination of inspiration and careful research methods. The most successful ones are tested and re-tested until they can be distilled into delicious, foolproof formulas. I don’t have the resources for that, though. When I create a recipe, I take more of a middle-school-science-project approach. Usually I half-form a lofty idea, then stitch a plan together from scraps of ideas I find in cookbooks, internet recipe archives, comment sections, Wikipedia articles, and things I overhear grandma-looking ladies say on the bus. Finally, hours before it’s “due”, I attempt the project exactly once.

Life-theme alert: It rarely goes as planned. Some of my “inventions” include: Gluten-free dairy-free raspberry chocolate cake roll (I have to use the word “oozy” to describe it. Sorry – I’m upset about it too); Sour-cream streusel berry pie (Looked like a pie, tasted like pie-flavored frittata); And vegan coconut mango pie (with a filling that evoked the spawn of a coconut jello jiggler and a bowl of oatmeal, wrapped in a blanket of jam).

For the most part, these weren’t abysmal failures. They were all satisfactorily dessert-flavored. But they weren’t quite successes either. Caitlin originals tend to come out sort of like Ryan Murphy projects: The elements are proven effective on their own (i.e. attractive teens + singing, or chocolate cake + pudding), but when they come together they make a misshapen mess that leaves a weird taste in your mouth. And yet – life theme alert number two – I have not learned my lesson! Just last week, I attempted to create a new hand pie recipe for a church picnic potluck.

Before I delve back into that story (so deftly teased at the top) I want you to know that I know how low the stakes actually were. The rational part of me understood that the Lutherans at this picnic wouldn’t renounce me over sub-par hand pies. But the rational part of me isn’t in the captain’s chair when I bake under pressure. So I’m going to tell the story from my emotional perspective.  To get into the right head space – that is, to understand how important the pies felt to me – pretend you’re watching a blockbuster thriller. In it, the hand pies are actually a vaccine that I have to complete before alien invaders release a plague that will destroy Earth, beginning with my church choir. Also, pretend Brandon Routh is my assistant/love interest because DON’T QUESTION MY EMOTIONAL TRUTH.

Scene two: 10 am Saturday, Farmers Market

Nowhere feels more full of promise on a Saturday morning than the farmers market. As I stroll around, I can pretend I’m the sort of person who might buy potted herbs and plant them in a container made out of a hollowed-out tree trunk. Or who might buy a woven basket full of local produce, then simmer it into jam on one of those “lazy Sundays” that lady food bloggers insist exist. Actually, I’m the sort of person who samples ten different fruits before deciding to buy jam instead. What I’m saying is, the Farmer’s market is a magical place.

Today I have a long list of produce I need for the week’s recipes, including rhubarb for the hand pies I plan to make for the picnic this afternoon. The last stand at the back corner of the market has had crates full of it in past weeks. But this week as I approach, I don’t see them. I realize that, now that I’m thinking about it, I didn’t see rhubarb at any of the other stands either. This must mean…

…Tilting closeup. Screeching violins…Rhubarb season is over.

I have to come up with a plan B. In the movie version, my assistant Brandon Routh would have done this for me. Back at the lab, he would have sifted through the Epicurious archives and talked me through my options in the field: “Do you see anything tart? Berries, maybe.”

“I…no!” I would have stammered as garlic scapes, heirloom radishes and artisan tofu swirled around me,  “Nothing as tart as rhubarb.”

He would take off his glasses and pinch the bridge of his nose in anguish. But then I would say, “Wait! There are blackberries. Will those work?”

“Yes! They might,” Brandon Routh would reply, “We’ll make them work. Together.”

But in non-movie reality, it’s just me and my iPhone. I note that, while none of the stands have rhubarb, several of them are heaped with glistening blackberries. I do a hasty internet search. Google assures me that, yes, blackberries can be hand-pied. I buy a pint and hurry home.

Scene three: 1 pm Saturday, The Lab

I decide to make the Smitten Kitchen recipe as written, with blackberries instead of rhubarb and a little less sugar. After I mix up the pie dough and put it in the fridge to chill, I put the blackberries and sugar on the stove. I set a timer for 20 minutes.  Turns out, I only need about 45 seconds to become completely racked with doubt.

In fiction, the impetuous “doer” and the careful “thinker” are usually two different people. Their opposing ideologies create exciting friction. So, in the movie version, Brandon Routh and I would tensely yet sexily question one another’s choices.

“What are you doing?” He would ask as I cranked the stove to medium, “You can’t just use the Smitten Kitchen Recipe. Blackberries and rhubarb are completely different! You’re going to poison everyone!”

I would snap back: “I can’t poison them if they’re already dead!” (Because of the aliens, remember) “I need to get started and unless you have a better idea…”

Brandon Routh would pull up the highest rated blackberry turnover recipe on Epicurious and show it to me. I would shake my head. “I can’t make that recipe, you dimple-chinned, well-toned fool. I don’t have any apples!”

“I know,” He would take me by the shoulders and look me in the eye, “but listen to me! You need to add a thickener! Because of science!”

In non-movie life though, I am both the doer and the thinker. The person who questions all of my choices is me. It makes the cooking process just as fraught, but less dynamic to watch. If there actually was an audience in my kitchen, they would have seen me: Turn the heat up on the berries; Set the timer to 20 minutes; Look up five different recipes for blackberry hand pies, (also three raspberry and one cherry); Dump a tablespoon of flour into the pot and watch it form tiny white pellets; Make a desperate noise like air escaping from a balloon; Put three more tablespoons of flour in a bowl, then pour some hot blackberry juice over it; Make purple play dough; Plop play dough ball in simmering blackberries; turn the heat off. Then on. Then low. Then off.

I mix up the cream cheese filling and I add a little sour cream even though it isn’t in the recipe because, even after all this, part of me still wants to play God.

I turn my attention to the dough. Smitten Kitchen’s “number one pie-making tip” is to keep the dough as cold as possible, so I spend the next hour rolling out dough, cutting it into circles, and putting it in the freezer on a loop, like a twee, ruffle-aproned Sisyphus. But then finally it’s time for the filling. The last step. It looks like I’m going make it.

Except of course, it doesn’t go smoothly. Now we’re back where we started in the opening scene: cream cheese is running everywhere and Damn it! I’m running out of time!

I go back to sopping up berry spills and quietly weeping. But I can’t give up. Not now.

At 5:20 The pies go in the oven. Smitten Kitchen recommends 18-20 minutes. My ride is coming to pick me up at 5:45

At 5:40 The pies are not done. I put 5 minutes on the timer and come up with a plan C, where I take molten lava-hot albino hand pies with me in the car and tell the picnic-goers they’re  “soft-batch.”

At 5:50 The pies are still not done, but my ride isn’t here yet either. I check my phone. No one has texted or called. I check the e-mail my ride sent me a few days ago, confirming when they would pick me up. It turns out, they are coming at 6:45, not 5:45! For once, my time dyslexia has worked in my favor. I clutch my heart in relief.

In the movie version, Brendan Routh would have something to do with this. I’d promise him a raise and we’d make out.

Denouement

The pies turned out anticlimactically fine. They looked beautiful, and they seemed to go over well at the picnic. But I knew that they could have been even better with a few tweaks. I felt like I could make the crust more tender, fit more filling inside, and make them just a little sweeter overall. So for you dear readers, I did something that I rarely do: I made them a second time. If you’re interested, the semi-scientifically tested recipe is available on the next page.

Bonus end-credits teaser for the sequel: I plan to invent a “summer” pierogi filling this week. Probably it’ll turn out super fine!