Friday, December 4, 2009

Respect the Crust

My wife is a great cook. She can make the lowliest meal taste wonderful, often without a recipe. Plus, I never know what I’ll be eating next – and it’s frequently something new. But even the great cooks need a day off every now and then, and this was one of those days.

In deference to my childhood, my wife baked Zach and I a pot pie – the old Swanson kind with the previously-aluminum pie plate to boot. When I was a kid I ate quite a few of those things for lunch when my mom worked, and you know what they say, “Old habits die hard.” I pretty much can’t stand the gorp in the center of the pie, but I love the crust. What my wife doesn’t seem to understand is that it’s important that the crust remain intact. (By crust I mean the fragile rim of the crust that’s crunchy and golden brown on the top outer edge before you invert it, not the part that annoyingly sticks to the bottom of the pie plate.) She generally unceremoniously dumps said pie on my plate with nary a consideration for the integrity of the crust. Which leads to my new motto: “RESPECT THE CRUST.”

Of course, my new motto can’t supplant the more dignified motto that’s on the Diekmann family coat of arms: “Carpe Chocolate.” The Latin adds a sense of savoir-faire, don’t you think?

3 comments:

Christopher Gillespie said...

Pot pie is not about the stuff inside. Its all about the crust. I have spent years in search of the perfect crust. I may have found it in the recent America's Test Kitchen method. It's all about the crust, baby.

Kari said...

Scott,
Memories! My childhood is filled with many a chicken pot pie. Swanson's. I love the crust, too.
(I think they tasted better in those days, don't you?

Scott Diekmann said...

Well Kari, it you compare the pot pie to the TV dinner in those days, the pot pie definitely tasted better! Nothing worse than the peas in one of those old TV dinners.