Where I Stop Reading to Bake Pie to Eat While Reading

"Mrs. Mullet, who was short and gray and round as a millstone and who, I'm quite sure, thought of herself as a character in a poem by A.A. Milne, was in the kitchen formulating one of her pus-like custard pies," says Flavia, the sassy eleven-year-old narrator of my current read, in talking about her family's housekeeper.

How could I not stop reading to bake one after that???

Custard pie is my second-favorite pie! (Next to Sour Cream Apple Pie, that is.) I made this one (adding an extra egg yolk and leaving out the recommended yellow food coloring [!] ) yesterday at about four o'clock in the afternoon. At about five, while the pie was cooling, Andy looked at me and said, "What are you thinking for dinner?" and I said, naturally, "Custard pie." Upon which he got up and grabbed a grocery bag and headed out the door to the grocery store to get some dinner.

I am brilliant!

I guess he is a Flavia de Luce sympathizer:

"As I passed the window, I noticed that a slice had been cut from Mrs. Mullet's custard pie. How odd, I thought; it was certainly none of the de Luces who had taken it. If there was one thing upon which we all agreed — one thing that united us as a family — it was our collective loathing of Mrs. Mullet's custard pies. Whenever she strayed from our favorite rhubarb or gooseberry to the dreaded custard, we generally begged off, feigning group illness, and sent her packing off home with the pie, and solicitous instructions to serve it up, with our compliments, to her good husband, Alf."

More for me.

Comments

[koralee]

Sounds like a lovely day...reading...baking...reading...eating...can i come to your house?!! I would love to do that...the book sounds lovely!

[kirsten]

The title of your post makes perfect sense to me...

[nicole]

I love pie for supper! Especially custard pie...it's healthy right? eggs and milk and flour. Sounds like breakfast!

[Katie]

Hilarious. And you have an unusually responsible husband.

[Nic]

I loved that book. I hope we get more Flavia novels.

[Laurie]

Oh, this made me laugh...hmmm, I wonder what Andy arrived home with to go with the custard pie :) We've been in kabob mode at our house lately. Friends have repeatedly recommended grilled pineapple, so we'll try that this weekend.

[leanne]

This is something I think I must try! I will most likely be the only one who gets to enjoy it...don't think the famiy will go for it. They would be sounding alot like little Flavia!
I worked at Marks and Spencer before I got married and I would get one of their little pies from England every week. Mmmmmmm.....

[Susan A]

I'm with Flavius! Please enjoy my share of that pie, and let me know when rhubarb is on the menu. I think I'll be feeling much better by then...

[Bridgette]

I may never eat custard pie again.

[Kiki]

Sounds like the perfect day! I love the trick for getting hubby to do the marketing-- I should try that!

[Portland Pie Commissioner]

All of this blogging of pie, photographing of pie, reading of pie. We certainly hope you'll come to the second annual Portland Pie Off. It's a pie free for all!

[Dawn]

Alicia, I've just discovered your blog and I love it. Your pie looks delicious! Thank you for sharing excerpts from the book, it sounds fabulous. Look forward to following your blog, stop by mine any time! :)
Dawn

[Bonnie]

Baking "dinner" sounds wonderful to me. I started reading fiction about the Amish. I've read 3 books (about 700 pages) in three days. I visit Holmes County in Ohio 3 or 4 times a year. It is the largest Amish population in the U.S. Anyway, I feel I have been in a reading coma- I can't wait to finish dinner so I can read. I need to bake a pie so we will have something for tonight. Eggs are protein, milk is dairy -yeah-perfect dinner!

[Ashley McGregor]

That is a great book- I read it a couple of weeks ago. I loved it from beginning to end.

[Tara]

Love this post!!! Can't wait for the next Flavia de Luce story. And I am quite taken with the thought of one of Mrs. Mullet's custard pies (and adored the reason given for why she continued to make them). Oh, to find a book which seeps into the rest of our lives...what happiness! Enjoy the book, enjoy the pie. (And may Andy enjoy...the carry-out food he fetched.)

[jamieofalltrades]

Just eat pie for dinner?! I do that in August when I make my famous Peaches and Cream pie. It's so good there's no need for dinner.

[Pixie]

That pie looks so tasty and easy! I can't wait to try it.

I'm in the process of trying to read as many of my books as I can because I have too many. Then I can put them on Paperback Swap and get new ones! lol I can see that I'll never have enough room for all the books.

[evalyn]

I've never understood, and have no sympathy for, people who don't like custard pie.

[Natty]

I love custard pie! When I lived in Pennsylvania, you could often buy pies from Mennonite's on the side of the road and they had two pies I have yet to find duplicated-- sugar pie and milk pie. They sound bland but were so delicious and simple and clean.

[Kim]

"I am Brilliant!" I just love that!
oh thank you dear sweet Alicia, who I will probably never meet but think it would be sooooo much fun if you lived next door.....

[Janet]

I absolutely loved that book! It's strange and charming all at once. Sounds like you're enjoying it, too. :-). What else is on your summer book list?

[Janet]

Oops, never mind, I see you posted your recent book purchases. (Keep up, Janet.) If you read all those yummy books in your hammock, you can keep an eye on all those pies cooling on your windowsill! Sounds heavenly...

[Jennifer]

So funny to read the latest post about making a pie (which looks yummy), and then scroll down and see a reference to Keri Russell (who was so great in Waitress). Synchronicity!

[Angie]

Alicia! You absolutely must watch "Cat Among the Pigeons" on PBS right now (Masterpiece Mystery). It's Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot and he's at one of those girls schools in the 1920s or so. I thoroughly loved it. I've always romanticized going to a girl's school, and this film serves it up perfectly. Did you already see it?

[Heather]

Now I'm craving pie :)