Pie & Wine (Unlocked)
and one terrible apartment
Originally published for paying subscribers July 10, 2022. Unlocked now with a big announcement!
Announcement!
I am unbelievably excited to announce my next book — a collection of a dozen short stories and a novella to be published by @hartsfieldhomesteadpress
I’m very proud of these stories, and I’m honored to be published by this up-and-coming press. Right now, we’re focused on making this collection the best it can possibly be, but I can’t wait to share it with you when it’s done.
The short story below will be included in the collection. I hope you enjoy it as a taste of things to come! Click here to see my publisher’s announcement.
It was the worst apartment I’ve lived in. The building next to mine burned down in the middle of the night. Our smoke alarms never went off, and we didn’t hear the sirens. I walked outside the next morning to see a charred mass sitting feet from my exterior wall. No one was hurt. But the street lamps in the parking lot flickered as you walked past them like you were in a horror movie. And the mail boxes were broken into not once, but twice. I walked out one morning to the mail hut to see the metal box sides of the structure fully opened, swinging in the breeze, junk mail scattered across the parking lot.
Water leaked down from the apartment above us in a freak flood. A man who said he was part of property management kept trying to get into our apartment. I’m still not convinced he worked for the complex. The water seeped down in between the drywall and the paint so fast that the paint sagged like a water balloon. I drained the water out from in between the wall and paint by popping the swelling lumps with a needle. No one ever fixed the damage.
Hornets came in through the bathroom vents once a day. I would catch them with a glass and a piece of paper and let them out outside, which I suspect is why they kept coming back. Maybe it was the same hornet coming back every day. The bathroom was carpeted and had a toilet that looked like it belonged in a kindergarten classroom. I’m pretty sure I was allergic to that apartment. The last two months I lived there, the sinuses above my eyes would swell at random, sagging down over my eyelids. It only happened when I was in that apartment.
My roommate, who blessedly had her own room, was a horror film major, still in college. Any time she was there, screams and growls and screechy violins echoed throughout the rooms. Maybe this was why the street lamps scared me so much. She didn’t believe in cooking. Or breakfast foods. Every morning, she would heat up frozen Chinese food in the microwave at 6 am, which, in my opinion, is far too early to smell frozen Chinese food. It seeped through the vents and doorways.
It was the worst.
But it was the first place I lived in after college. And my room was big enough to put an air mattress on the floor. My mom would come to visit about one weekend a month. And we had a routine.
The afternoon she got there, we’d go out to Village Inn and buy a pie. Whatever the special was that day. Then we’d go to the liquor store and buy a bottle of wine to pair with it. We’d go back to my apartment, sit on the floor, eat the pie out of the tin, and sip the wine out of the glasses that I got for 10 cents a pop at the thrift store on the corner.
We got good at our pie and wine pairings.
We’d think about the notes of the wine, the flavor of the fruit. Was it a summery pie? Then we’d start in the white wine section. A pie with stone fruits? Definitely look for a red. We had a system and an infinite amount of fun using it. We also have always prided ourselves on being able to find good bottles of wine for under $15/bottle. It adds an extra sense of fun to the hunt, and we’ve come across so many good ones.
Sometimes, we’d throw old “Gilmore Girls” reruns on in the background while we talked. Sometimes we’d turn on an Ella Fitzgerald album. Sometimes we’d just enjoy the odd noises that the apartment made and that seeped in through the walls.
I think everyone’s lived in an apartment like that one. For my husband, it was the place he lived in junior year where there was no A/C and mice ran rampant through the rooms, and there was a pool in the courtyard that never had any water in it but was always full of debris. For my parents it was the house out in the desert where coyotes came and circled the house every night, scorpions liked living in the dressers, and a woodpecker flew in through the swamp cooler. It always could be much, much worse.
And, as much as I hated that apartment, one of the things I remember the most about it are those times with my mom. We still pair pie and wine. Every summer, we get very excited about making “frosé” (frozen rosé blended together with strawberries) and mixed berry pies. I get to enjoy these things on the porch of my house, which is hornet free, breathing in air that doesn’t smell like thawing chow mein.
I hope you enjoy these pairings as much as we did and still do. I’ve linked our particular favorite wines below!
Mom’s Pie & Wine Pairings
Peach Pie and Unoaked Chardonnay
Mixed Berry Pie and Frosé (recipe below!)
Cherry Pie and Pinot Noir
Apple Pie and Zinfindel
Strawberry Rhubarb Pie and Riesling
Blueberry Crumble and Proseco
Frosé
You will need:
2 bottles rosé (whichever is your favorite! I prefer something a little less sweet to balance the strawberries like this one)
1 small package strawberries, washed and hulled
Plastic cocktail cups
Plastic snack bags (and rubber bands if your bags aren’t big enough to close over the cups!)
What to do:
Divide the rosé evenly between the cocktail cups. Cover the cups and place them in the freezer. Let sit for at least three hours (until they have somewhat solidified). Transfer the frozen rosé from the cups into a blender, add strawberries, blend until the consistency of a slushy. If your frozé isn’t as frozen as you’d like, that’s ok! Just add ice to the glasses of less-than-frozen frozé and add a little Topo Chico to the glasses for some fizz! Garnish with strawberries if you wish and enjoy!
Did you like the frosé? Had you had it before?
That’s it for this week. If you liked this post, consider sending “Food & Fodder” to a friend who you think might enjoy it! Paying subscribers can come back later this month for more summery things.
Thanks,
Juliana
PS —
Have you guys heard about Bookshop?
If you love supporting smaller, brick-and-mortar bookstores but love shopping from the comfort of your home (or, like me, you live in a teeny tiny town with a lovely but sometimes limited book selection) you’ve got to check them out. 10% of their sales go to local book stores, and 10% goes to their affiliates (like me!) every time you buy a book. They’ve got all the selection of a big online bookstore, and they’ve donated $20 million and counting to bookstores!
I now have a little “storefront” on their site, so if you’re wanting to see or buy some of my favorite books, head on over to my Bookshop site! Right now, my Bookshop lists include my Cookbook Collection, My Work, My Top 10 (always changing), and My New Foray into Scary Books.
You can find the cookbook I mentioned above, “Half-Baked Harvest: Super Simple,” there!
Beautiful story, things we never forget. I think I have probably had pie and wine but, I was much older, good pairings.
Definitely will try that recipe. Where I am anything fruity and COLD