Dear Great Grandma Inez,

I hope you approve. I am bringing a pie to my in-laws for Thanksgiving, the first year we're going up to see them as married people. It's not a blue-ribbon winning pie, and (heaven forbid) I didn't use any shortening in the crust, but I think it will do. It's been almost twenty years since you passed, and the Abernathies are eating pie again. Well, at least this branch of them.

And the custard didn't even break this time.

Every time I set out to make pie, I know your legacy and infamy is right there in the kitchen with me. Yours have become the stuff of legends. I'm leaving Pecan to your ghost and mom for a few more years.

Here's my offering to the family shrine for my ancestral kitchen-folk.


I hope you have pie where you are now, and that you don't have to get up before dawn to make it.