IN SEARCH OF BLUEBERRY PIE…

PLASTICVILLE-USA

IN SEARCH OF BLUEBERRY PIE…

My 93 year old mother was..and still is..an amazing cook. Her sister’s kitchen talents where just as amazing and they were both outclassed by the woman who taught them..my grandmother.

My mother was not keen on teaching me how to cook because she came from a time when cooking was considered woman’s work, and if a guy showed any sort domestic talents he was thought to be queer. So my mother really wouldn’t let me into the kitchen. I learned what I learned by watching her and remembering what she did.

I picked up a lot of things, but one thing I never found a knack for was pie. I couldn’t make a good pie if there was a gun screwed into my ear. Mother on the other hand made fantastic pies. One of my favorites is blueberry pie.

When I was growing up we had a cottage on a lake in northeastern Pennsylvania and all around the lake were wild blueberry bushes. My mother would pick these berries and then make just wonderful pies. Yum!

Today I live a mere thousand or so miles from my mother so getting one of her pies is a rare opportunity and I have to fend for myself in finding some.

While TV Myth Machine goes all-in on a daily basis spinning boxcar loads of horse manure about how TV is “America’s Friendliest Hometown” and what a cozy lovely place it is. Of course it’s a lot of malarkey and nothing could be further from the truth.

TV resembles a movie back lot or a wax apple. The façade looks great, but when you peek behind the lot fronts or take a bite of the wax apple the mirage melts like ice in the Florida sun.

Part of that façade is that it is almost impossible to find local and/or mom & pop businesses in TV. There are a couple of reasons for this. The Morse organization demands computer like sameness and disdains any sort of individualism. For that reason they love the various corporate chains because those chains, like Morse Industries, treasure order and sameness above all. The corporate chains also have the necessary money to pay the high property lease rates that TV gets for commercial property. Small local operators and mom & pops have trouble paying the heavy prices to rent a storefront.

Consequently you are NOT going to find any sort of mom & pop bake shop operating inside TV. There is one that operates just outside of TV on the northern end, but even they are a disappointment. They do no baking at their store. They are a part of a small Florida-based chain that does its baking in a central bakery and then ships the day’s goods to the various storefronts. You get whatever they have to offer, and the offerings tend to vary from day to day.

Of course all of the big-name grocery stores that operate within the boundaries of TV have in-store “bakeries”. Well…that’s stretching the word bakery until it snaps. Today almost every major grocery store chain offers in-store “bakeries”. But these “bakeries” don’t actually create a single thing. What they do is thaw and then “finish” the bake-out of whatever they are offering.

All of the bakeries “fresh goods” were not made there. They were made at very large commercial bakeries and then hard-frozen and shipped to the store to be “broken out” which means to thaw and do the finish baking.

How do I know this you ask? Well..my youngest son just happens to be a quality control manager at one of these huge commercial bakeries where they make all the bread and rolls and pies and cakes for one of the south’s largest grocery store chains. They also make all of the rolls for one of the country’s largest sub-sandwich shops. Other big commercial bakeries do the same for other regional and national grocery store chains.

So whatever you are looking for you can take heart that the pie or French bread you’re bringing home was indeed thawed out early this morning and quick baked to finish the process. So it is “fresh” today.

Since these are the choices I have in TV bubble I head out seeking blueberry pie. Apparently blueberry pie is NOT popular in the south. While you can find bushel basketfuls of apple and cherry pies, finding blueberry pie is like finding a Republican at an Al Sharpton rally. Good luck. I couldn’t find a single blueberry pie anywhere inside TV. Actually..if you wanted a TastyKake single lunchbox blueberry pie those could be had. But a 9 inch blueberry pie suitable for dessert? No way!

It wasn’t until I left the confines of TV..which is ALWAYS a good thing to do if you value your sanity..that I found a blueberry pie. And while I was thankful to find one, it was one of just two that were available. There were lots of apple, cherry and in this store peach pies, but just a couple lonely blueberry pies. I bought ‘em both!

Following my successful quest for blueberry pie I was ready for a piece that evening. Of course I knew it was going to be disappointing. It wasn’t going to even come close to one of my mother’s pies. But it was going to have to do, and in the end it wasn’t bad.

It’s good to be thankful for life’s little things.