The Luxury of Pie

One definition of luxury must include being able, on discovering that one's raspberry-apricot pie filling doesn't really fill the pie shell properly, to step out the back door and pick another cup of fresh berries from one's own raspberry canes so quickly that the top crust, that one has already rolled out, is still supple enough to pick up and put into place after adding the new berries to the pie.

 And should one be looking for an example of a poorly constructed sentence, one likely doesn't have to look any farther. I'd like to blame the Angela Thirkell I picked up late last night since it's a post-war book and in those she rather lets herself go in her endearingly rambling way, rather like old Cousin Emily who thinks she still lives at Pomfret Towers though she left it sixty years earlier. But really I've tried to think of a better way to write that sentence and without turning it into a lengthy anecdote which, uncharacteristically, I didn't want to do, I don't think it can be done, at least not by me. I'm open to suggestions.

 But I had the "definition of luxury" thought as I was picking the berries a few hours ago, thinking, more than a little smugly, that it illustrated how simple my needs and desires were. This led quickly to the recognition that really it's not such a simple or common thing to live where one can grow raspberries handily out one's own back door. Which in turn reminded me of something Daniel Handler (close friend of Lemony Snicket) said when talking about his new book We Are Pirates on "Live Wire" yesterday . . . something about how we all steal happiness, or maybe comfort, from others. The host questioned this a bit but Mr Handler's position was that everyone in the audience was likely in a pretty darned comfortable demographic and that as probably white, probably reasonable affluent, undoubtedly American,  we're living a pretty luxurious lifestyle, probably at the expense of others who are not living quite so comfortably.

 But I've got my pie, my lovely pie, made with berries from the back and apricots purchased at the Farmers Market a week ago.

Slightly skimpy pie filling

Additional raspberries, with rolled top crust in the background