The Chocolate Pie Mission

The other day I was at the grocery store and suddenly got a hankering for a chocolate meringue pie. Now for my friends who aren't southern, a hankering is a sudden urge, bordering on obsession, with having something. The more I thought about that chocolate pie, the more obsessed with it I got. But I didn't want some premade pie from the bakery, that seemed almost like cheating. I wanted a good old fashioned, home-made chocolate pie. The only problem was I couldn't remember the recipe. I thought long and hard, and all I could remember was eggs and cocoa. I spied some older ladies working in the bakery, aha! I'll ask them. I hate to make speculations about people judged on appearance alone, but I knew these gray haired gals would surely have a chocolate pie recipe filed away in their brains.

Trying to make my way slowly there, so as not to give off an air of a crazy woman with no thought in her head but a yummy chocolate pie, I edged my buggy up and softly called out, "excuse me". They both turned to look at me, and I told them of my hankering for the chocolate pie, and the quandry I was in because I couldn't remember the ingredients. They stood there quietly for a second, and I thought, "yes, I am fixing to recieve someone's delicious pie recipe that has surely been passed down from generations ago". Instead of divulging a secret recipe, one of them said, "I haven't made a chocolate pie in years, I wouldn't even know where to begin". The other one then informs me that she usually just buys her pies from the bakery. Are you kidding me? What respectable older woman, especially an older southern woman, doesn't have a chocolate meringue pie recipe committed to memory?

I then set off on a mission. I reached deep into my memory and finally found the recipe (or is that a recipe for fudge? What does it matter, they're both good) I went through the store frantically grabbing ingredients. I came home and rushed to my recipe box and found MY recipe. I had managed to remember all the ingredients, which gave me a sudden rush of superiority over the ladies at the grocery store. I then spent a good hour assembling my ingredients, mixing, cooking, and baking until I had indeed made the perfect chocolate meringue pie.

But it was with a note of melancholy that I baked. I had to ponder on how many children of this generation are missing out on home-made goodness because of the convenience of ready made? I realize at the end of the day, they both taste similar. I like to think that I add an extra ingredient in my cooking of home made food that Betty Crocker or any of her co-horts just aren't capable of producing. Love. And that my friends, is quite delicious.