Apres Cruzatte

With a new episode of “Pushing Daisies” arriving tomorrow, lets talk pie.

Here’s a fun review of “Pushing Daisies” from the NY Times: “Loner Finds He Has a Touch for Piemaking and Undeadmaking.”

In last week’s episode, Ned says that “the expression ‘pie in the sky’ entered popular culture in 1911. It refers to a dessert so sweet it can only be found in heaven.” Not so fast; he got 1911 right, but we’ll have to clear up the rest. Try a slice of these pie-oriented phrase origins:

• pie in the sky
• easy as pie
• American as apple pie
• humble pie

And finally, A Apple Pie by Kate Greenaway, an ABC book from 1886; and “Ray,” a poem by Hayden Carruth. Here’s a tasty crumb:

    …me, a sixty-seven-year-old galoot, an old fool
because all old men are fools, they have to be,
      shoveling big jagged chunks of that ordinary pie
into my mouth, and the water falling from my eyes
      onto that pie, the plate, my hand, little speckles
shining into the light, brightening the colors, and I
      ate that goddamn pie, and it tasted good to me.