Well I didn’t see THAT coming.

I have been baking for six hours straight. My feet hurt. My back hurts. My hands are raw from too many washings. BUT! I have four baked pies, one more in the oven, and a cran-orange bread baking next to it.

I thought I was home free.

You see, pies – they don’t like me. You could almost say we were arch-enemies. The first year I baked them, it took me ten hours to make two pies…and I use the term “make” there very loosely. The next year I thought I was more prepared, but I still ended up on the phone with my mom, in tears, because I could not get this pie thing straight. I did end up with my pies, but only after sending my new husband out to the store for more shortening so I could start over. For the third time. Every year since then I’ve made sure I was back home for Thanksgiving. That way I could just “help” my mom bake the pies. That way the pies were edible and everyone was happy.

So I was very nervous this morning.

Things went fine. The first batch of dough was a little crumbly when I tried to shape it into a ball, and then a little sticky when I tried to lift the crust off the workspace. Consequently, that first pie crust was assembled from hundreds of little pieces. After that, I pulled out a pastry cloth my mom had sent me years ago and I had previously scorned. Turns out, it was magical and made things so much easier. Darn my mom for knowing everything. The post-pastry cloth pie crusts came out okay. Not perfect, still ugly, and the crust was a little thick – but okay.

See why I thought everything was fine? The Christmas music and the praying over the pie crusts was all working. Until I turned around to wash my hands yet again and found two inches of grimy, gray water standing in the sink with small pieces of apple peels floating around. My stupid dish-disposal in my stupid-sink decided RIGHT THAT VERY MINUTE! In the middle of STRESSFUL PIE BAKING! on the DAY BEFORE THANKSGIVING to break!

Panic ensued.

After I collected myself, me and my adrenaline and all my fancy cursewords reached into the sink and pulled as many pieces of apple peel out as we could. The water went down an inch, but there it stayed no matter what I tried. The disposal ran, but it didn’t work; the water gurgled but went nowhere. Finally, I made a call to my friend. I think I might be in trouble later because when he asked if it was an emergency, I answered, “Ummm…sort of?” I guess technically a busted sink isn’t an emergency. But I was in the middle of baking and I have to cook my first ever Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow! I can’t do that without a sink! It was a kitchen emergency!

He tried to help me find this so-called crank that’s supposed to be attached underneath the plumbing for the disposal (it’s not). Then he almost killed me when he told me to go shut off the circuit breaker/fuse thingy for the disposal so I could reach in there and unclog it, and I told him I had already done that (without disconnecting the power, natch). After I told him that my other sink (it’s a double) worked fine and explained the connection of the pipes, he explained that I had two options. The first one was to take a plunger and try to suction out the blockage. The second one was to disconnect the pipes and the trap and the disposal and manually unclog the drain. He further explained that because the blockage was somewhere above the connection for the other sink (since it was working), I wouldn’t have to seal off the sink in order to use the plunger. So I plunged.

And was sprayed by a jet of grimy, greasy water that shot out of the overflow valve that’s next to the faucet.

He didn’t warn me about that. So I ripped off the fancy covering, tried to cover the openings with my hand and plunged and plunged and plunged. Water was sloshing everywhere as I tried to keep the plunger from slipping off the drain, water was leaking out of the overflow, and I was covered with sewer water. Oh, okay, not really…but it felt that way. Finally, after hearing the pipes vibrate dangerously, the blockage cleared and water gurgled all the way down the drain like it was supposed to. Hallelujah!

In case you were wondering, it took two showers before I felt safe touching food again.

Nothing like a good kitchen sink emergency to put Thanksgiving pies in perspective, eh?

Advertisement

Tags: cooking, holidays, Thanksgiving