Anne Dimock, Writer

Available October 1st, 2005
At all major book retailers
Andrews McMeel Publishing
ISBN: 0-7407-5465-3
Price: $12.95 ($17.95 Canada)

When was the last time you had a piece of home made pie? I mean a real pie that someone made from scratch, not that solid wedge sitting in the dessert cooler at some franchise theme restaurant. Can you remember what it looked like, with its juice bubbling up through the vented top crust and the fluted rim? Remember the smell of cinnamon as it baked, and the warm sweetness and flaky dryness? You can probably also remember the woman who made that pie, the color of her apron, the length of her hair, and how hard her dining room chairs were. If this memory reaches back longer than one month, you need a slice of Humble Pie, the first book that takes all the experiences of home made pies, the people who made them and the circumstances that created them, and puts them between two covers. It’s no less than the philosophy and metaphysics of pie itself. All you need is the book and a fork.

Part memoir, part food writing, part social commentary on the nature of men and women, Humble Pie will humorously show how just about everything relates to a good piece of pie. Structured loosely as a chronological memoir, Humble Pie contains stories and essays about people who make pies, their reasons for doing so, and the circumstances behind the great pie epiphanies. A parallel structure of wayside rest stops along a journey, called the Pie Ramble, chronicles a disappointing pursuit of pies. The Pie Ramble teaches us that it is the journey - not the destination - that counts, and gives hope that anything lost can be found again.

Praise for Humble Pie

“Anne Dimock is the Proust of pie and her remembrance of pies past is meant to inspire the pies to come. This is a lovely and elegant memoir.”
- Garrison Keillor, best-selling author and host of radio’s A Prairie Home Companion

“Dimock has such cultural bandwidth about pie and life in general that she seamlessly refers to David Lynch’s Twin Peaks, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Buddha, and Carl Sagan without missing a beat, or perhaps I should say a crumb. So go ahead, start reading Humble Pie. Like the best pies, you just might find yourself devouring the whole thing in one sitting. The only time you’ll put it down is when you head to the kitchen to make a pie.”
- Ed Levine, radio and television personality and author of Pizza: A Slice of Heaven and New York Eats (More), and a frequent contributor to the New York Times Dining Section

Teeny Slivers of Humble Pie

“The edge of the Great Swamp of New Jersey was an unlikely spot for the renaissance of pie making, but there you have it. No southern accents, no farm-wife wisdom. Just the gentle musings of suburban middle-class life. Prophets can come from anywhere, even a bedroom community of New York City. When archaeologists look back upon us, hundreds of years from now, they will see that the full flowering of Pie Maker culture really began in 1953 in Madison, New Jersey, and it began in my backyard.”

“The modern-day American ramble is the road trip, the urge to get in the car and drive, seeking to satisfy a hunger with no name, to scratch an itch, to fill an empty vessel. There is always a new beginning on a road trip, a fresh adventure about to unfold with every turn of the ignition key. To satisfy our American longing, we get in the car and drive.

After we’ve been driving for about two hours, that longing tweaks us in our stomachs and we want nothing more—and nothing less—than to stop at a café or diner for a cup of coffee and a piece of pie. This is an old idea, an artifact of our parents’ and grandparents’ time, and much harder to do in our time than theirs, for there is very little good pie anymore. Even if we find good pie on the road, it quickly disappears under the weight of demand. But we are hopeful and give it a try. We drive across the land at hundred-mile intervals, searching for the pie that will fill the hole in us, not fully appreciating that the car and the highways helped eradicate some of pie’s natural habitat.

But there must be some left. We aren’t sure where to look anymore; the small-town bakery and the diner on Main Street have closed up in favor of the big-box mall outside of town. We check guidebooks and Web sites for tips. The natural habitat for pies has changed, shrunk, disappeared. All too often, when we finally find a piece of pie, it disappoints us with the dense crust and stiff filling of the mass-produced pie. We get in the car again and drive some more. It must be out there somewhere.”

“In Minnesota you can feel that the edge of summer has burned off by the time the first apples ripen. Not so in New Jersey, where you must commence the pie work in humidity so youthful that it promises to linger through a prolonged adolescence. But Pie Makers wear that humidity like a badge of courage. Anyone can make a pie in October—dozens of pies in October. But a Great Swamp August? That is an entirely different matter

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August brings out an unspoken competition among Pie Makers in the Great Swamp. How early could you start? How many hours at a time? How long could you last? How many pies in August? Pie Makers never ask these questions of each other, but slyly leak this information about themselves to one another in thinly veiled conversation about the pie work. Each keeps a running tab of her own pies and an estimate of her neighbors’. This is not about petty jealousies or base ambition, but rather endurance and yield, pride and admiration. Pie Makers feel awe and draw inspiration from the one among them who tops all the rest. The one who will begin on August 1 with blueberries and cherries and proceed through peaches and blackberries and onward to apple, and who doesn’t stop until August 31 and will have made at least sixty pies. August is the hallmark of Pie Makers. Unequaled for versatility, volume, heat, and relentless humidity, August separates the Pie Makers from the bakers. August tests you, pushes you to your limit, makes you stand on your own. It drives you crazy with fruit and makes your crust go bad. And the Pie Maker who emerges from the Great Swamp of New Jersey in August with the most pies is revered. And that Pie Maker, more often than not, was my mother—Our Lady of the Great Swamp, Mary Dimock, the Queen of Pies.”