By Jan Hostyn.
My pies are so not appropriate fare for this time of year. Nope, smack dab in the midst of the post-holiday deprivation phase, when moderation and restraint seem to be all the rage, my pies brazenly flaunt their lack of self-control, their innards spilling gleefully all over the bottom of my very un-pristine oven. They’re simply stuffed to bursting, kind of like us after the whole holiday fa-la-la thing.
You see, I have this habit, this thing, this fascination. Some people might call it an obsession.
It’s kind of a running joke in my house. If something is stuffed right to the very top, is almost overflowing or is actually spilling over, everyone assumes I must be the one responsible. For them, it’s a foregone conclusion, one I never get the chance to defend myself against. Not that I could defend myself — they’re always right.
My nightly hot chocolates have to be full. I pile up the batter in my muffin cups until it’s cascading all over, my soup- and chili-making escapades always turn into feed-the-world events because I simply can’t stop adding bits of this and that until my gigantic soup pot is simmering-over full. I keep popping popcorn until the kernels tumble out of my big red popcorn bowl and I order my lattes without foam so that they’re — you guessed it — full.
Right to the top.
Dough-lovers would hate my pyrohy — they’re stuffed with so much potato/cheddar filling that they’ve been mistaken for little white balls. My lasagna always bubbles over and I’m convinced my turkeys groan in agony every time I cram that last little bit of stuffing in. As for my sandwiches, well, simply trying to get my mouth around one of them is an adventure in itself.
Where other people see mugs or bowls or containers or glasses, I see containers begging to be filled. And if I can pile and cram and stuff and stack something over the top — like my pies — well, that’s even better.
Your average pie recipe calls for four cups of fruit. Ha. That makes a pie that’s only half-full. I don’t do half-full, even if it’s not mug- or drink- or cup-related. My pies are always jammed so full that putting them together is a challenge. One hand is kept busy stretching and manoeuvring and tugging the dough over all of that fruit while the other frantically pushes and shoves and tucks and struggles to control all the errant bits of fruit that are trying their utmost to escape.
Oh, and I absolutely cannot pour a half-glass of anything.
Ask my husband. He has this mug, this favourite mug, which he drinks everything from. But this mug of his is kind of big. Too big to fill to the top, he thinks. For him, it’s a perfect-when-3/4-full mug. For me, it’s a perfect-when-full mug, just like all mugs ever manufactured. So now it’s become somewhat of a problematic mug.
At first he used comments and requests and helpful hints in an attempt to teach me how to fill it. When that failed, the snide remarks surfaced. Now he’s resigned himself to either taking control and pouring his darn drink himself or putting up with my thoughtfulness and, along with that, a precariously full drink. He’s not above shooting me a look every once in a while, though.
And it’s not just filling things up. Certain things need to be of a certain size. Big. Large. Definitely not average. Like apples. Those little baseball-sized-things-pretending-to-be-apples that are perplexingly popular confound me. My ideal apples often impersonate mini-cantaloupes, and that can create issues. Even though I’m one of those self-check aficionados sometimes, when I have too many items, I’m forced to do the cashier thing. I always get a look and the comment, “Are these apples? Oh my, they’re so…big. Do you actually eat the whole thing?” I’ve even been known to make special apple-only shopping trips so I can breeze through the self-check and dodge the whole annoying amazed-and-befuddled-cashier thing.
The biggest, reddest pomegranates always find their way into my cart, only the heftiest potatoes make the trip home with me and only extra-large eggs ever see the inside of my fridge.
There’s no real theme. But bigger isn’t always better. I can’t seem to get enough of those ultra-sweet mini bell peppers, my salads always sport oodles of little cherry tomatoes and I’d much rather eat a mini peanut butter cup (or three) than one regular-sized one.
And all those glasses, mugs and containers that beg to be crammed full to the top don’t necessarily have to be oversized themselves. Oh, some definitely are, but I’m just as content squeezing every last drop of liquid I can into a small glass as a large one.
So yes, I guess I like big, large, overflowing, overstuffed, filled to the very top…substantial. For me, it’s just the way things should be. The powers-that-be who dissect our thought processes might vehemently disagree, but hey, they’ve never tasted one of my overstuffed and pretty-darn-amazing pies.
Jan Hostyn never has to worry about having a half-full cup rather than a half-empty one — hers is always full.