Pie and Movies: "Waitress"

Let's look at the pies in this movie.

1. I Don't Want Earl's Baby Pie or Bad Baby Pie: Egg, Brie cheese with smoked ham
2. Kick in the Pants Pie: Cinnamon spice custard
3. I Hate My Husband Pie: Bittersweet chocolate drowned in caramel
4. Spaghetti pie
5. Marshmallow Mermaid Pie
6. Fallin' in Love Chocolate Mousse Pie
7. Baby Screaming its Head Off in the Middle of the Night and Ruining my Life Pie: New York cheesecake with brandy and pecans with nutmeg
8. Peachy Keen Tarts
9. Earl Murders Me Because I'm Having an Affair Pie: Smash blackberries and raspberries into a chocolate crust
10. I can't Have No Affair because It's Wrong and I don't Want Earl to Kill me Pie: Vanilla Custard with banana hold the banana.
11. Spanish Dancer Pie with potato crust
12. Naughty Pumpkin Pie
13. Strawberry Chocolate Oasis pie
14. Pregnant Miserable Self-Pitying Loser Pie: Lumpy oatmeal with fruitcake mashed in it. Flambeed.
15. Lonely Chicago Pie
16. Car Radio Pie
17. Jenna's First Kiss Pie
18. Old Joe's Horney Pie

I watched "Waitress" twice. "Waitress" is a 2007 American dramedy that was written and directed Adrienne Shelly. Shelly was tragically murdered about three months before it debuted at the Sundance Film Festival.

Although the movie is set in the South, the movie was actually filmed in Saugus, California. Saugus is named after the hometown of Henry Newhall (Saugus, Massachusetts) whose land the town was built on. In 1987, Saugus and Valencia, Newhall and Canyon Country were merged to make Santa Clarita.
Santa Clarita is in Los Angeles County.

"The Waitress" is about a waitress named Jenna, living in an unnamed small town in the American South. She's unhappily married to Earl (Jeremy Sisto) and works at Joe's Pie Diner. She's not only a waitress but also a "pie genius." At the opening of the movie, she finds that she's pregnant and that inspires her to create "Bad Baby Pie."

Jenna dreams of winning $25,000 in a pie baking contest in a nearby town. Earl refuses to let her go that faraway and doesn't think she needs to dream. She should be satisfied with the kind of life she has.

Her coworkers and only friends Becky (Cheryl Hines) and Dawn (Shelly) don't envy her life. Becky is single. Dawn is unhappily married. Becky eventually finds romance with the kind of guy who proposes on the first date (read stalker here). Becky has a fling with the cook. The owner, Joe (Andy Griffith), is sympathetic to Jenna's hopes and dreams and her desire to leave her husband.

Jenna takes up with the married new physician Jim Pomatter (Nathan Fillion), who has moved to the town because his wife is completing her residency at a local hospital and Jenna's doctor is retiring.  In the end, Jenna gives birth to Lulu, breaks up with both her husband the Pomatter and her husband. And, Joe dies leaving her a sizable amount of money.

In the epilogue, she's opened Lulu's Pies where she makes brightly colored pies while holding her baby and she's won the pie contest.

I like bright colors, but I'm not in favor of all those brightly colored pies which look like they are mostly sugar and food dye. 

I think  a mermaid would want to eat wakame and raw fish. The spaghetti pie is basically a casserole using the noodles as the crust and piling on the sauce and meatball on top and then putting it into the oven. That should make lovers of fine pasta cringe. March is noodle month, so there may be a better way to feature noodles.

But let's look at the basic pie-making problems of "Waitress."

First, the pie is all about the crust. You don't want it to be soggy and you don't want it to be too hard. That sets up two problems: fruit with too much juice and custards.

The best way to make a custard pie is to steam back the custard in a separate dish and then scoot it into a baked pie crust. This is not how it is represented in the movie.

For me the best way to use blackberries and raspberries in a pie would be bake the filling separately  and then put it in the pie. If you're making a double-crust pie, then I would partially cook the bottom crust and perhaps even coat the bottom with a little beaten egg. If the pie crust is still hot, the egg coating will be baked before you put the filling in. Also, I would make the filling on top of the stove first, particularly if using frozen. That way you can reduce the liquid. I would never, ever "mash" the filling in the pie.