Thursday, April 23, 2009

Recipe for Rage Pie


I lost my mind today over a pie crust. I was taking a cooking class at school. The instructor claims to be very into "intuitive" cooking-- where you follow a basic template but not so much a recipe. What is funny about this is he is actually the most inflexible cooking teacher I have had at Bastyr. Today was pie day. I had emailed him earlier this week about making gluten-free pie crust and he had not given me a very specific answer, but in class he said he wanted us to only do whole-wheat crust because he is not knowledgeable about gluten-free baking and he wanted us to do something he could help us with. I told him I wanted to try it anyway, since I would never make a regular pie outside of the class since I can't eat it- he said it was about cooking for other people and I said my nutrition practice is going to be centered on helping people with food allergies and we were back and forth etc. At this point other members of the class (who were all gathered watching us have this debate) started offering suggestions on ways I could make a gluten-free crust work, which just further infuriated our instructor. He turned to me and said today I want you to focus on making a wheat crust. This was the LAST STRAW for me in a very emotional frustrating week. I am always the person who sucks it up and smiles when I don't want to and takes it when my boss yells at me and does what I'm "supposed" to do. Well not today. I turned around, grabbed my stuff and left without another word. I marched upstairs to the registrar's office, withdrew from the class, got in my car and drove home. Extreme? yes. Irrational? Perhaps, but I am SO tired of being told NO. I was auditing the class for my personal enjoyment-- it was not any kind of requirement and I no longer found it enjoyable so I left. I'm still very angry and I know if I watch myself from a distance that this had less to do with pie crust and a lot more to do with built up anger and frustration from the events of earlier this week, but I don't care. I'm home early and I'm taking my chickens outside. I don't need pie thank you very much.

2 comments:

Adair said...

I'm sorry. That sounds horribly unfair.

Ryah said...

Mmmm, rage pie. I cook up this pie from time to time, especially in response to unfair administration practices at certain higher education institutions. Unfortunately my pie is usually filled with bills instead of gluten.