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As has been pointed out in this space in the past, I am not the blossoming flower of a girl that I used to be, so I should just get over this childish love of snow days. I realize that part of the reason I still get a kick out of snow is because, not having a car, I don't actually have to drive on it. When I moved back to my redneck mountain town on the ass-end of northeastern Pennsylvania after graduating from college, I got a job on the local paper, a job that necessitated that I drive from one end of the county to another on an almost-hourly basis. I did not love snow that winter. Well, no, I lie. I did not love driving on snow. But I loved it when I was safe at home, knowing that as long as I called my story in to the managing editor, who lived close enough to the paper to be able to get in, I would get a free pass for the rest of the day to drink tea and watch snowflakes the size of dimes float through the air.

We got all of our snow on the weekend, starting at noon on Saturday, wrapping up this afternoon, leaving a foot of the dry powdery stuff, a bitch if you want to throw snowballs, but just what you want if your primary concern is shoveling the stuff off the sidewalk. We went out early, before the snow started, to do all of the chores -- laundry, groceries, etc. -- that we would normally do on Sunday. Lloyd braved the milk + bread + egg-buying throngs to pick up his lunch supplies for the week, while I moved from butcher shop to Italian deli to sandwich shop to vegetable market, breathing in that sharp cold scent of nothing that signifies that snow is on the way. In the time it took me to buy a bundle of leeks, a bunch of celery and a little bag of carrots, the snow started, and not tentatively, either; no isolated flakes kicking off this nor'easter, thank you very much. That was it for me and Lloyd and the outside world for the rest of the day: we bundled in, opened the curtains so we could watch the snow fall, puttered about our three little rooms, watched our new Napoleon Dynamite dvd, followed it up with some cheesy 70's monster chiller horror theatre special. I took advantage of the housebound time to make another pot of soup, beef and leek and barley this week, augmented with carrots, celery, tomatoes and some dried Christmas lima beans I bought on my last trip to Kalustyan's. Since the Shaker lemon pie was gone, I decided to make the buttermilk pie that has been haunting my pie dreams, vanilla bean/buttermilk pie, the standard vanilla extract of most buttermilk pie recipes replaced with the seeds of two vanilla pods, scraped from the pod, added to the sugar and zizzed in the food processor.

It should be the stuff of baking dreams, this buttermilk pie, and I'm sure that at worst it will be just fine, but my kitchen ballet failed me again this morning. Most of the pies I love to make require filling an unbaked shell and baking everything together. Custard pies, though, play by different rules. A custard pie must be baked gently. If you overbake a custard pie, or if you bake it at too hot a temperature, the proteins in the eggs will coil together too tightly, squeezing out the moisture that would otherwise be suspended throughout the custard. The custard will be grainy, weepy, just shy of scrambled eggs. But the gentle heat that is a friend to the custard is not a friend to the crust: if you bake a crust from raw at such low temperatures, the bottom crust will not bake sufficiently; out of the oven, the bottom crust will rapidly grow soggy, and the starchy taste of uncooked flour will not bake out entirely. Trust someone who has learned the hard way on this. The solution to this dilemma is to parbake the crust, and anyone who bakes a lot of pies -- or who reads a lot of baking books and dreams of baking a lot of pies -- the instructions will sound drearily familiar: Roll out your crust. Fill the pie plate. Chill the crust in the freezer. Get out your pie weights, or the dried beans or cherry pits you use for pie weights, and a 16" length of foil. Get your pie crust out of the freezer, mold the foil to fit the shell, pour in the pie weights, bake the crust for 15 minutes at 400 degrees F, open the oven, carefully remove the pie weights, prick any bubbles in the bottom crust with a fork, close the oven door, turn the heat down to 375, bake the crust for 12 more minutes, pull the shell out and let it cool before you fill it. I did all this, followed the process to the letter, and even with all my solicitous care, the crust still shrank by 1/2 inch -- not a crisis, but I was still despondent. It only got worse when I managed to slosh a bit of the custard over one of the shorter edges of the pie, sending the custard to the underside of the shell. All of that work and care to create a crisp bottom crust, shot, completely. I could feel my clumsy, short-tempered 11-year-old self returning with a vengeance. What kind of bakerina is it who can't even get a damn pie into the oven without drama?

"The oven is too narrow and the floor tilts," said Lloyd. "This oven has given you problems since we moved in. I really don't think it's you."

He is right, of course, as he also is when he reminds me that I always have a tiny little learning curve on pies I've never made before, using techniques I haven't used since culinary school. Nevertheless, I am still sheepish: I have made an Ugly Pie. Of course it will taste good: I was careful in the baking of the custard, and it is nigh impossible to combine eggs, sugar, vanilla beans and buttermilk and make something that doesn't taste good. Of course we know that the optimal word is flavor: didn't I spend weeks in pastry school doing "flavor puzzles," listing the ingredients in our pantry and coming up with flavors that belonged together? Did I not spend years reading pastry magazines that emphasized interesting sugar molding techniques and mile-high garnishes, and more years reading other pastry magazines that reversed the trend, that reminded us that all that foofaraw was unnecessary if the dessert itself didn't taste good? But even as I recite the litany of flavor, I remember that I was trained by a chef who received *his* training from Swiss pastry chefs, who are light-years beyond fastidious in terms of technique, of mixing and chilling and rolling a dough so that it doesn't lose half an inch in the baking. I was trained, at school, in restaurants and in bakeries, to make it look as good as it tasted, and today it was like I'd never spent a minute in school. I think of a line from Debby Bull's Blue Jelly: "The worst thing about being depressed was those days when it felt like I hadn't made any progress at all." Then I think of a long-ago Martha Stewart Christmas special, in which Martha and Julia Child made side-by-side croquembouches. (If you are not familiar with the croquembouche, you can see some lovely pictures of it here.) Martha's was perfect, all the cream puffs the same size, artfully glued together with caramel, the spun sugar forming perfect wreaths. Julia's was shorter, lopsided, not nearly so artful. "Oh, my," said Julia, "mine's not nearly as nice." "That's all right," said Martha. "Yours can be the rustic version." I try out the name: Rustic Vanilla Bean Buttermilk Pie. Nope. It's a dodge, that "rustic."

There is a picture of the pie, yes. I am not going to post it until we taste the pie, and I know once and for all whether this pie is a success, and if today's little misadventure was just that, a little misadventure.

Edit:  The verdict is in.  The pie is lovely.  The picture is here.  The recipe is available for anyone who would like to click on the cute little link below.

Vanilla Bean Buttermilk Pie

makes 1 9" pie

Pie crust of your choice, partially baked

1 cup granulated sugar

3 tablespoons all-purpose flour

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 vanilla beans, Madagascar or Mexican

3 large eggs

1 large egg yolk

1 1/2 cups buttermilk

3 tablespoons butter, melted (optional)*

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Set an oven rack at the bottom of the oven.

Place the sugar, flour and salt in a food processor.  (If you do not have a food processor, you can do all of this in a blender, or by hand -- just be sure that the whites and yolks are thoroughly beaten together.)  Split the vanilla beans with a paring knife, scrape the seeds from the beans and add the seeds to the food processor.  Process the sugar and vanilla together for about 1 minute, until the sugar is thoroughly imbued with the vanilla.  Add the eggs and egg yolk and process just until blended.  Add the buttermilk and melted butter, if using, and process just until blended once more.

Pour the filling into the pie shell.  Place the pie on a baking sheet lined with foil, parchment or a Silpat (to catch drips).  Bake for 40 minutes, rotating halfway through the bake so that the pie bakes evenly.  The pie will still be liquid, so rotate with care!  If the edges brown too quickly, wrap them with foil wrap or a pie shield.  The pie is done when it is still a little wobbly in the center; the residual heat in the pie will continue to cook it after you take it out of the oven.  Serve at room temperature or chilled.

* Most of the buttermilk pie recipes I've come across call for a little butter.  I had planned to add it, but I had a brain moment as I was putting the pie together and didn't realize I'd forgotten it until hours later.  I think the pie is just fine without it, but if you think the custard could use a little more richness, by all means, use it.