Comfort Me With Apples

The Song Of Solomon, a strange book of the Bible, contains this strange, strange passage:

I am the rose of Sharon,
And the lily of the valleys.
As the lily among thorns,
So is my love among the daughters.
As the apple tree among the trees of the wood,
So is my beloved among the sons.
I sat down under his shadow with great delight,
And his fruit was sweet to my taste.
He brought me to the banqueting house,
And his banner over me was love.
Stay me with flagons,
Comfort me with apples:
for I am sick of love.

I have no idea what that means.

What the heck is a flagon? How do you get stayed by one?

And what does it mean to say, “Comfort me with apples”?

A reference note in my Bible margin explains the phrase “Comfort me” can be translated, “Straw me with apples”.

Isn’t that helpful!

In camp settings I have heard people sing “His Banner Over Me Is Love” to a catchy tune — and there are hand motions to the song too.

There’s a lot about the Bible I don’t understand, but that doesn’t bother me unduly, I have enough trouble living with the parts I understand all too well, thank you.

What got me to thinking about Solomon’s love poem was that Friday I did something I have never done before in my life.

We have not been to the grocery store this week so our cupboard is bare. No ice cream, no Twinkies, no potato chips, no Nutty Buddies. Nothing but some green leafy things called vegetables. — we face starvation.

To remedy this dire lack of real food, like the folks in the Donner Party, I took matters into my own hands. They solved the problem their way, I solved it my way.

I baked an apple pie!

My first ever.

Here’s a photo of it:

From scratch I baked it.

Here’s how:

I pared and cored all the apples we had in the house. I chipped them up small. I sprinkled them with a tiny bit of cinnamon sugar (Ginny is diabetic so I used little sugar) and threw on some nutmeg (First time I’ve ever touched the stuff).

Since I could not add sugar, I dumped in a box of raisins. Those sweeten it enough without adding to Ginny’s problem. I melted the end of a stick of butter and poured that on the mixture.

Then came my light, flaky pie crust (it’s much lighter than a flagon). I put two cups of flour (more or less) into a mixing bowl, melted the rest of the stick of butter and poured that in with a touch of water and a sprinkle of salt and cinnamon.

Somewhere in this house — only God and Ginny knows where — there’s a rolling pin, but I could not find it. So I put most of my clump of dough on a sheet of waxed paper, covered it with another sheet of waxed paper, and flattened the dough out by rolling over it with a plastic two litter bottle of soda pop.

Worked fine.

I lined a round pan with that flattened dough, added my filling, and rolled out the rest of the dough for a top.

I crimped the edges of the two dough sheets together with a fork then circled the lot with a strip of aluminum foil. I’d pre-heated the oven to about 400 degrees (or maybe it was 425) and let my pie bake on a cookie sheet for as long as it took to wash the dishes, answer two phone calls and read a chapter in my spy novel.

Baking times may vary depending on the length of the chapter in the novel you’re reading, but it’s somewhere between 30 and 60 minutes.

Looked alright to me. So I took it from the oven and let it cool.

When Ginny came home from work tonight I surprised her with my pie.

It tasted delicious!

Like a kitten catching its first mouse, I’m pleased with my accomplishment.

I feel so proud of me.

If the Iron Chef feels threatened by my culinary prowess, I’ll bake another pie and comfort him with apples.

But, he’ll have to bring his own flagon.