14/7: You never know what you may find on the streets of the Mission. While doing some window shopping on Valencia Street, we happened upon a queue of people. They were all standing in line for this small red cart decorated with paintings of pigeons. Noah, Eric’s roommate, who had joined our little group somewhere between Dolores Park and Valencia Street, said that this was the Valencia Street pie cart. The pie baker came to the corner of Valencia Street and 19th every Friday and Saturday afternoon, and sold pieces of pie until she ran out. It was just one of those things that you come across in the Mission, and (probably) nowhere else.
Of course we had to try. She had almost run out of everything, and we got the last two pieces that she had – lemon custard and strawberry-rhubarb. They were heavenly. Seriously, there can’t be a better way to eat pie than from a paper box with plastic forks, on a San Francisco pavement on a Saturday afternoon together with a bunch of new friends.
Happy pie eaters: me, Anne, Abbies friend Joe, Sandra, Abbies friend Ruth and Noah. (Picture borrowed from Abbie.)
And I’ve been thinking. I like inviting people to eat my pies and cakes and whatnots, and more than once I’ve been told that I should pursue a carreer in the pastry business. (Really, baking a good cake is easy – just use sugar and butter and anything will be delicious.) So maybe, if everything else fails me, I could build a red pie cart and start selling pieces of pie on Fridays and Saturdays on the corner Skånegatan-Nytorgsgatan on Södermalm in Stockholm. Don’t you think the weekend peppy hipsters would go nuts for some old-school American pie?
Katja Malmborg 