Pie and Dreams

Three luscious lemon tarts glistened up at Catherine. She reached her towel-wrapped hands into the oven, ignoring the heat that enveloped her arms and pressed against her cheeks, and lifted the tray from the hearth. The tarts’ sunshine filling quivered, as if glad to be freed from the stone chamber. […]
“You are my crowning joy,” she proclaimed, spreading her arms wide over the tarts, as if bestowing a knighthood upon them. “Now I bid you to go into the world with your lemony scrumptiousness and bring forth smiles from every mouth you grace with your presence.”
“Speaking to the food again, Lady Catherine?”
“Ah-ah, not just any food, Cheshire.” She lifted a finger without glancing back. “Might I introduce you to the most wondrous lemon tarts ever to be baked within the great Kingdom of Hearts!” […]
“Are lemons in season this time of year?” asked Cheshire. […]
“Not exactly,” she said, smiling to herself. […] “They’re from a dream,” she confessed.
Marissa Meyer, Heartless

National Pie Day occurs on January 23. Pi Day takes place on March 14. Today I am combining them and celebrating Pi Day with pie. Or rather, tart. Lemon tart.

Short of writing the thing, I had this blog post all planned out: lemon tarts from Marissa Meyer’s Heartless. I was going to talk about dreams.

Then my aunt died. And I wondered if I should find a more sorrowful food from some sorrowful book. (Perhaps Miss Havisham’s wedding cake?) But I don’t like sudden changes in schedule, and pi day only happens once a year, so I decided to stick to my original plan. (The lemon curd filling for these tarts, though, does come from A Half Baked Idea, which is a food memoir about grief. So that’s appropriate.) Now that I sit down to write about dreams, though, I can’t make my thoughts and ideas connect with the book.

I’m going to try, though. Forgive me if this post doesn’t hang together as well as some of my other ones.

What do you dream about?

Cath, the protagonist of this delightful and heartbreaking (yes, I did that on purpose) Alice in Wonderland prequel, dreams a lemon tree into being. (See also: The Dream Thieves, by Maggie Stiefvater.)

I have never dreamed a tree into existence, but I have two recurring dreams. One is that I am pregnant; the other is that I am being chased by some animal/person/organization. The latter dream is never stressful, but exciting and plot-driven. I wonder what these dreams say about me?

I found a quiz that purports to answer exactly this question. Here are my results: “Your dreams say you’re looking forward to new beginnings. There’s something big coming and you’re looking forward to it. You might be dreaming of babies and pregnancy, or of pure white snow, or of water washing things away. You probably dream in a mix of styles, first person and third, long dreams and short dreams, with a wide variety of emotions. That’s because change and beginnings can come with mixed emotions. Your dreams are probably as all over the place, like your emotions right now, so ride out the wave.”

Well! So that was actually kind of accurate. If you take the quiz, let me know! I’d be interested to hear whether it’s kind of accurate for you too.

I also found an interesting article about some common dreams and their supposed meanings.

That is apparently all I have in me for this month. I enjoyed making these tarts; Cath would think them far, far from perfect, but I had fun making them (it was my first time making both lemon curd and candied lemon peel, which, I’m pretty sure, is said to give courage to the eater in Jackson Pearce’s Sweetly), although I now understand why hers took five hours to make. Mine are a bit “rustic”, but they really tasted good. And that’s what counts, right?