I expressed some interest in learning to bake pies a while back, and a friend is trying to help me out.

For Christmas, she gave me a rolling pin, a pie plate and made me a little book on pie making. I have yet to actually make a pie, but I did follow one of the little book’s suggestions, and made a quiche. I’ve always been a little nervous about making crusts, but my friend maintains that it’s actually not that difficult — she claims that people turn making crust into this big, scary thing, and that if you remain calm and follow some basic guidelines, your crust will turn out fine. I like it when things are easy, and so I chose to believe her.

I combined the flour and salt, and then set about working the butter into the mixture. This was a little harder than it sounds, as I don’t own a pastry blender. But my friend had helpfully suggested alternative tools (“If you don’t have a rolling pin, try a wine bottle”), and so I used two butter knives to cut the butter into smaller and smaller pieces and blend it with the flour and salt. Then I poured some ice cold water onto the dough, creating a thick, gloppy mess. The little book suggested that I cover a flat, clean surface with flour before rolling the dough, and so I dumped some flour on the kitchen table and placed one of the balls on the pile of flour. I got my rolling pin, pressed it into the crust and pushed. The thick, gloppy mess responded as if covered with suction cups, wrapping itself around the rolling pin like a giant leech. I ripped it off and placed the thick, gloppy mess back on the table, but not until after I’d managed to totally slime myself. My hands and arms were covered with dough, and I rushed to the sink to wash it off. I have a bad habit of not always reading the entire recipe before I start cooking, and when I glanced back at the little book, I saw that my friend had recommended sprinkling flour on the rolling pin to keep the dough from sticking to it, and using a butter knife to detach sticky dough from the rolling pin.

Even with the flour and the butter knife, rolling the dough was hard work. I kept getting dough all over my arms and hands, and whenever the build-up became unbearable (I don’t like being covered with gunk), I dashed to the sink and scraped it off. By the time my misshapen crust was fully rolled, it looked like something had exploded in my kitchen. There was flour everywhere, and little pieces of dough stuck to the counters and appliances, and a new layer of sediment covering the linoleum. I paused to catch my breath, then lifted the crust — using the butter knife to get it off the table without tearing in half — and placed it in the pie plate. I mixed eggs, milk, cheese, pesto and sundried tomatoes, poured it into the plate, and threw it into the oven.

The quiche itself was a success. While the crust could have come out a little better, it had a nice consistency — in other words, it didn’t feel or taste like cardboard. But the following night, I noticed a new problem: My kitchen sink wasn’t draining. I poured some Drano in it, but nothing happened. Instead, I created a toxic cesspool that I feared would melt the skin off my hand if I dipped it into the water. I suspected the pie dough explosion and blocked sink were somehow connected; at the same time, I found it difficult to believe Drano couldn’t cut through pie dough. Then I remembered my difficulty taming and subduing the pie dough, and reconsidered. I bought some more Drano, poured it down the drain, and flushed the sink with several pots of boiling water.

But there was still no movement; the toxic cesspool seemed to be expanding. Ashamed, I called my landlord, who said she had a snake-like apparatus that might be able to do the job. By the time I got home the next day, the sink had been cleared. “What was blocking it?” I asked, expecting her to say that a pile of marbles had somehow gotten lodged in my plumbing. “It appeared to be a piece of eggshell,” she said. “That’s it?” I said. “A piece of eggshell?” Obviously, the quiche was to blame. I’ve vowed that the next time I make one, I’ll be a lot more careful. But I have learned a valuable lesson. You cannot underestimate the power of food.

THE ORCHID THIEF

I finished Susan Orleans’ 2000 book “The Orchid Thief,” about the 1994 arrest of South Florida resident John Laroche and a group of Seminole Indians for poaching rare orchids from the Fakahatchee Strand State Preserve. I decided to read the book after my December vacation in the Everglades and Key West, and Orleans does a really good job of evoking South Florida, its lushness and weirdness and mystery and allure. Laroche is an interesting character, although at times I wondered if he really deserved to be the star of a best-selling book. When Orleans described some of the letters she received after her piece about Laroche ran in The New Yorker, objecting to her portrayal of him, I understood what they were complaining about. Laroche is something of a con man, but his criminality isn’t really all that exceptional. I often marveled at Orleans’ ability to put up with him — as a reporter, I tend to tire of sources who don’t keep appointments fairly quickly.

Overall, “The Orchid Thief” is an interesting exploration of both obsession and plants. My main complaint is that it just sort of peters out — that there’s no real plot to speak of, although maybe it’s more correct to say that the plot isn’t really that compelling. We know from the book’s first pages that Laroche will eventually give up orchids as a hobby, and it’s no real surprise when the Seminoles grow weary of his antics, and fire him. The book ends with Laroche and Orleans visiting the Fakahatchee so Orleans can finally see one of the rare orchids — called a ghost orchid, because its roots blend with the tree, and the flower appears to be floating in midair. But instead they get lost, and wander around for a while, and decide to leave the swamp even though they still haven’t seen a ghost orchid. Since the whole book is about Orleans’ quest to see a ghost orchid, this felt anti-climatic and very “Waiting for Godot-ish” to me. But maybe I just can’t relate to someone who would write a whole book about ghost orchids, but never actually succeed in seeing one.

Got a comment? E-mail me at sfoss@dailygazette.net.