My dearest, B

This wasn't really meant to be shared. I bake alone, before you wake. The first pies come out in silence. Each carries something: a place I miss, a person I loved, a taste I never want to forget, or a version of myself I’ve left behind. Some are stitched together with so much ache they feel almost too private to make. They are not just recipes. They are records. 

I’ve always believed pie can be a bridge between people, something that connects us without words.

When you meet me at the window, you’ll think I’m bright, bubbly, maybe even too much, like the pink of my shop. But beneath, I am private. Sharing my feelings has never been my strong suit. But I have always spoken food fluently. It is how I enter the world.

When I found pie, I understood it was my language. One I can speak without hesitation, even when I don’t have the words. It is how I show my love, where I hide my pain, and keep my memories.

Blame Butter is a living archive and pie is my medium. A place where flavor, art, and my memory collapse into something timeless, yet transformed. I’m a collector of moments. I call them residencies because they are. Each one a chapter, each pie a new piece in my catalogue raisonné I share with you.

There is a reason food endures as one of our deepest forms of provenance. Even when language, clothing, or even a country is lost, food remains. It carries our traditions forward. It holds our dearest memories. A dish is never just food. It is the person who prepared it, the place you sat in anticipation, and the conversations you had across the table eating it. A smell can transport you to a singular moment from the past. You don’t just remember your grandmother’s cooking; you remember one of countless times she served it to you. Why that one? Why that moment?

Not all memories are sweet. The longing for a dish made by someone who is gone. The meal together you didn’t know would be your last. We eat to survive, but dessert is a decision. The thing we save room for, that we split even when we are too full. What we carry to celebrations and to funerals. Dessert is memory chosen, appetite made into proof of joy, grief, and love.

For a long time, I thought success meant running the kitchen of a grand hotel, reaching the pinnacle of the corporate ladder. I don’t feel that way anymore. Success is this archive: the places I go, the people I feed, the stories I hear because I brought pie.

I love pie because it is universal. Whether it is spanakopita in Greece, bisteeya in Morocco, Geraardsbergse Mattentaart in Belgium, börek in Turkey, or Xian Bing in China, every culture has a pie. Any dish can be turned into pie, because everything tastes better wrapped in flaky pastry.

So here we are: Residency No. 1, Only a Matter of Time. 

Thank you for sitting at my table. Because food is how I say I see you. Stay a while. Let me take care of you. 

This is a love letter to appetite, to memory, to provenance.

If you’re reading this, you’re already part of the story. 

Forever yours,