"What do you believe is true even though you cannot prove it?"

In full reliance on the laws of physics as I understand them (and let’s be clear, my understanding is 99.5% empirical with a dim 0.5% grasp on the facts), I decided to answer this question in the form of a pie. Not pi. Just pie.

People who know me (assuming there are such people) can tell you that I got me some bona fide kitchen game. I can cook. I would say that I am a freestyle cooking specialist. On any unpromising-looking Tuesday night, I’ll chip something out of the freezer, dumpster-dive into the crisper, rattle about in the cupboards, wing it all together and hey presto, there will be something hot and yummy, if maybe a little unorthodox, slung on your plate by dinnertime. That’s my gift.

Well, truly, my gift may be pattern recognition. I just recently worked this out. I was thinking about myself (as I often lovingly and lengthily do) and trying to identify the points of intersection in all my interests and skills. What’s the connection between composing pop songs, cooking, and solving logic problems? How about between playing billiards, playing Scrabble and finding things other people have lost? The pattern that emerged was patterns. I’m good at pattern recognition.

Pattern recognition is essential to good cooking, too, in case you were wondering where the hell I’m going with this. Cooking is about combining patterns of flavours, textures, and colours using various techniques and methods. It’s weaving, but with food. Because I have good pattern recognition skills in the kitchen, I know that when I have a dish that’s built on a Holy Trinity of ginger, garlic and coriander, it will not work to throw vanilla into the mix.

Come to think of it, being good at pattern recognition is really just a fancy way of saying that I’m not complete crap at paying attention to life experience. I only need to throw away one batch of ginger-, garlic-, coriander- and vanilla-fried chicken. I know how to spell “obsessiveness”, even though the on-board spell checker continually attempts to foist something weird on me. I can find things my friend Tim has lost in about 38 seconds because I know Tim in a way he doesn’t know himself. When I look at a room with Tim in it, he’s in it, whereas in his own view of the scene, I’m in it. We have different patterns in mind, and different blind spots, too.

But what about the freaking pie? I hear you clamour. Okay. The question was “What do you believe is true even though you cannot prove it?" Well, I believe that all of the foregoing is true – all the stuff about pattern recognition and vanilla-fried chicken and why Tim can’t ever find his cell phone without me – but I can’t prove it. And good lord, what a time waster that would be, if I tried. Really, you might as well ask “What DON’T you believe is true even though you cannot prove it?”

What I believe is true, even though I can’t prove it, is that faith is as necessary as breath. Faith is Imagination’s dumpier sister. Faith is the one who knits the mittens, pays the oil bill on time, and dresses properly in foul weather. Faith doesn’t worry about stepping off the porch only to be hit by a bus (though Imagination wastes all sorts of time on it). Faith bakes all the pies.

So, asked to produce something I believe is true but cannot prove, I went with faith and baked a pie. My pie will not be too sweet. It may be a little tangy, even, and here a smidge of vanilla is not out of place. I baked my pie in a hot oven until the crust got properly crusty, then I set it on a ledge, out of reach of the cats and other naysayers, where even now it is cooling, waiting for whoever wants a slice. It will be delicious, for it is a pie made out of garden-fresh, handpicked amor vincit omnia.