My aunt in Fresno said my pie crust was 'fine' at Thanksgiving and I'm still trying to figure out if that was a win or a fail | Baking Fails And Wins - Talk Freely
My aunt in Fresno said my pie crust was 'fine' at Thanksgiving and I'm still trying to figure out if that was a win or a fail
I brought a pumpkin pie to her house last November and she took one bite, nodded, and said 'it's fine' before moving on to talk about her neighbor's fence. My cousin's store-bought pie got a whole speech about how flaky it was, so I genuinely can't tell if 'fine' meant good or if she was being polite. Now I'm stuck between two camps: some people say family will always sugarcoat, others say 'fine' is the dead giveaway that something's wrong. I keep going back and forth on whether I should've asked her directly or just let it go. Has anyone gotten the 'fine' treatment and later found out what it actually meant? Which side do you land on here?
Honestly "fine" is one of those words that does so much heavy lifting in our lives and we never stop to notice it. It can mean "this is good and I have nothing else to say" or it can mean "I love you too much to tell you the truth," and there's really no way to know which one from the outside. That's kind of the thing with family food moments, the words barely matter and the real review is in how much got eaten. If she had two slices and sent you home with an empty plate, that's a win no matter what came out of her mouth. If your pie sat there untouched while everyone fought over the store bought one, then yeah, maybe read into it. But "fine" from an aunt who then moved on to neighbor fence gossip is probably just her being done talking about dessert, not a secret burn.