Let me tell you about the night I lost my dignity to a pie.
It was 2 AM, I was three glasses of boxed Chardonnay deep, and Amazon was whispering sweet nothings into my phone’s glow. I thought I was being practical — a theater kid finally growing up, buying baking supplies. But no, the universe had other plans for my lower intestine. I ordered the FurRain Ceramic Pie Weights Reusable 10mm Baking Beans Pie Crust Weights Natural Ceramic Stoneware with Wheat Straw Container for $15.99, thinking, “Finally, I’ll make a perfect blind-baked tart shell.” And I did. I made a gorgeous, flaky, crimped-edge masterpiece. And then, like Icarus, I flew too close to the anus.
Look, you don’t just buy a product called “FurRain Ceramic Pie Weights Reusable 10mm Baking Beans Pie Crust Weights Natural Ceramic Stoneware with Wheat Straw Container” without your brain doing the logical calculus of what else those little terracotta pebbles could do. They’re smooth. They’re 10mm — which, in the world of performative plumbing, is a Goldilocks diameter. They come in a goddamn wheat straw container that looks like a minimalist urn for a very small, very chic dog. And they’re reusable. The drama of it all! The potential for an encore performance!
So, the moment of truth. I thought, if a man can put a glass dildo up there, surely a handful of tiny, heat-treated ceramic baking beans is fine. I am a fool. A magnificent, aspiring fool.
The sensation is best described as “aggressively granular.” It’s not one object, it’s a chorus of tiny, unyielding pressure points. Every time I shifted my weight, I could hear them clacking together inside me like a ghost maraca. I felt like a human maraca. A very, very full human maraca. I tried to imagine I was a beautiful, slightly lumpy pie crust being perfectly weighted down, but the reality was just... a colon full of tiny, unforgiving stones. They were so loud. Every step I took sounded like I was walking on a bag of those Instant Pot silicone pastry brush components—you know, the ones that go clink? I had read a few reviews about what happens when instant pot silicone pastry brush comes into contact with ceramic, and now I was living the sequel.
For the love of God, do not buy or skip instant pot silicone pastry brush for this purpose. Just use the brush for butter. Do not do what I did.
After 45 minutes of intense, theatrical grunting, I managed to expel the entire ensemble into a bowl with a sound like a meteor shower hitting a tarp. The wheat straw container survived. I am not the same man. My dignity is gone, but I can now perfectly blind-bake a quiche Lorraine. And I know, with absolute certainty, that sometimes a prop is just a prop.
