In high school, in Portland, my best friend and I skipped school a lot to go to the market and buy hand pies. The grocery store brand were two for a dollar. If you’re picturing something quaint, like you’d find in a small-town bakery, you couldn’t be further off: These were starchy white pockets of pure chemical. The wrappers had colorful pictures of blackberries or cherries on them, but one bite into the factory-nondescript crust and all assumptions of real fruit vanished. Each pie contained a layer of bright goo that barely moved when shaken.

That was the year I decided that pie was my number one favorite food. I may have been a little embarrassed to be more specific, but I will reiterate to you now: I longed for deep fried hand pies from the grocery store.

I went to college in Washington State, and when I finished, I decided to move to New Orleans to be a special education teacher. This was two years after Hurricane Katrina, and I had this naïve sense that it was my civic duty to go.

I didn’t really want to move. I felt I was supposed to.