I Made a Pie!

To some, this might not be that exciting. To me, it was a moment of triumph.

You see, pie and I have not always gotten along very well. I love pie. I love eating pie. I’ve always had some issues making pie. But we’ll get back to that in a moment.

Usually, when I think of pie, I think of Thanksgiving. And have I told you? Thanksgiving is my FAVORITE holiday. There are many reasons, non-the-least being the fact that there is at least one dessert for every person at dinner. And Thanksgiving dinner isn’t small. One year we had two turkeys and over twenty people. And yes, there were over twenty different desserts. We don’t joke around with desserts.

For a number of years I used to get together with a couple of my high school friends everything Thanksgiving morning for breakfast. We would head to Bickford’s (where many a-Friday night was spent during high school), order big breakfasts, and catch up on what had happened during the past year. At some point we realized that going to breakfast on Thanksgiving morning was…counterproductive to Thanksgiving dinner? So, we changed our tradition and have since been running the local Feaster Five race.

Jen and I get up early, run the 5K, and occasionally run into old high school friends who wear giant turkey hats. But the real reason we running the Feaster Five? They give you a WHOLE pie at the end of the race. (They give you a boatload of other food and a newspaper, but the pie is the draw for us.) To be perfectly honest, the pie isn’t even that good. It’s kind of a generic mass-produced apple pie, but the idea that they give you an entire pie totally makes it worth it (plus all those health benefits and stuff).

However, I do not have a pie-less Thanksgiving, because every Thanksgiving the Jackster does buy me a crumb-topped apple pie. I have from Wednesday night to Sunday afternoon to eat that entire pie. Because for some reason, she buys an entire pie just for ME. I don’t think I’ve ever actually finished the entire pie which is simultaneously disappointing and relieving. But crumb topped apple pie is totally the way to go.

Any of you ever heard of Chaos Pie? Or Alden Merrel? Apparently it’s a New England thing. It’s funny how many things I did not realize were regional brands and am still figuring out now. Stuff like the Hood light block bottle, Papa Gino’s pizza, and Alden Merrel. But oh, the Chaos Pie. It’s a custard-y pie baked in a cookie crust with brownies, Snickers, and caramel. I want some right now. Hey mom, can you figure out how to mail me one?

So back to my pie triumph. You see, I don’t make pies very often because I historically have not been very good at it. As a youngster, I tried to make a cherry pie. Actually, I succeeded on making a cherry pie. And in the directions, I was told to sprinkle the top of the cherry pie with some sugar before baking. So I diligently sprinkled the pie with sugar my mother told me was in the blue container. It wasn’t until dinner the next night that I discovered that sugar wasn’t sugar, it was salt. Now, salt has its place in baking, but it’s not being liberally sprinkled all over the top of a cherry pie.

I followed up the cherry pie disaster with a semi-poisonous key lime pie that was colored an unfortunate shade of green. Thinking about that pie still gives me the willies.

In college I attempted a lemon meringue pie that ended up being 3/4 lemon filling 1/4 over-beaten, flat, meringue like substance. You see, my pie record is not that good.

So last week I decided to give the pie another whirl. I found some awesome peaches and semi-simple crust recipe and went to work. The crust was nothing special. In fact, this pie was nothing special. But it also wasn’t salty, flat, or going to give anyone food poisoning. The peach filling was pretty delicious though. It’s a start. Apple season is coming up so maybe I can figure out that whole crumb topped apple pie thing. I’m moving one step closer to pie perfection!