Blogger Piefest 2005

This is the first installment in a new 11.5 feature known as "Spinning Girl and Friends in the Kitchen". Future installments will depend solely upon my mood and the available ingredients in my pantry.


Episode I: Pumpkin Pie

Is there really anything better than pumpkin pie? Few things. A very few. And there's never really enough of it, not if you love it as much as some of us do. Today was a perfect day to make a pumpkin pie from semi-scratch; that is, with some pre-made ingredients like canned pumpkin and a ready-made crust. I really admire the folk who made pumpkin pies from actual pumpkins. Whoever that folk was, she was the bomb.

The folk making this pie are, however, not into cubing and steaming pumpkin for hours on end. We are can-opening type of folk. And by "we", I of course mean myself and my carefully chosen Blogger Piefest 2005 phone companion. I chose for my baking partner a folk in Missouri named Baker-Man Dave, whom I love bossing around and whom I could convince to make a pie with me.

Dave got into his baking gear, and went to market. I pulled jeans on over my pajama bottoms and threw a jacket on over my tank top, and went to market. Then we assembled the ingredients.

Here are my ingredients. Notice the broken crust, already. It is a granola crust (yum!) that I tried to take out of the foil pan to put into the glass pan, because I am a snob. The wages for my snobbery is crumbs.


Here are Dave's ingredients. Notice how he tries to hide the Cool Whip behind the pie shells, as if we wouldn't notice. Show the world your non-dairy whipped topping with pride! After this photo, I have no more evidence of Dave's pie-making. You'll have to go see how it turned out; I do know that he had to bake it extra-long because I think he was following the high-altitude directions, and also because he didn't preheat the oven as told. We did have a wonderful talk while we were baking. Some topics this talk included were:

• Christmas wreaths, like the huge one I got but can't hang until I find the door hook
• Golf and something called a "humdinger", which is when you pay a certain sum of money for a do-over in a tournament.
• Calzone
• Shower gel and its benefits
• How beautiful I am
• How to make the pie, which is why we were talking in the first place! Hello!

Pie-Related Events in chronological order:

Nothing quite like raw eggs mixed with evapo-milk.

mmm, straight off the vine as God intended.

mixy mixy

pour

leftover filling becomes a crustless pie.

Bake for an hour & fifteen, or two hours at the high altitudes of St. Louis, Missouri.

While pies are baking, practice making the perfect Reddi-Whip "pouf" for later. Sample flavor (for quality). Repeat.

crustless pie

The real pie!

Served.

This was a really great way to spend part of my Sunday. In conclusion, I would definitely like to try more pie experiments with Dave sometime soon. Next weekend, join us as Monkey and I make his favorite dish, Pu Pu Platter. Until then ... Bon apetit!