pie

Pie Porn

After making my first really successful crust at Kate McDermott’s Art of the Pie class, I knew I’d need some practice quickly to reinforce what I’d learned. I sent a message to friends: bring me a pie pan and a few bucks and I’ll make you a pie. I got no shortage of takers.

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Sweet Potato Pie

The last time I made a sweet potato pie it didn't turn out all that well, so I was a little nervous about repeating the same mistakes twice. Sweet potatoes are funny. I read somewhere recently that nearly everything we call sweet potatoes are really variations of yams, and true sweet potatoes are in fact, really large and often unseen in our grocery stores. So the last time I made sweet potato pie, I bought what were labeled 'sweet potatoes,' a really pale tuber. Even though I knew the color of a sweet potato pie was supposed to be closer to a pumpkin, I tried to get the right ingredients.

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Pecan Pie

This pie was legend in my ex's family. His grandmother Irene had made it for years and once she'd entered the State Fair of Texas pecan pie contest, she won it for 7 years straight. The only reason she stopped winning, they told me, was because she stopped entering.

That's a good enough reason to make this pie. It's been proven over generations, and even for the seal of approval from a big pecan state. The pecan state, as far as I'm concerned.

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Art of the Pie

Ask anyone who knows me well and they'll tell you about my pie hang-ups. I think it started when I was about 10 and I made my first pie, I think a cherry with a lattice top. I say I think because I never got to taste that pie. My little bother and I were always fighting, and at 4 he didn't have a grasp (or maybe be did) of how sublimely irritating he could be. When the pie was cooling on the table, he sat next to it - staring at it - until my parents sent me upstairs for fear I would hit him just for breathing all over it.

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