Pie Day Contest

If you've been reading the blogs of some of my Sciblings, you know there is this Pi(e) Day contest going on, till March 14. (Get it?) You are supposed to bake a pie, then post a picture and the recipe. Janet in particular has been posting some very tasty looking pies, and her violet custard pie was just astonishing. I thought briefly about submitting an entry but (1) I am no baker, (2) even when I have attempted to bake something, it's never been a pie, and (3) having seen these other entries, I'd be ashamed to even think of submitting whatever shabby thing I could probably come up with.

So instead I'll just share with you this fab Philly Ink article about the Pie Lady.

Also, there's this Rick Nichols piece about Pennsylvania Dutch pies. It is my fond hope to make a pilgrammage to Krumsville in order to sample the pie spread there at Dietrich's myself.

Some were laid out on a table near the cash register. But that was just a smattering: Dietrich started enumerating the full pie line.

There is blueberry crumb, which is her personal favorite of the crumb family, which includes strawberry-rhubarb crumb and apple (Granny Smith) crumb, and cherry and huckleberry - foraged in the mountains - crumb and strawberry crumb and peach crumb. "Did I say rhubarb?"

Then there's a fine, cinnamony apple "with a lid." And a big softball of an apple dumpling. And mincemeat, which is a fine mince of beef and various citrus and raisins they make on premises and which, blessedly, is not cloyingly sweet. There are egg-custard pies, as well - a coconut custard and an astonishingly tasty black raspberry custard, and a red raspberry custard, and blueberry custard, peach, cherry and molasses custard, and a black walnut custard that, frankly, is overly subtle. And a molasses-coconut custard.

There is much more: Lemon sponge and lemon meringue, and coconut, chocolate and vanilla cream, and a crispy-topped local black walnut pie without any dairy that can keep for weeks just like a pecan pie, which it is related to. And a pageant of shoofly pies - wet-bottom, honey, lemon ("which is what they sometimes call Montgomery Pie") and vanilla and chocolate versions of shoofly pie, some cut in halves, the better to reveal their inner beauty.

Oh, pie, how we love you. May I have a slice right now? Mmmmmm....