I Made A Pie

When we woke up this morning, we were faced with our weekly challenge: "How are we going to make today, a Saturday, extra awesome?" Because we do what we can to make the weekdays awesome, sure, but on Saturdays you get an entire day! If you think of something that takes eight hours, you just go out and spend eight hours doing it. There aren't nearly the limits of the midweek. Today, one of Kirsten's ideas for things we could do was to bake something. See, neither of us are anything to write home about when it comes to baking, so it was a good idea to take on this challenge and see if I could improve my average a little bit. A quick glance around the kitchen, and I saw the eight gigantic Granny Smith apples (they're from Costco, and I know Costco does the large packages thing, etc., but these apples themselves [I like dem] are very, very big) in the red bowl. I decided to make a pie. And then the more I thought about it, the more excited I got. I can't really explain exactly why, but I got into a mode where I had to make a good pie. I was pretty happy all day today, but I was just in this mood where I wanted to accomplish something and feel like I did a good job at it. We all get in those moods every now and then, right? (Right guys...? Guys?) And that something, my project for the day, was a real blue ribbon winner of a pie. I'm a firm believer that no one in the blog reading world really cares too much about minutiae like what you ate and cooked on a given day, and I normally shy away from that sort of thing. But today, this was important to me. So I thought, what the heck, I'll show you some pictures. First, I put together Kirsten's mom's recipe for Never-Fail Pie Crust, folded in about a half cup of sharp cheddar cheese, and let it relax in the refrigerator for thirty minutes. We at dinner in that time, and then I rolled out the crust, made the filling, sprinkled on the streusel topping, and then cut strips of crust so I could do the real live weaving thing on the top, like on Looney Tunes. (I regret to say that I didn't keep my head in the game, and some of my weaving is off.) That's when Kirsten entered the scene with the camera. (Note the red bowl.)


After the weaving, you cut around the top of the pie dish, like this:


Then you crimp the edges (that part's fun), and it goes in the oven.



And after thirty minutes...



And here I am stuffing the last bit of a slice into my mouth. This is my signature method of eating things that crumble. It feeds your hunger and automatically catches crumbs. It also makes Kirsten laugh, because if you eat things this way, you look like a castaway enjoying his first day back on solid ground.


I know it's just a pie, but it's a streusel-topped sharp cheddar and Granny Smith apple thing of beauty that was baked my me and actually turned out really well. If you'd seen me previous baking attempts, you'd gladly excuse my hubris in making a whole post out of something so mundane.

Also, I'm willing to give out the recipe. But you have to leave comments. Because people who run blogs like comments like puppies like alarm clocks.