Pi Day!

Pi Day ended up being both a bigger production and smaller party than I had anticipated.  In my head it started quite simple:  I would make another pie, and myself and anyone who was around (my roommates, etc.) would eat it.  Since two weeks ago I had made a covered pie, like this:

This time I wanted to make a normal (to my mind) pie.  Since my pie crust recipe makes enough for one covered pie or two uncovered, that would mean that I would need to make two pies, instead of one.  One would be chocolate, that much was certain.  Last time I had lavished all that effort on an apple pie, which isn't my favorite. This time I would make no such mistake.  My other favorite is lemon meringue, which, despite the fact that my family makes the lemon from a box mix, takes substantially more effort than our usual instant Jell-O pudding chocolate pie.  My roommate, who doesn't even like pie except for key lime, decided she wanted in on the pie action and was going to make a key lime pie.

About this time, Di posted a comment on my pie post, mentioning that we should do Pi Day together.  Motivated by the thought of a joint pie party, I decided to make things more complicated.  I remembered that once upon a time, years ago, Balgram had brought a pie made by her mother to our shared Japanese class.  It was lemon meringue, and I had loved it.  So I asked her to ask her mother how to make her South African lemon meringue pie.  When her wonderful mother emailed me the recipe, it included the recipe for her pie crust.  To my surprise, it was quite different from mine.  It had things like an egg, baking powder, and sugar in it.  Weird, I thought.  That could be good.

So I decided to try a new recipe of lemon meringue, this one from scratch and from a different continent, and a new pie crust recipe.  The new recipe made three pie shells, so I would need to make three pies.

Which is how I came to be making three pies on Monday.

I made a chocolate pudding,

a lemon meringue (look, it was pretty!),

and an experimental coconut Oreo (it wasn't very pretty, hence the Oreos on the top).

Allie made her key lime, and then Di came and made a fabulous pumpkin and another lemon meringue.  Hesitant to make too big of a party on a school night, I hadn't invited very many people, and many of the people who considered coming ended up not being able to.  So there we were, with six pies (well, five.  Di's lemon meringue never "set," leaving a bunch of meringue, which got slightly overdone, floating in a sea of liquid lemon stuff.).  Five pies, and only four of us.

I never said we weren't silly.  We made Cuny take the picture since he didn't make any of the pies.  Also, when did I get into thumbs up?  I don't remember having a thumbs up think before the last two weeks.

We ate a lot of pie, but not enough.  Di took hers home, and Allie and I both took pies to work the next day for our coworkers to polish off.  Now we're done to only two nearly full pies in the fridge.  

After all this pie making in the last few months, I'm beginning to feel basically competent, if not very confident, in my pie-making skills.  There was no cussing, crying, or even much grumbling while I made those crusts.  Of course, it helped that I knew I had three chances and the excuse of trying a new recipe in case they didn't turn out.

I've tried a butter crust and a sweet crust, and both seemed easier than the Crisco crust that my mother makes.  I also got to watch someone else (Di) make pies.  I barely recognized the process when someone else did it.  Her recipe combined elements from both my mom's recipe and my friend's mom's recipe.  It had shortening, salt, AND an egg.  And she used some sort of magic weird pastry cloth.  And her pie crusts were super thick compared to my thin, stinting ones (it turns out that when the recipe said "three crusts" it must have meant either three incredibly thin crusts or three very small pies, maybe 8 inches).  With all those differences, her pie turned out delicious.  It turns out, there are about a million ways to make pie.  So now, I am curious.  How do you make pies?  Does your crust recipe use shortening or butter?  Does is contain sugar or salt or both?  Are there eggs in it?  Do you transfer it to the pan by folding and lifting, or by wrapping it around the rolling pin, or by using the pastry cloth?

If you're wondering which recipes I've liked best, I can't really tell you so far.  I think I need to make and eat a lot more pie before I develop a very discriminating pallet.  Also, I think I might just be a lover of pies of all recipes and denominations, which is just fine by me.  It was a great night, lots of delicious pie and friends I've known for years.  To add to it, there was Mario Kart and a beautiful sunset.