PIE! piepiepiepie!

MMMmmmmmMMMMMmmmmmm PIE!

My husband and I went to a benefit pie contest this past weekend. I had planned on entering the contest, but decided not to. We still went, because for a $5.00 donation you could have all the pie you wanted. I was in hog heaven!

I love pies - more than any other dessert. I can pass up a cake without giving it a second thought, but pie? No way! I learned to make pies about 8 years ago, so that I could make apple pies for my dad. My mother used to make them, but her Alzheimer's changed her personality in such a way that she no longer enjoyed baking and cooking. The first pie I made for my dad was I baked in a 13" by 9" pan. My mother and I each had one piece but my father, over the course of a week, ate the rest of it all by himself. Evidently he liked it.

A few years after that I was able to make a black raspberry pie for my mom, the summer before she died. Pies were her favorite dessert too and black raspberry was her favorite pie. But she hadn't had any since she was a girl on a farm in eastern Ohio, since black raspberries are so hard to come by in the city (until recently). The day I gave her the pie was a bad day for her (Alzheimer's patients often have good and bad days or periods). When my sister and I eye sat down to eat some pie with her, I watched her face as she tasted it and for just a moment I saw my mom again. Her eyes lit up in recognition of the taste and she made an "okay" signal with her right hand and kept enjoying her pie. It was a moment I'll never forget. It was worth the hours I spent on the berry farm picking the berries, just to know that she got her black raspberry pie again.