(Nearly) Dying For Pie

I taught myself to make pie a little over a year ago when I signed up to bring them to an event at my daughter's school without reallllly knowing how to make one. Oh, I could make pumpkin pies, but I always used my mom's secret crust recipe (which is to use Pillsbury All-Ready Pie Crusts and roll them out a little thinner before using and you're welcome). I practiced and practiced (my family HATED that part of the exercise - not!) and, using America's Test Kitchen's recipe, I learned to make a darn fine crust. Then I perfected coconut cream pie (with meringue) and French silk pie, and we ate pie and ate pie and then I quit making pies before we could no longer fit through doorways.

The College Boy was home this weekend and lamented that I NEVER made pie anymore. I ignored him at first, and then I got an attack of the guilts and figured I might as well make the little whiner that sweet boy a pie.

Without thinking about it (which is how I do most of my cooking and pretty much anything else in life), I made enough crust for TWO pies. I baked both pie shells (by the way, if you don't keep your pie crust-rolling chops up, you lose them, so they weren't the PRETTIEST crusts I've ever made, but they were certainly still tasty) and spent hours and hours making a French silk pie, half of which was gobbled up in mere minutes. 

For reasons only known to the school district, we had classes as usual today, which is President's Day, but the College Boy did not and was still home. My husband didn't have to go to work, either, so they spent the day watching movies and asking me what I was going to do with the unused pie crust that was still on the dining room table. 

Fine, I'll make another pie.

This time, I wanted to replicate a pie we love from a favorite restaurant in town, a chocolate cream pie with a layer of cherry pie filling inside. Since this was another FOR REAL pie, that meant no cheating with a box of chocolate pudding, and (this is important) the recipe called for sugar, egg yolks, milk and cornstarch. I keep the cornstarch, which I don't use very often, in a high cabinet above my pantry shelves, shoved way in the back. Thinking I would be putting it right back inside after I mixed the ingredients, I left the cabinet doors open, which is not something I ordinarily do. I cooked the pudding, added the chopped bittersweet chocolate and butter, and now was ready to pour it into the pie shell (the already-baked one sitting on the dining room table that had been SCREAMING to my husband and son and BEGGING to be made into a pie). With great purpose, I strode towards the dining room when CRACK, I ran into the corner of the open cabinet door with my head and dropped like a rock to my knees.

The scene of the crime.

The sound was enough to make my husband pause the movie he and the College Boy were watching and come into the kitchen, where I was bent over, holding my head and crying.

"Let me see," he said, pulling my hands away from my head, and when I looked down, there was blood on my hand. GAHHHHH!!!! No, wait, not blood; just chocolate. And a growing goose egg on my head.

Once my husband determined I was not going to bleed onto the pie was all right (ish), he went back to the movie (College Boy, I must note, did not get up to see if I was dead or alive). Trouper that I am, I finished making the pie, washed the dishes, and cleaned off the counter before I went upstairs with Boo Boo Bunny and iced my goose egg with the help of not one, but two concerned cats.

Icing my owie with boo boo bunny.
Don't I look pitiful with my mascara
all over my face?

The nursing staff.

I still have a headache. And a very tender lump on my forehead, right at my hairline.

And pie. I have pie. 

I TOLD you the crust wasn't pretty.

Mmmmmm!