Pie Day!

Today was Pie Day (and Chris N's b-day - Happy Birthday, honey!).

Pie Day was a special day created soley for the purpose of encouraging young Naomi to stop smoking. I hate smoking and I used to do it, a little - only a little - for one summer and usually only after a crappy night at work and we'd be drinking too...or I'd have clove cigarettes and they don't count. ;)

Anyway... Naomi is 19 I think, maybe only 18, and smokes because her ex-boyfriend got her started on it. My point exactly - her EX. But that's a whole other deal.

I found out about her condition when I was talking to AP and so I gave her my standard lecture about my dad and how he smoked until he was 13 and how he died at 58 and gave her the whole rundown of his illnesses.

Not to bore or depress you with all that, it worked. And she quit smoking for 2 weeks and then, sadly, went out with her high school friends and smoked again.

So the countdown went back to zero. We made a new deal that she had to go 4 weeks without smoking and I'd bake her a pie (originially it was only 3). So yesterday was D-day and she had to report in (not that I hadn't been bugging her daily all month) and with integrity on the line she said she had been good.

So last night I baked her a Strawberry-Rhubarb pie. All sorts of things went wrong with this. I was short 2 cups of rhubarb so I had to put in more strawberries. I ran out of flour so I had to run to the store, mid-crust kneading, to get more. The pie bubbled over so it didn't look very pretty and my first attempt at a lattice top was pretty horrendous.

I have pictures but stupid me forgot my camera at work. Tomorrow, I promise.

Naomi thought it was great and everyone said it tasted awesome. I broke my SB plan (on day 2, no less!) and had a piece. I have this thing about tasting what I bake because I need to know if it really was good or if people were lying when they say things like that. It was pretty good and the crust, which was a new recipe, was really good. I'm going to start using that one for my apple pies.

My only worry now is that Pie Day will get out around work and I'll be having all sorts of orders flooding in for supervisor's helping their people kick the ash, so to speak. Not a bad side business though and I do love to bake.

Next up: Pumpkin Pie!