November Thankfulness - Pie

My, oh my, how I love pie.  (I should write a poem, shouldn't I?)

I love to read about pie, bake pie, serve pie and eat pie.

And eat pie the next day, when it is almost always better, except for meringue pie; sad but true, meringues, like yeast breads, are outside of my skill set.

Mom was a great pie baker; her best was Raisin Exquisite.
Grandma Hunley was a great pie baker; fortunately for us, meringues were her specialty -- chocolate meringue, lemon meringue, coconut meringue.
I am just an OK sort of pie baker, whose crusts still tend to shrink and often get a little black around the edges.  I do, however, have aspirations of greatness, and look toward the day when I'll have enough time and patience to cut out little pastry leaves to decorate the edges of our pies, a la Martha Stewart.  

This Thanksgiving, I think we will have about 20 pie-loving guests, so I'm baking the following:  2 pumpkin pies, 2 regular sugar cream pies (the state pie of Indiana, and everyone's favorite), 1 brown sugar sugar cream pie (recipe here -- Clay says, "Why mess around with a good thing?" but I say, "This might be the new good thing!") and 1 mincemeat (just because).  If things go as planned, I am going to make the crusts, using the foolproof recipe from America's Test Kitchen (the secret is vodka!); if things go wonky, as they are apt to do around here lately, I will rely on the Pillsbury Dough Boy and his marvelous refrigerated crust.

Piece.  Of pie.