Pie Night 2011!

I haven't been blogging much in the last week, and there are a few reasons for that.  We'll get to those in this post.  It doesn't mean I'm not thankful or haven't been thinking about posting...I've just been doing other things...

....like making pie!!!!  Pie Night 2011 was Wednesday evening!  We had 19 pies to share with family and friends.  I have pictures of all but 3 of them, so I'll mention those 3 first.

One of those was a Grasshopper pie for our friend, Chris, who contributed some brews for the evening's choice of beverages.  One was a Key Lime pie that we made for Baby Amelia.  And one of those was a Mississippi Mud Ice Cream Pie with a layer of vanilla ice cream, fudge vodka sauce, pecans and coffee ice cream - all for our friend, Rhea.  This pic includes a pic of the bottle holding the fudge vodka sauce, but that's not really much to go on.  I still have some of this sauce left that can be poured over ice cream with no pie, but I'm waiting for a special occasion to indulge.  Cause this stuff is good...

This pic also shows the Pecan pie that we made for our friend, Christie, and the Pumpkin pie for my daughter, B - who didn't eat of it, because she's waiting for Thanksgiving, so it was ok for us to "break" the pie by garnishing it with whipped cream.  I love that girl!

Ok, so that accounts for 5 pies, 14 more to go.  Let's get after it! 

The next 3 pies were presented elevated on the table.  See on Monday last week I had to replace my water heater, and 3 people were very helpful in making that replacement happen.  So it can be said that if it was not for these 3 people, Pie Night 2011 might not have been.  May I request a moment of silence in honor of these 3 please?  Thank you.

Our highest honor goes to our friend, Brendan, who was the water heater installer extraordinaire!  Here is a pic of his French Silk Pie.  And yes, I did cut off a portion of the pie, but there's a better pic of it below.  I need a new blog photographer, but more on that a little lower...And then we have my son-in-law, K's Oreo pie to the right.  K was the water heater installation Project Manager/Contractor. 

And our 3rd pie in this set was for my friend, G, who helped in many little ways to make the water heater install last Monday work.  You'll be hearing more about G in the future.  Let's just say that Pioneer Woman has her Marlboro Man....Jus' Deb has her G...who has also agreed to take on the role of official blog photo man going forward, but we didn't come to that agreement before Pie Night, so these pics are still of the JD quality.  Beyond all of that, G nominated himself as chief Pie Night bottle washer PLUS key lime squeezer, so it can definitely be said that without G's efforts, Pie Night 2011 may have been only a dream. 

His pie?  Oh, you want to know about his pie?  He "shared" his pie with Alton Brown - the Coconut Cream with Macadamia Nut Crust.  While he "shared" his pie honor with Alton, he didn't so much share his pie with my work associates the next day...he was quite cute when he asked if he could keep his pie and not send it to my office, so how could I say no?

We have a few more cream pies.  Let's do those next.  Here is the peanut butter pie that I really hoped was creamier than last year for N.  (Not sure whether we succeeded in that or not...)  And a Pistachio pie for lil' baby Kiana.  You can also see a small bit of the Banana Cream that we made in honor of Ashley who is expecting her own little one.  We have decided that we ALWAYS need at least one child under the age of about 3 or 4 at every Pie Night.  It's a must.  This year we had 2 and 1/2...

Ok, so that accounts for 10 of the 19 pies.  9 more to go....let's move to 2 of our fruit pies.  We had a Pi Apple Pie for P...and a Strawberry Rhubarb for Jennifer.  The Strawberry Rhubarb was my first attempt at such a pie, and it wasn't too bad, if I may say so myself. 

Then we had a Blackberry for Scott, a Baked Strawberry for A, an Apple Butterscotch for Molly, and a Peach for me.  For the blackberry, baked strawberry and strawberry rhubarb, I precooked some of the berries in wine until a syrup formed, which I think worked very well for all 3. That takes us to 17....

...so 2 more to go.  My daughter, S, asked for Lemon Meringue, and my son, S, asked for a Mexican Chocolate pie.  This one I will make again.  I did not get enough of this one.  It's a dark chocolate with hints of cinnamon and even cayenne pepper.  Don't freak out till you've tried it.  It tastes like chocolate, but at the very end, you feel this wonderful slight heat at the back of your throat.  Cool, huh?

And that about sums up Pie Night 2011.  If I don't talk about the Hula Hoop challenges going on in the front bedroom.  Or the baby whisperers on hand.  Or the pitcher of milk requested by a couple of special young men, because apparently you can't have pie without milk.  I will keep this in mind for future Pie Nights...

I'll close with a couple of things I'm thankful for.  People who know how to make water heater installations happen on very short notice and for as few dollars as possible.  I am very thankful for them.  I'm thankful for family and friends who say "Happy Pie Night!"  I'm thankful for the original Pie Night family that we can imitate.  And I'm thankful for the chance to make 19 pies and love on people with baking.  Fun!  Fun!

Happy Thanksgiving all, but I plan to post more between now and then, so I'll probably say that again this week...