It’s Labor Day weekend and time to chill a little.  It’s time to spend time with family and friends, maybe enjoy some really good food.

Easy as pie, as they say, and this one surely is as easy as they come.  Try Angel Pie and see if you don’t agree that this is one of the better treats you can make for a warm weekend of kicking back.  It’s light, fluffy, lemony and fruity all at the same time.

An added bonus:  it’s gluten-free!

While relaxing this weekend, I’m going to appreciate especially those who have been or still are part of labor unions.  They help make for a middle class in America.  Here’s to everyone who works hard and contributes to their families and community! 

It’s kind of like looking for love in all the wrong places.

I was on a road trip with three friends recently and, just in time for lunch, we saw this sign on a roadside diner.  The whole roadside diner idea was appealing:  comfort food, big booths with padded vinyl seating, and a waitress with her name on the back of her belt refilling coffee cups.  Perfect!

The sign promised pie, so we checked out the refrigerated pie case immediately, before even being seated.  Featured there was a selection of fruit and cream options, including cherry, apple, lemon meringue and coconut cream.  The hostess reassured us that, yes, everything was made right there at the diner, just like homemade.  Oh, yum!  This was going to be fun!

The booths were full of local folks, so we settled down at a wooden table for four in the annex.  Sure enough, Betty brought lots of coffee and we ordered everything from country fried steak to enchiladas to a Chinese chicken salad.  Everything was pretty good, given that we were many miles from the nearest sources of fresh ingredients. 

Then the moment we’d been looking forward to:  sharing a piece of pie.  There was lots of talk and we finally agreed on the coconut cream, as it did look the most beautiful and all of us were in the mood for few bites of something sweet and blissful.  And if the pie was shared four ways, no great harm would come to anyone’s diet!

Shockingly awful.  I mention this not to disparage the café but just to be real with you about what commercially made pie is like these days.  Can you imagine pie so bad that four of us couldn’t finish one piece?  It’s true:  the crust was dense and tough, the filling was starchy to the point of gakky, and the topping seemed to be a cross between whipped cream and plastic.  Really!  We left most of it on the plate.

Do you find yourself looking for good pie and frequently being disappointed by what’s served?  Me, too.

So, my friends, I’m proposing that we once again commit to making pie and teaching others how to make pie and then enjoying it together.  Let’s keep good pie alive! 

And what do you think about making a list of places in the U.S. and Canada where it’s possible to buy a really good piece of pie, based on your experience and judgment?  I’d love to compile a list! 

Start thinking about where you go for good pie in your area and in the next newsletter (Sept.), we’ll set up a system for collecting your personal endorsements and posting them with pictures on a list here at Pie Pals so we can all find that good pie when we’re traveling.  Who knows?  Maybe we’ll take more road trips, just for the sake of finding a good piece of pie! 

Yours in the search,

I support a woman’s right to choose, and not just her pie.  Her right to choose pretty much everything, especially if it has to do with her very own body:  that temple of the divine here on Earth.  She’s in charge of that – from what goes into it, including pie, to what comes out of it, including babies.

In America today, it’s a woman’s legal right to choose whether or not to have children.  Period.  She may involve others in her decisions but, bottom line, it’s her decision.

Do we really want to change that now?  Election Day is here.  Please consider whether you think it’s important to uphold a woman’s right to make her own healthcare, body and pie decisions. 

Personally, I pick peach.

A bougainvillea bower was dropping magenta flowers into the aqua pool and a short waterfall burst from rocks overhead.  OK, the rocks were fake, but we are terribly near Disney World, after all, in Orlando, FL.  Nevertheless, the water and colors together made me happy.

The American Pie Championship is being held here and the big pool at the convention center hotel invited me in.  It felt good to get moving, swimming in that blue pool after sampling…how many pies today?  Granted, I probably consumed less pie today than most of the 3 year olds there, but I tasted at least 12 pies.

Part of the championships is the pie festival, held nearby in a park.  I’m not much for crowds anymore, but this was worth it.  About 30,000 people descended on this park today and ate to their hearts’ delight (well, maybe to their mouths’ delight) as commercial pie companies shared their goods.  For a price of only $10 for adults and $5 for kids, people could walk up and sample every pie there.

The street was lined with pie pushers!  There were probably 10 different pie companies, all sharing individual servings of several different kinds of pie up to every comer.  Chocolate, cherry, pecan, apple, blueberry with no sugar added, lemon meringue, “Dixie” pie, Key Lime pie, peach pie, rhubarb, pumpkin, strawberry, you-name-it pie.

My favorite part was watching the baby strollers go by – full of babies and pie samples stacked up high enroute to a seat in the shade.  People enjoying pie and each other, making new friends over pie.  Even more beautiful than magenta bougainvillea in an aqua pool.