Friendsgiving

The Tuesday before Thanksgiving we were invited to a Friendsgiving celebration at the Kirk household. We were put in charge of bringing dessert and I got super ambitious and decided to make homemade pies from scratch. I had been seeing so many pie pins on Pinterest and not knowing what I was getting myself into I set out to make a pecan pie and an apple pie. I had intended to use Pioneer Woman's recipes, but when I was searching for a homemade crust I came across the blog Gimme Some Oven. The first line when I opened her pecan pie recipe was this:
"My Grandma Ebright was many things…She was the faithful wife of a Kansas wheat farmer for sixty years, proud mother of five, and involved grandmother of thirteen. [...] She was a firecracker. She was thoughtful. She was stubborn. She was giving. She was hilarious. She was creative. She was loyal. She was my grandma.And she was an expert baker of pecan pie."

While I really loved the entire section about her Grandma Ebright, what got me most was her mention of a Kansas wheat farmer. My mom's dad, fondly known as "Poppy", was a doctor in rural western Kansas. While he was a doctor by day [and night] he was also a farmer. He grew up on a farm and was very knowledgeable about crops and everything farm-related. He was actually one of those grandpas who knew a lot about a lot of different stuff. Smart man, my Poppy. When I was younger he had me well trained about the different kinds of crops that grew in Kansas. Whenever I was in the car with him he would point to a field and ask me what crop was growing there. I knew about 99% of the time. However, that skill did not carry over to my adulthood. Back to pie.

I started gathering my supplies for homemade pies and staging them into artsy photos.

I had all these thoughts in my head about how I would take step-by-step photos so people could see my process.

As you can see in the picture below I already have my dough started in my food processor. My food processor was basically the most important part of my operation. Saved me so much time and energy. Love that machine.

About 2 hours and one pie crust into my adventure I realized that for all the time and expense I had put into making these pies I would likely end up picking up a $5 Marie Calendar's frozen pie while en route to the party. Things were not looking good. I had to call in reinforcements.

After sending out an S.O.S. my sweet husband came home from work early to help me sort out my mess. 

Please note the bottle in the sink- for some reason I thought I could do this task while simultaneously watching my 3 month old niece.... She was not a fan of my project, ha.

Pecan pie

Apple pie

The actual baking part was probably our biggest failure. Next time I will definitely invest in a pie shield. The pecan pie was a smidge burnt and the apple pie was a bit undercooked, but overall I thought the pies tasted and looked pretty good.

Hope your week is off to a good start!

Bets