It was the best one yet!

Every since this--->

came home, I've been feeling the pressure!  It goes so well in my kitchen that I must win again next year.  So I've spent many, many moments thinking about PIE!   (Judy F., the previous sentence was not an inside joke between you and me...but I'm giggling anyway.)

This week has been filled with sleepless nights comprised of endless searches of all things PIE.  I looked around cooking blogs, perused punchfork until dawn, fast forwarded through hundreds of episodes of The Cooking Channel's programs.  I finally settled on a peach blackberry thing.  I spent the better part of the day with Shelly getting hay in Canon City.

The whole ride into town, she's promising me a stop at the grocery so I could pick up a few things.  Instead the closest I got to a store with food for purchase was Burger King.  After Burger King, she headed straight to Colon Orchards and loaded up hay.  She ended up with a few more big bales than she had originally planned.

Since this was Tom Truck's first haul since his upgrade (recall the blog about our trip to Denver to offload the sheep) Shelly decided that we'd better make haste and head up the hill.  For a split second I thought I'd slip a few apples into my bag when I was letting Izzy out to use the little girl's room.  The apples didn't look ready and I left my bag at home and I really don't need any negative Karma.  So I loaded my dog and my bad attitude and away we went.

Upon our arrival home, Shelly started whining about lunch.  I'm convinced it's a conditioned response with her.  We make the turn into the driveway and she starts salivating like Pavlov's dog.  Izzy and I walked to the house from the barn.  I'm supposed to be thinking about lunch but instead, I'm trying to remember what I have in the pantry so I can make a pie.  Izzy steps on me several times, as she's bounding from gopher hole to prairie dog hole.  I decide on steak, rice and broccoli for a lunch/dinner meal.  Things are going along swimmingly.  I get the food made and even manage to start some laundry.  As I finish grilling the steak and let Shelly know that she can some feed her face, I hear the buzzer on the dryer.  I set my steak on a plate to let it rest and head downstairs to fold the clothes.  I head back up the stairs when I'm done, thinking to myself, "Since I've made a large meal for lunch, I can skip making dinner and instead make a PIE."

As I top the stairs I see my lurch of a dog, standing in the kitchen licking her lips.  I think nothing of it until I see the plate.  There is no steak to be found.  The plate hasn't moved.  I know that Izzy has sucked it down.  Taco Dog and Virus Dog have not moved from their usual positions.  Not only did she inhale my entire hunk of meat but she didn't even share with her siblings.

I was so frustrated that I gave Izzy the stink eye.  I had lost my appetite.  I decided that a little alone time would probably be a good idea.  I headed down to the cow pasture to check on Jenny Cow.  Jenny Cow is expected to deliver her first calf in late July.  She's already showing signs of the coming baby with a filling udder and cocked tail.  I brought her up to the milking barn to get some extra cookies and a good brushing.  Jenny and I chatted about her upcoming due date and all the glorious milk she was going to give us.

After our time together I headed home and started baking.  I made a batch of shortbread cookies, let them cool and then smashed them for a crust.  Then I smooshed about 7.2 recipes together in my head and filled the crust with apples and some other yummy stuff.  I pull the pie from the oven and set it in the microwave to cool.  I start making a caramel whipped cream.  As the cream is getting fluffy in the stand mixer, Shelly asks me if the pie will be ready before we go to bed.  I decide to place the pie in the fridge to cool it quickly.  As I'm moving a jar of pickles to the side the unthinkable happens.  I drop the pie! 

Apparently, it was cool enough as Izzy managed to slurp up several mouthfuls before she realized that I was unhappy about the situation.  I scooped the remaining pie into the pig bucket and sulked away to their pen.  I came back to the house and realized that I had forgotten about the cream being whipped in the stand mixer.  I now have caramel butter.

I'm telling you that pie was the best pie I have ever made.  I have no idea what I put in it, what temperature I baked it at, or for how long.  It is forever lost because someone put the pickles in the wrong place in the fridge.