Two pies

Last night I baked pies for my office Thanksgiving party. The event is like a massive potluck; every year, the Thanksgiving committee posts sign-up sheets with Southern Thanksgiving food categories: green beans, greens (usually collards), stuffing, sweet potatoes, macaroni and cheese, turkey legs, pies, etc. There are about 100 of us. Multiple people sign up for each category, so any one person is making food for about 20 people. This means you get to sample five different pots of collards from five different family recipes (if that's your thing) (and it's very much my thing). Then the committee buys and cooks some turkeys and hams. And my coworker from Puerto Rico makes this amazing stewed turkey with green olives. I have no idea what's in it, but it is consistently incredible.

So, I spent the evening making pies. First, though, I had to install a new bake element in our oven. The old one caught on fire and cracked (or cracked and caught on fire -- not sure which, though it was exciting in any case) a month ago, and it took us a while to track down the part. It was surprisingly easy to change except for getting the rusted screws off, considering it was nighttime and I was working by flashlight because I had to cut off the breaker. Anyway, the oven works beautifully now.

I started with a pumpkin pie. Pumpkin pie is not especially popular at my office; people there say they prefer sweet potato pie. The differences are so slight -- same seasonings, same color -- but I don't particularly like sweet potatoes with sugar added, so I stuck with what I know. It was the only pumpkin pie there, and about 4 people out of 100 had a slice. The four sweet potato pies disappeared. So I brought over half the pumpkin pie home.

I also made a chocolate pecan pie. The recipe is pretty much the same as for a regular pecan pie: toast some pecans, and mix them into a custard made with eggs, butter, Karo syrup (Norwegians represent!), sugar, and rum. This just happened to have 6 ounces of bittersweet chocolate in it as well. It was wildly popular. I was pleased. The Joy of Cooking came through yet again.

Did I mention that I buy prebaked pie shells? Yes, after making my own crust a few times, I finally came to agree with you that it's absolutely unnecessary.

This year's Thanksgiving party was a little slim on the vegetable categories, but I did have some wonderful homemade mac and cheese, excellent collards, and a good slice of coconut cream pie. I was disappointed to find that the slice of ham I got was spiced ham. It tasted like Captain Morgan's. Yeccch.