It's a Pie Day!

My Mom. Doing what she did best!

Pie.

That king of treats.

The amazing union of lightly browned and flaky crust and yummy filling.

And topped with a delicious scoop of iced or whipped cream . . .

It's like heaven.

In your mouth.

Spilled on the floor and reduced to its sticky, disparate parts, it's not as good.

But we won't go there.

And I just finished cleaning.
So . . . pie.

Today is pie-making day.

Whenever our family celebrates, we do it with pie.

It's a long-standing tradition that spans one generation.

Okay, we started it, but it's still a good tradition!

So, because tomorrow is the launching of my new book, Carving Angels, and every party requires pie, I will spend today making it.

Pie, I mean.

I love making it.

My Mom made fantastic pie. 

Sweet. Flaky. (This is the only place where 'flaky' is a good thing.)

And utterly delicious.

And so, when I make it, using her recipes, it's like spending time with her.

I even have a picture, which I prop up and talk to.

Okay, it's weird, but she's been gone for nearly a decade and I miss her.

And now, in honour of this grand occasion, I am including some of my favourite 'pie' quotes:

1. "Keep your knives, we're having pie!"  ~My Dad. Just before Mom whacked him.
2. "Keep your fork, Duke, there's pie."  ~The proprietress of a diner to the Duke of Edinborough.
3. "A boy doesn't have to go to war to be a hero; he can say he doesn't like pie when he sees there isn't enough to go around."  ~E.W. Howe
4. "It is utterly insufficient (to eat pie only twice a week), as anyone who knows the secret of our strength as a nation and the foundation of our industrial supremacy must admit. Pie is the American synonym of prosperity, and its varying contents, the calendar of the changing seasons. Pie is the food of the heroic. No pie-eating people can ever be permanently vanquished."  ~EDITORIAL New York Times, 1902
5. "But I, when I undress me
   Each night, upon my knees
   Will ask the Lord to bless me
   With apple-pie and cheese."
               ~Eugene Field
6. "Thy breath is like the steame of apple-pyes."  ~Arcadia   Robert Green, 1590
7. "In order to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe."  ~ Isaac Asimov
8. If all the world were Apple pie, And all the seas were ink, And all the trees were bread and cheese, What would we have to drink?  ~ Unknown

I have to go. My Mom is waiting.
Happy pie day!