Bread's fine and all...but PIE!

If you haven't noticed, I'm on a little bit of a bread roll right now. Sorry, bread's not quite as exciting as cupcakes and cookies and whatnot, but it's tasty, and I need to get better at it. Meanwhile, I'm (hopefully!) winding down on all this bread, because I can't eat it as fast as I can bake it, and moving on to PIE!

My neighborhood back home has a ginormous arts and craft and music and...everything...festival thing, called Art on the Avenue. They shut down a mile of our "main street" (known as "The Avenue," hence the name) and line it with craft vendors, and food, and musicians, and all sorts of fun stuff. It's huge and crazy and awesome.

The best part? They have a pie contest every year! And not only am I entering, I'm going to win, gosh darn it!

So here's the first of many many sample pies, a spiced pear pie from one of my old cookbooks. I wanted something that tasted fairly normal, not totally outside the realm of possibilities for a pie contest, but something nobody else would make.

Test pie one was pretty darn good, but it can always be better. I'm going to try again with a few modifications, a different crumb top, maybe some nuts, maybe some honey, maybe a different crust...just be forewarned, soon I will present you with the best pear pie recipe in the whole wide world!