Genesis: Week #1 (October 26, 2008)

Here we go...

Week one, I had no idea that I was even embarking on this project.  Just another lazy Sunday afternoon with nothing important to do, so I decided that my daughter and I should try baking a pie.  Of course, we couldn't agree on what type of pie to make, so... we decide that we'll try to make two.  Great idea!  As noted in the prologue to all of this, I have little (no) idea what I'm doing in the kitchen, but how hard could it be, right?  Wow, am I clueless.  

We managed to decide on the two types of pie that we wanted to make.  I chose pumpkin, my daughter went with butterscotch.  I thought it would be fun to just try to pull a recipe off of the internet and go with it.  That's what we did for the butterscotch pie (the recipe can be found here), but for the pumpkin we used a friend's recipe.  Of course, since this pie making was going to be so easy, I thought we should make it a challenge by attempting to do as much from scratch as possible.  The only significant concession that was made was that we bought premade crust dough.   Other than that, the intent was to create the pies from scratch.  For the pumpkin pie, that included purchasing a baking pumpkin and making our own pumpkin puree.  Who wants to just dump your pumpkin out of a can, right?  Did I mention what an idiot I am?

I have to admit that it was really nice to have an extra set of hands for this first round at least.  Some things (like getting the rolled out pie crusts into the pie tin) were a lot easier with someone else to help out.  We didn't really split up the pie making in any organized way.  We both helped with aspects of each pie.  That made it pretty fun for me, although we each had our moments of frustration to be sure.

In theory, my wife wasn't "involved" in this pie making.  In practice, she answered all of our stupid questions, lent a helping hand a few times, and generally made it possible for us to complete two pies in an afternoon.  I'm pretty sure I'd still be standing in the kitchen with flour all over my shirt staring at the floor if it weren't for her.

All in all, this first week was pretty successful.  We ended up with two edible pies.  From now on I'll try to get a picture of the finished pie(s) to post here, but since this first week happened before I committed to this foolish endeavor, there's nothing to show, only the extra two pounds I put on since I ate 3/4 of the two pies.  I'm going to have to come up with a plan for what to do with the output, but that's for another entry...

So... that's the origin of my 52 pies project.  I'm still not sure how I got here, but now that I've told people about it I suppose I'd better follow through.  This blog, and hopefully questions and comments from readers will keep me honest as I improve my skills in the kitchen, and maybe even enjoy myself in the process.

Late-breaking news flash:  A picture of the butterscotch pie has been located and is shown here ...