Friday is PIE DAY!

Today's Pie Day features neither a freshly baked pie nor a recipe-just a story.  I woke up this morning to a refrigerator/freezer that has apparently kicked the bucket.  On today's agenda:  shuffling food around to working freezers and snowbanks-yes; appliance shopping-yes; pie baking-no. 

Here, however, is a photo of the last piece of my hubby's birthday rhubarb pie.  I am about to eat it with a big glass of milk that is, thankfully, still salvagable from the now warm fridge.  I'm trying to use up the perishables, which is today's excuse for eating pie for breakfast. 

Now, I know that March is not rhubarb season in Minnesota, but I always make a rhubarb pie for his birthday.  In fact, that first birthday when we started dating is what renewed my interest in pie baking, and threw me into this whole crazy love of pie (and him).

We had only been dating for 2 months, but as any witnesses can attest, I think we already knew that this was the real deal.  He had, at some point, mentioned that his mom had always made a rhubarb pie for his birthday when he was growing up.  Being that he was far from home at the time, I decided that this would surely be a way to really woo him.  With this in mind, I set out to make a rhubarb pie for his birthday on that March 1st.  A rather desparate and hilarious search for some rhubarb ensued, and we finally ended up securing some from a friend's mother's freezer in northern Virginia.  It wasn't quite enough to create a decadent pie, so I had to bulk it up with apples.  As it had been quite awhile since I had actually baked a pie (hard to imagine now), I put in a panicky call to my mother asking for the pie crust recipe and pie baking pointers.  I remember that the whole process seemed somewhat magical, and that everything seemed to work out perfectly to produce one of the most beautiful and delicious pies I've ever made.  This may be one of those memories that gains momentum and grandeur over time, but it really did launch my love for pie baking.  It just seemed like an absolute natural fit.  Plus, I now had a man that really loved to eat pie.