Whoops, it’s October–almost the end, too. Life has been swirling and twirling, round and round like leaves in the wind, so fast that I barely noticed how much time had gone by.

Tonight, I’m typing this as my dear husband is on the way back from the grocery store. Even though I remembered to get pie crusts, I forgot to buy disposable pie pans, so he went out to get some for me. I’ve got three pies to get into the oven tonight. Tomorrow is the Fall Festival at our son’s elementary school, and I volunteered to bring THREE apple pies for the pie contest–what I thought was a pie-EATING contest. They’ll need lots of pies, right?

It wasn’t until I got a friendly and overly surprised email from a parent volunteer that I realized my error.

Dear Mrs. Harrison,

Wow! I’ve never had anyone volunteer to place THREE pies in the pie contest. Wow! Usually, at our school, each contestant only enters one pie. Would it be all right with you if we put the other two in the Bake Sale?

Thanks so much and I can’t wait to taste your pie.

Signed,

Parent Volunteer Who Now Thinks You Are A Crazy, Egotistical, Pie Contest Attention Hog

 

OK, so maybe she didn’t word it EXACTLY like that, but I sure felt like a doofus. So I wrote a polite recovery email and promptly forgot about my commitment–until tonight. So now I bake.

Two of the pies (the lesser, Bake Sale pies) are made with a mix of apples I had around–some golden delicious, some granny smith, and a few of these pretty little organic apples I got at a local farmer’s market.

I peeled and chopped, peeled and chopped, peeled and chopped. It’s interesting to me–once I’ve peeled 8 or 10 apples, the peeling becomes a bit of a game.I try to peel off the entire peel without breaking it. Peeling round and round and round, very methodically, making sure that the blade never meets anything except the peel. No finger pies. 🙂 Because I’ve had A LOT of practice peeling apples, I have pretty good success at my game. Lots of twirly, swirly spirals of apple peels. Inevitably though, one eventually breaks. Sometimes it’s just the strength of the peel. Sometimes it’s just my fault. It’s all part of what must be done to get to the good part.

Either way, the apples got peeled. For the third pie, I figured I should try a little something different. It is a contest, after all. I used all organic apples and only six other ingredients, which brings me to the name of the contest pie:

Lucky Seven Pie

There are some pretty regular ingredients in there; apples, sugar, cinnamon, salt, lemon juice, and flour. And then there’s this one:

Well, creativity counts, right?

We’re not required to give the recipe, and we’re new to this town, so people are just gonna have to wonder what those seven ingredients are. Gotta keep things interesting. Who knows? Maybe I’ll be LUCKY enough to win. 🙂

Meanwhile, life goes on.

And we are twirling round and round, methodically peeling back the layers, trying to keep things from breaking and then starting over when they do. We try to avoid getting hurt. Round and round. It’s what must be done to get to the good part.