Oct 102013
 

Alternately titled: Alliteration is Annoying.

20131009-141455.jpgYou know what my favorite part of the Pie Party is? I mean, besides pretending to be invincible from saddlebag-inducing calories all day. Getting to hang out with my peoples! I’m not nearly as social as I once was in the yesteryears, but I still have a little bit of the hostess bug in my system, so I enjoy putting together a nice event for my friends to crash. And people seem to really love the whole “WHAT KIND OF PIE SHOULD I BAKE/BRING!?” part, which is awesome. Especially when dudes roll up with a pie in their hands like it’s your basic 6-pack.

I literally started having pie parties because I wanted to eat pie and I wanted my friends to bring me those pies. And they did! I had no idea it would have grown into what it is now though. And it’s even reunited me with some old high school friends too, which makes me believe that pie is the answer to all of the problems. Vote for pie.

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The tables were pretty much piled with pie within the first 45 minutes. Sweet, glorious motherfucking pie. All kinds of pie, too! Pies with fruit, cream, chocolate and even savory pies like Kelly’s taco pie and spinach pie, and Patty and Tim’s veggie quiche. I loved that there were non-sweet options because while I love the fuck out of pie, I always forget to eat lunch beforehand and end up being That Person who is craving a sandwich at the pie party.

From what I hear, the taco pie was a hit, but I wouldn’t know because of that whole no meat clause in my diet. (Read: I’m still too stubborn to eat meat 17 years after my parents told me I’d never last as a vegetarian.)

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My ex-work nemesis BRAD, along with Gayle and her crew. Gayle brought me a hostess gift! Brad did not.

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I didn’t know Sean was planning on coming! So that was a nice surprise.

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I became tragically ill after eating my first plate of pies. I guess my body isn’t used to all of the sugar anymore, so I wound up with an immediate headache. (This could have also had something to do with the ridiculous amount of stress I put myself under before the party even started. What good is a pie party if I can’t even enjoy myself!?)

That chemical pie up there was made by Kara and it was extremely confusing yet pleasurable to the mouth. It tastes just like an apple pie but it is MADE OUT OF RITZ CRACKERS WHAT. I guess this is something that originated during the Depression when apples were too expensive, but my feeble mind can barely comprehend the fact that someone was able to invent that back when there was no Internet. Henry was annoyed that I didn’t label it “mock apple pie” because I guess some people were deterred by the whole “chemical” thing. I wish I had a slice of that right now.

Kaitlin’s crack pie was the clear crowd favorite for the second year in a row, but Bridget’s Snickers apple pie was definitely a close second. I was able to snag a tiny morsel toward the end of the party after the tylenol my cousin Danielle gave me kicked in, and I can attest that it was definitely the kind of pie my fatter self would have eaten the FUCK out of.

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My new work friend Chris and her girlfriend Monica (who is also my friend now too, thanks Facebook!) made this Yoda caramel pear pie which I didn’t get to try and I am so fucking pissed because the first (and only) pie I ever made (kind of)on my own was a pear pie!

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Bridget’s Snickers apple pie thing! I had to steal this photo from her Facebook because I didn’t get a picture on Sunday. I really wish that was sitting in front of me right now instead of this severed nun’s head that Marcy just brought over to me.

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Janna schmoozing with Jeremy when she was supposed to be helping me!!!

Apparently, everyone also really liked the pumpkin creme pie that Janna brought so I was quick to point out that it was FROM EAT N PARK. Nice try, Janna Child, but I saw the bag it came in.

I’m just kidding—lots of people bring bakery pies! There aren’t really any rules for the pie party. Just, you know, bring a pie.

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Here is a photo of people pleasantly pillaging pie. Sandy looks like she might even be singing about it.

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Dogs are also invited to the pie party. And I mean actual dogs, not ugly women.

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Danielle just always wears gray now to make it easier for Corey.

OMG! Remember two pie parties ago when I learned that my brother Corey is color blind?! Well, at this pie party, I learned that he sucks at Solitaire. But! He was one of only two people who enjoyed the cupcake pie, so at least he doesn’t suck at having good taste in pies? (I don’t care if anyone loved or hated Henry’s other pie, because that one was his idea and this is all about me. But my pies never shine, goddammit!)

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TWINS! Amber1 (on the right) brought a pink lemonade pie!

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The Law Firm Table. God only knows what good gossip I missed out on by earning my social butterfly wings. :(

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Laura and Mike brought a maple cream apple pie! MAPLE. IN AN APPLE PIE. I managed to plunge of forkful of it down my gullet before the end of the party and it was amazing.

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There three tiny babies at this year’s pie party, all of which I admired from afar. Not Wendy though, she got all up in their grills.

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OMG two of my friends from high school came this year! I hadn’t seen Cara since 1997, and I actually just had breakfast with Alisa a few weeks ago, so this was only the second time I’ve seen her since 1997. They brought little baby apple raspberry pies which were a hit (and were all snatched up before I could get Henry to put them with the invisible pile of leftovers he was pretending to take home). My favorite part was when Henry would walk by and Cara, Alisa and I would all look at him at the same time and he would be all, “What? What?” and then we would just laugh.

Alisa was really proud of her drawings, particularly her saggy boob-like glasses:

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I couldn’t believe she left without ripping this off as a souvenir, so then I thought it would be REALLY NICE of me to mail it to her so her kids could hang it up on the fridge, but stupid Henry had already thrown it out. What an art-hating douchebag. What’s next, Henry—signing petitions to get art classes out of public schools? Melting down our crayons for marital aids? Sorry to tell you Henry, but THAT IS CONSIDERED ART IN PRISON.

20131009-141340.jpgI sat next to Kara and Theo for awhile because Kara is pretty good at not baby-bombing my lap or giving me face-noogies with diapered butts. While I still have baby-phobia, it was pretty cool that there were three new babies there, unable to eat pie. In addition to Theo, Sandy brought her new baby Zoe, and my Internet friend Alex brought his little baby Finn! So all of the babies got to look at each other and not do anything. And no one forced one into my arms! I got to admire from several feet away, which is how I best handle these situations. I guess deep down I have this fear that I am going to cradle a baby in my arms at which time they will be able to sense with immediate certainty that I have the devil within and then they will begin to buck and shriek and everyone will turn to look at me and I hate it when people look at me.

Anyway, I do not have photos of Alex (THIS TIME) but it was really exciting that he came to eat pie because I have never met him in real life before! You may remember him as my guest-poster while I was on vacation last June and also the mastermind behind the April Fool’s Day Pittsburgh Blogger Thingie for which I wrote this Top 5 list about things I like to do in Pittsburgh. Anyway, I invited him via Twitter and was super stoked when he posted a picture on Instagram while baking a pie, because that meant that there was a 50/50 chance he was actually going to show up! Apparently, I missed his tweet telling me that they were lost, but he and his family still managed to show up! Which is amazing because whenever I’m lost, I give up after 5 minutes and go home. If I can find my way home. That’s the only complaint about the pie party every year, is that South Park is such a fucking vortex that most people end up driving around aimlessly looking for the pavilion. My co-worker Jill even wound up going to the park office for directions.

Too bad Henry won’t buy me a house with a sprawling backyard. BLAME HENRY, PIE PARTY IV EDITION.

Anyway, after Alex and his family left, Henry’s mom asked me how I know him.

“The Internet,” I said nonchalantly. “This was actually the first time I met him.”

“Did he bring a pie?” she asked me slowly.

“Yeah, the pecan pie,” I answered.

“I ATE A PIECE OF THAT!” she cried like she was expecting to fold in half and collapse into a poisoned flesh-heap. I promised her that I didn’t think Alex had baked hemlock into his pie, but if he did, I would surely contact the Twitter Police and they’d take him to some iJail and we’d follow the trial on Instagram.

20131010-091338.jpgThere’s a water pump thing next to the pavilion and the kids pretty much spend most of their time at every pie party screaming at each other in kid-code and doing May Day dances around the pump all afternoon. Usually, other parents are keeping an eye out in case someone fashions a shiv out of a pie server and retaliates after their stuffed bunny gets tossed into the woods (I may or may not have my own child in mind here), so I can continue being 100% ignorant to the fact that my kid has stripped off his shoes, socks and shirts and is running around, drenched in sweat, speckled with dirt and leaves, and baring his ass crack. Supposedly, Chooch and his crew took bottles of water over to the slide and turned it into a waterslide, and it was probably a good thing that I was ignoring all of this because I have been told after the fact that when grown-ups would go over and tell them to please be careful, they would respond with, “We are invincible.” However, Kara told me that Chooch and the older kids were really good around Harland, Rachel and Elena, at least, and did not try to get them to climb any trees or stab adults in a cornfield.

Henry and I were talking about how no one cried this year, and then we realized it was because there were no poorly-parented bad seeds in the mix. The safe word of last year’s pie party was “MOMMMMMMMMY!!!!!!!” It was four hours of tattle-telling and crying and I wanted to run away. Ugh, kids.

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My pretty mason jars.

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The table looked so pretty in the beginning, but after about five minutes it prety much looked like this all day. Ugh, just looking at this picture makes me want to rewind to Sunday so I can eat more. I totally missed out.

Obligatory Pie People Count:

  • Janna
  • Jeremy
  • Elizabeth, Mike and Rachel
  • Sandy, Ben, Elena and Zoe
  • Kara, Harland and Theo
  • Kelly, Sam, Steph, Kian and Zac
  • Judy
  • Kaitlin
  • Corey and Danielle
  • (Cousin) Danielle, Ean and Corey
  • Cara and Alisa
  • Wendy
  • Brad
  • Bridget
  • John, Jenn, Hailey, Gavin and Abby
  • Sue
  • Barb
  • Amber1 and Ashley
  • Sean and Kylie
  • Chris and Monica
  • Nate and April
  • Mike and Laura
  • Patty and Tim
  • Gayle, Jeff and Tami
  • Debbie and Colton
  • Alex, Kelly and Finn
  • Jill

20131009-141544.jpgThank god there always seem to be people there at the end to help Henry clean up and dole out leftovers, while I sit in a pie-coma, holding a fork.

I was never really able to bounce back after my inaugural pie plate gave me diabetes, but toward the end of the party, I remembered that there were savory pies, so I had a slice of spinach and the veggie quiche, which were both AMAZING and made me feel a lot better. Thanks for thinking out of the box, Kelly and Patty! So then I was able to take small samples of other pies while Henry was trying to wrap things up, like the cheesecake Wendy brought from the farmer’s market; Jill’s raspberry & chocolate ganache, which tasted like something that would earn a bitch an apron on Master Chef; Bridget’s Snickers apple pie thing, GOOD GOD Snickers should honestly find a way to put that into candy bar-form; and Laura’s maple cream apple pie which was fantastic because I’m obsessed with maple things still! I tried to get Henry to taste it but he said he doesn’t like maple!? I feel like maybe I just recently learned this but forgot because nothing he tells me is really all that interesting, unless it’s a story about him taking steroids and then Hulk-smashing a handicapped lady at a Ted Nugent concert.

Finally, at around 6:45, I headed down the street to Hundred Acres Manor with Laura, Mike, and my cousins Danielle, Corey and Ean, because what better way to end the pie party than by running through a haunted house while inhaling chainsaw fumes and synthetic fog? I was in such a hurry that it just now occurred to me that I don’t think I said goodbye to Henry’s family, and I now for certain that I didn’t say goodbye to Henry or Chooch. I rule at social couth.

****

When I got home that night, I felt a lot better and was suddenly really hungry again (literally, all I ate all day was cream of wheat and pretty much the equivalent of two slices of pie) so I started to look around for the leftovers but HENRY DID NOT TAKE ANYTHING HOME. Nothing! Not a single fucking piece of any pie. I wanted to kill him!

“Yeah, but if I had brought leftovers into the house, you would have bitched about me wanting to make you fat,” Henry argued. Touché, motherfucker. Touché.

Were you at the pie party? Did you have a good time? What is your all-time favorite pie? TELL ME! Because I clearly didn’t get my fill on Sunday.

 

  12 Responses to “Pie Party IV, Part 2: People Pounding Pie”

  1. If that is not Henry’s mother with her hand under her chin, behind Chooch, then I am a monkey’s uncle!

  2. Everybody had a great time, as always…. after seeing this post…have I really been to 4 of these parties already… :)

  3. I was there. In spirit. You want to know a secret? I hate pie crust and I hate fruity pies. But you layer me some chocolate, caramel, pumpkin, CUPCAKES!, whatever else besides fruit (it’s a texture thing), into a graham cracker crust? I’d marry that. I so want to try that cupcake pie. Add to that the Snickers pie that I would wolf down, and it’s making my teeth hurt.

    • I didn’t know that about you! I’ve tasted some pretty bad pie crust in my day, so I can understand that. Henry finally started making his own from scratch and it makes a world of difference!

      We’re (haha, “we’re”) going to try to make the cupcake pie again with red velvet cupcakes this time!

      • I have a really hard time with the flakiness of the pie crust. And then baked fruit gives me the willies. I’ve got issues, I know. But that cupcake pie with red velvet cupcakes? My god, that sounds delightful!

  4. Such a good time! You always do such a great job pulling this things together. Its a shame Henry doesn’t help at all :-P

    Also, I just peeked at Alex’s site, and it looks like he runs with the same group I do. Or at least did until Theo happened. Small world!

    • I loved your chemical pie so much!

      My friend Angie also runs with that group, and she just started working there too! Do you know her? She is really tall and has short black hair. We used to work together but she left last spring. :(

  5. “I always forget to eat lunch beforehand and end up being That Person who is craving a sandwich at the pie party.”

    “Well, at this pie party, I learned that he sucks at Solitaire.”

    “My favorite part was when Henry would walk by and Cara, Alisa and I would all look at him at the same time and he would be all, “What? What?” and then we would just laugh.”

    “What an art-hating douchebag.”

    ““I ATE A PIECE OF THAT!” she cried like she was expecting to fold in half and collapse into a poisoned flesh-heap. I promised her that I didn’t think Alex had baked hemlock into his pie, but if he did, I would surely contact the Twitter Police and they’d take him to some iJail and we’d follow the trial on Instagram.”

    “so I can continue being 100% ignorant to the fact that my kid has stripped off his shoes, socks and shirts and is running around, drenched in sweat, speckled with dirt and leaves, and baring his ass crack. ”

    “because Kara is pretty good at not baby-bombing my lap or giving me face-noogies with diapered butts.”

    “unless it’s a story about him taking steroids and then Hulk-smashing a handicapped lady at a Ted Nugent concert.”

    My Tolhurst moments! I love reading about your pie parties! You have a TON of friends and that’s awesome.

    Also, I’m not sure how it escaped me that Henry dislikes maple, after we sat there in a maple establishment.

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