Aftermath

Thanksgiving was great... I was an undead zombie by the end of the day tho'. Our guests asked where our dishwasher was... Furry Husband and I looked at each other. I pointed to him, he pointed to me.

It's all manual labor baby... no fancy, modern mechanical dish washin' invention here!

The chocolate cream pie was most excellent if I do say so myself. I had a pie crust catastrophe that I'll share cuz maybe I can save someone from the same mistake.

The recipe called for a blind baked pie crust. I thought that meant I had to wear a blind fold. I pulled out my Joy of Cooking to double check. Oh. PRE-baked pie crust. Blind bake is an over the pond English term for "pre-baked"....

I looked at Furry Husband, "Honey, you can put the blindfold away now."

Said I should bake it at 450 for 10-12 minutes or until golden brown. I dug out the pretty deep dish white ceramic pie plate, put the crust in, poked lots of holes in it with a fork...

Oh. Hmmm. The Joy of Cooking says I should weight the crust with dried beans....

I looked in the cupboard. No dried beans. Wait! Here we go! I have some dried lentils. Lentils are beans right? I poured the lentils into the pie crust and popped it in the oven.

10 min. later I checked the crust.

What the?

The crust slid down the sides of my pie plate! There was this little smooshed disc of pie crust...

I pulled it out of the oven and called my neighbor who bakes a pretty mean pie crust. I told her what had happened.

"Did you use a glass pie plate?"

Yes I say...

"Yeah, that happened to me once too - the glass gets too slippery and hot and the crust can slide down the side"

She said she's salvaged pie crusts by smooshing them back up the sides if they aren't completely done.

Under the lentils the crust wasn't done yet. I was gonna try to salvage. But first I had to get the lentils outta there.

NEVER and I repeat NEVER use lentils as dried beans to weight a pie crust. They are small and flat and they sink into the pie crust. I was scooping them out, picking and digging at the pie crust - cursing the day lentils were invented. I couldn't be sure I'd gotten them all. Did I mention they are similar in color to a pie crust?

Decided that I didn't want to risk having any guest bite into a creamy piece of chocolate cream pie only to bite down on a dried lentil and break a tooth. Besides, the crust was looking like a moon scape all pocked and pitted with craters. Not a pretty crust at all. Furry Husband was looking at it very dubiously.

BAH!

My stubborn nature will have to give in and recognize defeat. I ditched the crust.

I made another and put it in my deep dish pie tin - that's pie TIN - no glass.... it turned out beautifully golden and flaky and all was well. I poured the chocolate filling in... cooled in the fridge and topped it with whipped cream the next morning. Fabulous. Everyone loved it. No lentils anywhere.

No one needs to know about the pie crust, glass pie plate, lentil nightmare.

Shhhhhhhh.