Pi Day

Yesterday was Pi Day! This means I had to make pie. Fact #1: strawberries are in season here, so I decided to make strawberry pie. Fact 2: the damnable graham crackers remain. I swear they're like tribbles. With these two facts, I found a recipe. But once again, I had to make substitutions due to laziness and lack of supplies.

Like most houses, our kitchen has cabinets that go up to the ceiling. I wish architects were more aware of the fact that Americans are getting shorter. Because of my shortness relative to the cabinets, I substituted brown sugar for white sugar. The brown sugar goes in the pantry next to the fridge. A nice, easy to reach place. The white sugar goes with the flour on the top shelf of the cabinet next to the stove. I have to bust out the ladder to get to it! This makes no sense. Both of the bakers in this house are short. And yet, the flours and the sugar live out of reach. There is only so much effort I'll put into making crust with the damnable graham crackers, so brown sugar became the order of the day.

The second substitution came from the fact that we are out of butter. Now, I was already planning on going to the grocery store to buy strawberries, so the sensible thing to do would be to hold off and buy butter too. But no, in addition to being somewhat lazy, I'm also a tad impatient. So I improvised. We had two tubs of butter substitute in the fridge. I'm deeply suspicious of that stuff. But it was that or wait and buy butter. So I opened tub #1 and discovered a new genus of mold. It was red. Into the trash it went! Tub #2 was acceptably artificial.

Of course, this was all silly, because once there was crust, I went to the store and bought strawberries. And forgot to buy butter. And later, while making the filling, I used the ladder to get the hidden sugar, making the brown sugar even more ridiculous. So perhaps I should rechristen this desert Ridiculous Pie. In my defense, it was Sunday.

Ridiculous Strawberry Pie
Ingredients:
1 1/3 cup graham cracker crumbs
3 tablespoons butter, melted (don't be like me; use the real stuff)
2 tablespoons brown sugar
cooking spray
2 cups sliced strawberries
2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
1/4 cup sugar
2 tablespoons water
1 tablespoon cornstarch
1 tablespoon lemon juice1 quart container of strawberries.

4 tablespoons graham cracker crumbs
1 1/2 teaspoons brown sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons butter, melted

Directions:Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Then you should make the crust by combing the graham crackers, sugar, and butter. Mix it with a fork, then dump it into a pie pan that you've liberally sprayed down. Pat the crumb mixture into place. Bake it for 15 minutes, and then let it cool completely. Might be time to go to the store.


To make the filling, combine the strawberries and vinegar in a pot and cook over medium high heat for 3 minutes. Stir in the sugar, then make a slurry with the cornstarch and the water and stir that in too. Bring the mix to a boil and let it boil for a full minute. Remove from heat and stir in the lemon juice. Set the pot aside and let it cool.


While your filling is cooling, hull and wash the rest of the strawberries. Place them in the pie shell, flat side down. Once your filling is cool, pour it over the strawberries and prod it into place. Mine looked pretty anemic at this point, but whatever, it's still good.

Stick the pie in the fridge for 4 hours. At the end of those 4 hours, pull it out of the fridge and make the topping. Melt the butter and mix with the graham crumbs and sugar. Sprinkle it over the pie, filling in any holes in your filling. Then serve your pie!

Recommendations: The fake butter isn't the end of the world, but the real stuff would be better. The original recipe also calls for chopped nuts in the topping, but I forgot to buy those too. I bet they'd be good. My filling was rather thick; in the future I'll use 1/2 a tablespoon instead.




Also, I need to be honest and admit that this was more of a pi(e) approximation. It ended up more like a cobbler. It's still pretty good, and it used up some of the damnable graham crackers.