Fourth of July means two things – fireworks, and pie.
My family’s pie tradition is a momentous operation. For as long as I can remember, Thanksgiving and the Fourth have been spent bopping around the kitchen and helping make the apple pie recipe from our now rather old edition of the Better Homes New Cook Book. Dad’s always been the pie crust maker, even though he can’t eat it any more, while Mom enlists whoever else happens to be on hand to cut a small mountain of apples and make filling.
This weekend, as we pondered what to bring to a properly patriotic pot-luck, I could think of nothing more appropriate than that old apple pie. I was fairly thrilled to find that the crust tasted exactly the way it’s supposed to, given my miserable track record for baked goods lately. The filling, however, came out horrendously runny. Our best guess was that it wasn’t adequately ventilated and/or was not baked long or hot enough. But it tasted wonderful, and that’s what matters.
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