Let Them Eat Pie!

I'm relatively new to this company and I'm still getting used to all of the "activities" that are sponsored by the "Culture Team". They are very big on establishing the "culture". A few days ago an email went out to the company to announce the 2nd Annual Thanksgiving Pie-Luck and Contest. PIE? I LOVE PIE! What? I have to make pie? And bring it into the office for people to taste, and judge, and I have to stand by my pie and people will know what pie I made and, and, and... I don't know if I can handle that.

People here expect me to bring pie. Multiple pies. Multiple Tasty pies. People here are foodies. Big time foodies. And they are foodies that know I went to culinary school and worked in the industry.

My pie making skills.... not so good. I just don't bake pie very often. Pie dough is something I have not mastered. Seriously, I can count all of the pies I've made on one hand. Usually I make cookies, cakes, custards, tarts with cookie crusts and cobbler (again so I can avoid the crust situation). This Thanksgiving I even decided against making a pumpkin pie so I can bypass the need to make a crust (a possible stand-in will be in tomorrow's post). Oy! I put too much pressure on myself to impress.

Win? do I care if I win? Hmm... I don't want to care, but yea I care. I guess I wouldn't enter if I didn't care. I'd like to say I just want an excuse to bake and to practice the pie making skills, but really, I like the attention. This is where I battle with the pull to be an extrovert, but really I'm a timid introvert. I battled with this a few weeks ago when we had a Halloween costume contest. I like to make the costume and to dress up, but I don't want to get up in front of the company (luckily my group won so all the time wasn't totally wasted.)

I talked to a few people that were here last year, and they said that there were many very nice traditional fruit pies that had a lot of love and care put into them, but the only ones that people paid attention to were the chocolaty, gooey, piled high with whipped cream, and heavily sprinkled with tasty goodies.

We are allowed to enter 2 pies, so to stay true to the introvert that is dieing to be an extrovert that is me, I will succumb to the need to be noticed and make an ungodly pile of goo for the masses and a lovely fruit or custard pie for those that notice that sort of thing.

I am pretty sure I have the dainty pie covered. Anyone have any ideas for the Pile o'Goo pie? If you could have anything in a pie crust, what would it be?