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A lot goes into a prize-winning pie. The fruit must be perfectly ripe and juicy. The pie crust demands a mixture of butter and lard. You are judged on appearance as well as taste, so coming up with a creative crust design is important. Phoebe and I pored over Pinterest pie sites. We scoured old cookbooks for techniques and recipes. We carefully set aside a jar of leaf lard for the crust and froze a small block of local butter. The blueberries came from our own bushes. I don’t make my pies with flour thickener. I use Clear-Jel and that must be ordered. My mother’s pie plate was the only one that would do.
Entries for the fair are dropped off on Thursday morning, so we set aside 
Wednesday night for pie baking. In the unlikely event of a pie disaster there would be time to make another. I know it sounds obsessive, but we were having so much fun that we were getting crazy. The big day came and we set to work making Phoebe’s pie. I remember playing Vivaldi in the background. We measured and laughed and got flour all over everything. It was so hard to wait for the oven time to ding but we waited without peeking, afraid to risk lowering the oven temperature and having a soggy crust.
Finally, after what seemed like hours we
pulled out her pie and it was….not perfect. The crust was a bit too brown, the lattice rather crooked. But we ohhed and ahhed over it and took pictures and set it to cool.
Phoebe and I were first in line to drop off her pie the next morning. We carefully filled out her little tab and folded it over so her information was hidden from the eyes of the judges. If waiting for pie to come out of the oven was hard, waiting for the fair to open Thursday afternoon so we could see the results was even harder. We raced to the 4-H building and there it was. Second place. I waited for Phoebe to show some disappointment but there was none at all! She
[caption id="attachment_24078" align="alignright" width="323"]
Your prize-winning pies will bake perfectly and look gorgeous in these natural stoneware pans. In 3 beautiful colors, at Lehmans.com and our store in Kidron, Ohio.[/caption]
was delighted to get any ribbon. I don’t think I ever saw a little girl quite so excited. But it turns out that it wasn’t the ribbon she really cared about. She told everybody who would listen how much fun we had and what a good baker she was. Her joy was for the memory of time spent with me.
So here is what you don’t know about Phoebe. She has some special needs and school is very, very hard for her. It’s so hard in fact, that we no longer send her to public school. We home-school her so we can concentrate on teaching her real skills and giving her islands of competency. Pie making, winning, losing - at the end of the day Phoebe learned a lot. Mostly she learned that pleasure comes from spending time together and pride from mastering a skill. That’s a lot of learning to come from some fruit and flour.
Here is our blueberry pie recipe:
[tasty-recipe id="37494"]
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