Strawberry Pie

Today our church had it's first "Summer Round Up". There was a chili cook-off and a pie contest. I was excited to have an excuse to make a pie, so I decided to make one.

I have a recipe from a friend (Janna) for a Blueberry Cream Pie. It's absolutely fantastic. Last year we used the recipe to make a blueberry pie and also tried it as a peach pie.

Now that strawberries are perfect in Michigan, I decided to try out the recipe with strawberries.

Last night I baked a pie crust. It was the prettiest one I've every made (which doesn't take much)! Wasn't perfect, but was waaay better than pie crusts I've done before.

Well, the church thing was tonight, so during my lunch break I went to the Farmer's Market, got some Visser Farms freshly picked strawberries, booked it home, ate a quick lunch and then prepared my pie filling. It didn't really have time to cool completely, but I finished it, filled the pie and booked it back to work.

Once I got done with work and booked it back home. I didn't have time to put the topping on the pie, so I gathered up what I needed and headed to church.

Once at church I topped the pie and added some little mint leaves for decoration to make it pretty. The mint leaves freaked a few people out since they made it into their slices of pie... Oh well.

Anyway, long story short, the pies were being judged. I didn't really expect much because our church BREEDS pie makers. I swear. They are all amazing in the kitchen, especially in the pie arena of food-dom.

Well... Apparently the judges were craving some fresh fruit, because they (and a lot of other people) loved my pie!

It was great hearing all of their compliments. Chris is excellent in the kitchen, but I tend to be a little bit more...still learning. I think I fit well into the baking, whereas Chris fits well into the cooking. A nice complement of each other. Anyway, I'm used to Chris getting compliments for what he makes, so it was really exciting for me to have made something that everyone seemed to love so much.

So thanks, North Holland church members!

I didn't have my camera with me, so these are from my cell phone:

Hiatus

Okay, okay, it's been far too long since I posted ANYTHING.

Pretty much about the time we were moving into our new house, my work hours got crazy for a few weeks. Then I got back to normal at work for a short period and then this past month has been largely overwhelming. Most days I would feel like people didn't realize that I was only one person, but I've made it through most of my list! Now my position is transitioning and hopefully in the next few weeks I can ease into a better groove.

The one unfortunate thing about my job is I spend a LOT of time in front of a computer (the entire day), so when I get home and the weather is nice, it's hard to sit down in front of my computer some more. I'd say that's pretty healthy to want to be outside, but I know y'all miss me. All two of you.

I have yet to take real pictures of the house (we finally have it pretty well furnished, now it just comes down to getting stuff on the walls, moving the piano in and maybe a few side tables and file cabinets here and there), but hope to soon.

In other news, the garden is planted, our back porch is always rotating with new potted plants (Chris brings them home from his parents greenhouse for clients, so they sit on our porch until he installs them), we have a lawn mower so I can be more pro-active about mowing, we've met the neighbors on three sides of the house (need to do a grill out to meet the rest, I think), um... Yeah. Basically we've been keeping busy!

I will do my best to actually get some pictures up here soon. The camera memory card I'm sure is filling up anyway, so I'll have to empty it here!