Pie in the Sky

At the time of this writing, we as a country and world are in the midst of a pandemic due to COVID-19. I have been healthy and able to work, albeit almost exclusively at home. My husband has been working off and on, but is still, thankfully, employed. My son has been doing school at home for a couple of weeks so far. He misses his friends and teacher, but is a homebody anyway, so he doesn't mind that part.

I have been using this time to explore more dishes for this blog and have enjoyed the extra time to spend on it. One of the dishes I had earmarked was a recipe for Kentucky Pie. Seemingly simple, it required ingredients I had on hand and was easily assembled in my awesome "pie in the sky" pie plate. I baked it according to the recipe, and took it out at the correct time. However, it hadn't finished cooking, so I turned the oven back on and put it back in. Or, at least I tried to. Josh was unloading the dishwasher at the time and Peter was running through the kitchen. Because he is 5 and thinks being silly is super funny, he thought it would be funny to shut the oven door while I was trying to put the pie inside. I jumped, and the pie landed on the rack, but sloshed and spilled half of its contents all over the oven. No one got burnt, but we did have a big mess and a half-baked pie. There was a lot of yelling and figuring out how to best clean out the oven (side note: highly recommend this method - it worked perfectly for our oven and we didn't have to use anything with toxic fumes or high temperatures. https://www.thekitchn.com/how-to-clean-an-oven-cleaning-lessons-from-the-kitchn-201191) There was also a bit of frustration and anxiety about trudging through additional weeks of being cooped up together. I found it a bit ironic that my pie plate said "pie in the sky" in the midst of coping and cleaning and trying to stay healthy and sane. It may seem a bit "pie in the sky" to have an uneventful time of social distancing, but I think we will make the best we can out of this time and treasure the simple things, like walks and camping in the living room.

Because of the way the pie fell, I did move it to the toaster oven and finished baking it. It burned a little in the middle, but was tasty on the outer sections. Kentucky Pie is a lot like pecan pie, but without the pecans. I may try it again someday. Probably not when my kid is running through the kitchen though...