Well, at least they didn't put me in charge of the turkey...

Last night (really only about 7 hours ago) I finished my worst night of cooking probably.  Not that I cook a lot, but I've made a few pumpkin pies and none have been so ridiculous as this.  I'm actually writing this at 3:00 in the morning because I've startled myself awake 5 times since 10:00 with nightmares of burning my house down....stupid pies! You'll understand how these are connected.  It is worth noting here that I am this wide awake because Bryce is waiting for the Android tablets to go on sale online through Best Buy.  It's such a good deal that it's worth refreshing the page between spats of Battlefield 3.  I know you're interested so I'll tell you - that yes, the price has changed, but they're still not available for purchase...hence the waiting.  continue.

First, I thought I'd make a dinner with some sauted greens, pasta, and garbanzo beans.  While we were at Wal-Mart for tomorrow's (today's) rolls we grabbed some garlic bread to accompany.  The pan we spread it out on had small holes - ok it's some sort of pizza pan Bryce had from his Bachelor days for his frozen pizzas, so it's not like we didn't know the holes were there. Some of the garlic juices managed to drip on the bottom of my oven and as I'm finishing up the pasta I see smoke rolling out the top of my oven.  We open it up and it rolls out filling our house. 

Bryce took his station waving the broom under the smoke detector so it didn't go off and we opened windows and doors and turned on the fan. (totally brings back memories of this broiling experience)

I threw salt and on it and we continued on in a slighty more smokey atmosphere.

After dinner was cleaned up I jumped right into my pies.  Everything was going fine - the filling smelled declicious! - until I started pouring the filling into the crusts.  I probably went wrong with the store-bought crusts, but I just wasn't in the mood for making the crusts after slaving over dinner. :)  and at this point it's too late anyway.

One seemed a bit more lopsided than the other and I attributed it to the pan balancing on my oven funny.  No, the cookiesheet was warped and my crust defective...

I put the pies in the oven again, smoke started appearing again and I opened my oven - face right in the door for all the smoke to sting - to find the said defective crust disinteigrating.  It was just melting off in a systematic way like it was supposed to do that.  I don't know how many pumpkin pie's you've made in your life folks, but I'd say I've make at least close to 10, and this is not supposed to happen. Is bad. 

I decide to beat the crust at its own game and took a spatulat to stick in my 450 degree oven (seriously it's only been in the oven for like 5 minutes out of the 10 at this degree to set the crust.  We're not even at the real baking yet!) to knock of any more of it that wanted to go and pushed it down a hole at the bottom of my oven. I was not feeding it something else to burn. 

As the cooking time moved along the pan was not enough to catch the drips, so I put in some aluminum foil to catch anything else before it hit the bottom.  Idea previously utilized with the dripping garlic bread.

That makes me, what, 0-2.  Losing to food on Thanksgiving.  What is wrong with this picture?

Now, usually I put aluminum foil on the edges of the crust after the initial 10 minute crisping session so that they DON'T look so bar-b-qued as they do in the picture.  However, my  time was being spent on drip and melting crust control and I said, "Forget it Pie.  Bring it - I don't care if your crust is burnt and I'm still going to share if you're ugly.  Guess what, I don't want to deal with the hassle of putting aluminun foil on your crust.  You don't deserve to be a pretty pie.  Take that, Pie."  I think this pie learned its lesson - next pie will behave much better.

So, my short nightmares are due to these dripping-causing-serious-smoke experiences.

To the pie in the background - I'm sorry you had to suffer extra crispy crust because of your fellow pie's actions and decision to not cooperate. 

**You bet Pie is going to be delicious -just cut off the most outter crust and feed the birds.**

Happy Thanksgiving.  I'm thankful they didn't put me in the charge of the turkey.