Emilie Richards's Blog, page 134

Joan's Daughter's Wonderful Blueberry Pie–with apologies to Wanda

Remember Joan, the pie prize winner whose daughter made a fabulous blueberry pie and won a prize at the fair, only to have it disappear before the second round of judging?  I received so many requests for the recipe after I ran Joan's story, that I begged her to ask her daughter if she would part with it.  Graciously, she agreed.

I had lots of blueberries, so today I decided to "do a Wanda" and make the pie.  I followed the instructions with two deviations.  I used frozen crusts I already had, plus I cut the sugar in the filling to 3/4 cup.  You can see my masterpiece below. I have to say, with complete sincerity, this pie was absolutely fabulous.  Everyone at our table said so.  Without having to make crusts, it was easy, as well.  No wonder this won a prize. 

As a thank you for making the pie in the first place, Joan shared one of the prizes in her box with her daughter.  My thanks to both of them for taking the time to share the recipe and the eating pleasure.  My family thanks them, too.

Joan's Daughter's Wonderful Blueberry Pie

For the double crust:

3 cups flour

1 and 1/2 teaspoons salt

1 1/4 cup shortening

Ice water

Add 3/4 cup shortening to flour and salt, and using a pastry cutter or two knives, cut until resembles coarsely ground cornmeal.

Add remaining 1/2 cup shortening and this time cut until it resembles small peas.

Add cold water, 1 tablespoon at a time until dough forms a tight ball. Divide in half and chill.  Roll dough for bottom crust and fit into pie plate.

For the filling:

4 cups fresh blueberries.

1 cup sugar

3 Tablespoons of flour

2 Tablespoons of tapioca

1/2 teaspoon of lemon peel

1/2 teaspoon each of nutmeg and cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon of salt

Add sugar to the blueberries, then combine flour, tapioca, lemon peel, spices and salt, and mix with blueberries.

Fill pie shell and sprinkle with 1 tablespoon of lemon juice and dot with 1 tablespoon of butter cut into small pieces.

Roll out the other half of crust and cover pie.  Be sure to vent by cutting holes or pricking with a fork. Seal the edges.

Bake at 425 for 35 to 40 minutes.

(A printable pdf is available here.)

Joan says she makes hers with blueberries picked from Pertic's.  Mr. Pertic was the developer of the Blue Crop blueberry, which is particularly huge and sweet.  Care to find a pick-your-own place near your house?  Double the fun of making your pie.  Be sure to bring a child or two along if you can.

We plan to eat ours with frozen vanilla yogurt made in my husband's new ice cream maker.  How about you?

I'm sure Wanda is hovering in the wings so she can steal this recipe for Wanda's Wonderful Pies.  BTW, if you've yet to buy and read Sunset Bridge, then you're missing out on an exciting development at the pie shop–among other things.  But my lips are sealed–except when I'm eating another slice of pie.

Treasure Beach: Chapter Six, Part Two

Summer isn't "over" for us, thank goodness, but it's nearly over for Olivia and the women of Happiness Key, whose lives will be forever changed in Sunset Bridge , available now at your favorite bookstore.  Meantime, Treasure Beach (the free prequel to Sunset Bridge) ends this month.  If you haven't been reading along, visit this page for enlightenment and instructions.  It's not too late to catch up.  And don't worry, you don't have to finish Treasure Beach to enjoy Sunset Bridge .  The stories aren't directly related, even though the characters are the same.

Finally, please don't forget to visit quilter Pat Sloan's website to sew along on the charming Happiness Key quilt that goes along with the series. 

Treasure Beach: Chapter Six, Part Two

Olivia stared at the other girl, who hadn't yet noticed her. She couldn't believe it. She wondered if she walked over to Jessie now and took the pen to examine it, if she would find that it was a purple felt-tip marker with a fine point.

Jessie looked up and discovered Olivia standing there. She nodded, but she didn't smile. "Aren't your friends that way?" She inclined her head in the direction from which Olivia had just come.

"Some of them."

Jessie turned away and went back to whatever she had been doing. Olivia walked over to her, then she put her bag down and got out her mat and spread it beside Jessie's towel.

"What are you doing?" she asked.

Jessie looked just a trace annoyed. "Writing a friend in Mexico City."

From here Olivia could see that Jessie's pen, while not purple, was a fine point felt tip, like the kind she'd seen in packages of multicolored markers at the drugstore. This one was a bright green, and Jessie was writing on yellow paper. Her script was easy to read with lots of familiar flourishes.

"How long did you live there?" Olivia asked, looking up again.

"Two years. Before that we lived in Italy, and before that, Peru."

She'd said this as if she was hoping it would forestall more questions, but Olivia ignored her tone. "Why do you move so much?"

Jessie put down her pen and sighed. "Because my father works for a big manufacturer and his job is to streamline production at all their facilities. When he's done he moves on and so do we."

"Oh. That means you'll be leaving Palmetto Grove?"

"I wish."

Olivia was surprised. "You don't like it here?"

"I don't belong here." Jessie turned. "Maybe you've noticed?"

Olivia made a face and didn't say anything.

"My mother was raised two blocks from this beach, so she wanted to come back and give us exactly what she'd had. She told my father until my brother and I are out of high school, we're going to stay here so we can have a normal American adolescence." Jessie said the last three words like they were a particularly loathsome disease.

"But you don't like it?"

"The other places we lived? I went to private school with a lot of different kinds of kids from all over the world. It wasn't like here. Here you have to be like everybody else, or you don't make friends."

Olivia considered that. "I'm not like everybody else. My dad's in prison and my mother drowned in a storm. I live with my grandmother in a little house over there." She pointed across the water toward the key. "I don't have two parents and a swimming pool, but most of the time nobody says anything mean."

"Really? That's true about your mother and father?"

"I wish it weren't."

"Boy, talk about a bummer."

"My grandmother's great, and we live in this funny little neighborhood. All the women are super. Really awesome. It's like having a big family, only nobody's related."

"My dad still travels a lot. My mother's working at a doctor's office now, and my brother? He's fifteen and all of a sudden he thinks I'm a creep."

"You're alone a lot then."

Jessie shrugged as if to say, who cares?

Olivia debated, then she spoke her mind. "Sometimes it seems like you try to be different, just to show everybody else you're better than they are."

"What?"

Olivia glanced at her. "I don't think it's true. Maybe you're just trying to be the person you were in those other countries, but kids here just don't get it yet. They will. There'll be a lot of new people in middle school, more to choose friends from. I think you're nice, now that I know you a little. You'll be okay there."

"What's it matter to you?"

Olivia reached over and took the SunDrop bottle out of Jessie's hand. She held it up, then peered inside. "Because somebody does care, after all. And maybe being held captive in Palmetto Grove isn't such a bad thing. Maybe you don't need any help. Maybe you just need a friend."

Jessie looked startled. "How do you know about that?" She grabbed for the bottle and held it against her chest.

"Tides and . . ." Olivia lowered her voice. "A really cool place called Treasure Beach. I'll show it to you when you come to my house to hang out. Lizzie and I named it. She'd want you to know about it, too, because she liked you, but it will have to be our secret."

Sunday Poetry: A Moment Seen, Forever Known

Welcome to Sunday Poetry.  If this is your first visit you can read about the purpose and inspiration of my Sunday blogs here.    

What's your part?  Just slow down a little and come along for the read–or sometimes, for the listen. No analysis needed or required. Let the poem sink in and move you wherever it may. If you'd like to tell us what the day's poem means in your life, or what word or phrase you've chosen to reflect on in the coming week, or where those reflections have taken you, we would be honored to have your comment. 

A Timbered Choir by Wendell Berry talks about one exquisite moment in an "ordinary" place.  ". . . and around it the whole field filled with chicory in bloom, blue as the sky reflected in the pond."  I was in my mid-twenties before I saw wild chicory in bloom in Southwest Virginia.  I could not imagine anything so lovely entwined and blooming with Queen Anne's lace by country roadsides, weeds some called it, but not me.  Never, never me.  Chicory still thrills me, as it thrilled Wendell Berry.

What might you find at home that is more significant, more heartbreakingly beautiful, than anything you saw when you searched in other places?

Seat Twelve People in a Room, and What Do We Get? A Verdict You Might Not Like.

Last week before the Casey Anthony verdict, I sat in a room at George Washington University and listened to a group of law students argue a case.   Since I'm friends with one of the law professors, I've done this before, perhaps half a dozen times. 

Any given night during moot court sessions, there might be six trials in session, all trying exactly the same case.  It's quite an achievement to find enough volunteers to make the process work, so our jury had only four members.

I've never been on a real jury, although I've been on voter rolls since 1970.  I'm envious of my friend, the author Karen Young who served an entire year on a state grand jury and has stories to tell about it.  I joke about my FBI file.  Have they inadvertently mixed me up with another Emilie?  Do I have a ringer on a watchlist?  I did protest in front of my university administration building as a sophomore.  Hmmm. . .

Without real experience, I've been delighted to take part in moot court.  Some of the law students are naturals, some need work, some of the defendants and witnesses should consider theater as a major.  Last week was the first time, however, that we tried a case of sexual assault.

In previous cases I've been interested in my own reaction.  While I'm usually a person who tries to weigh both sides of any issue, I really don't want to hear "why" somebody might have committed a crime or what will happen if he's thrown under the calaboose.  I want the facts, ma'am.  Did he or didn't she?  Show me the proof, and I'll convict without worrying about the wife who will have to fend for herself or the library where our suspect volunteers every Wednesday.  But if there's reasonable doubt?  Watch out.  If a prosecutor can't make a case, then I can't say "guilty," no matter how likely it is that the defendant did indeed try to run down his mother-in-law after she served him greasy pork chops.

This had been true until the case was sexual assault. 

The cases the GW law students try are based on real events, with many details altered and rewritten.  By the time we hear them, they're almost entirely fiction.  In this one, a young pregnant waitress walks home late at night after getting off work early because she's not feeling well.  Halfway there, she's accosted by a customer she just served–and doesn't remember–escorted into his car at knife point and eventually raped.  At night's end she's deposited back where the nightmare began and allowed to finish her walk home.

I wanted the defendant to fry.  Our victim was lovely, young, sweet as her diner's apple pie.  Her husband was madly in love, poor but hardworking.  Wow.  Does a happily married woman expecting her first child and experiencing morning sickeness (at midnight) really offer herself to a stranger she meets in the diner, then beat herself up so she can use rape as an excuse because she's late coming home?  Did it matter to me that the police detective did not test the DNA from the rape kit?  Not when both of them agreed the sex had happened.  This was not, remember, an episode of CSI.

How often is a sexual assault witnessed by credible people who can testify to what they've seen?  Most of these cases have to be, by nature, circumstantial.  So at what point must we rely on indirect evidence and convict a rapist or a mother who murders a child?  At what point are our doubts reasonable and at what point absurd?

Our jury of four hung.  By the end of our deliberations three of us agreed that the defendant was guilty.  The fourth was certain from the moment we put our heads together, that he was not.  She thought the investigation should have gone deeper, even though most of the facts were not in dispute.

In fairness to our hold-out, every other jury that night brought in a verdict of not guilty.

I thought about that mock trial when I learned yesterday that Casey Anthony will go free.  I thought about my own reaction and sympathy for the moot court victim.  About the fact that only rarely does a prosecutor have a credible witness who can point a finger and say "I was there and I saw her do it."  I thought about how much rides on the supposed sincerity of the defendant or accuser, the quality of the lawyers and prosecutors.  The good ones win their cases, even if the cases have holes.

Our justice system isn't always fair.  Poor defendants are sometimes assigned great public defenders, and sometimes they're assigned recently graduated law students who never won in moot court, either.  High profile cases attract fabulously inventive lawyers, who frequently win cases that looked bullet proof because they coin catchy slogans or artfully muddy the waters.   Jury pools who watch too much television can't understand that underfunded police departments must pick and choose what and whom to pursue and spend taxpayer money wisely.

Our justice system isn't always fair.  It is, however, pretty darned amazing.  Casey Anthony will go free because twelve of her peers looked at all the evidence, perhaps thought she is guilty as sin, and still voted not guilty.  Because not guilty was, in their minds, the only legitimate choice.  For them the case wasn't made.  Reasonable doubt existed.  And in the background, the death penalty loomed.  We may not agree, but in this country?  Thank God we're allowed that privilege.

Treasure Beach: Chapter Six, Part One

Summer isn't "over" for us, thank goodness, but it's nearly over for Olivia and the women of Happiness Key, whose lives will be forever changed in Sunset Bridge , available now at your favorite bookstore.  Meantime, Treasure Beach (the free prequel to Sunset Bridge) ends this month.  If you haven't been reading along, visit this page for enlightenment and instructions.  It's not too late to catch up.  And don't worry, you don't have to finish Treasure Beach to enjoy Sunset Bridge .  The stories aren't directly related, even though the characters are the same.

Finally, please don't forget to visit quilter Pat Sloan's website to sew along on the charming Happiness Key quilt that goes along with the series.  This month the final piece of the mystery quilt is revealed.  The moment my own quilt is finished, I'll show you my handiwork. 

Treasure Beach: Chapter Six, Part One

Olivia hadn't planned to attend Sunday's barbecue. The home room mother for the upcoming year had organized it, along with a couple of other parents, so that everybody in the class could have a carefree afternoon and get to know each other before braving the front doors of the middle school.

She knew some of the kids who had been assigned to her home room and would probably recognize more on the first day of school. At first she hadn't seen any point in hanging out with them before she had to, but as the weekend progressed, she changed her mind. The barbecue was at the town beach. She thought it might be interesting to have an excuse to test the weatherman's theory that the SunDrop bottle had been launched there. She decided she would launch a bottle herself, and see if it washed up at Treasure Beach in the next day or so.

If nothing else, it was something to do.

When she and Alice arrived at the beach the party site wasn't hard to spot because Olivia could see smoke from barbecues and girls her age running toward it. Her grandmother, who was feeling better now, dropped her off in the parking lot and promised to come back the moment Olivia wanted to go home. She got the canvas bag with her towel, a mat and the SunDrop bottle Wanda had given her, complete with a cork she'd borrowed from Tracy's trash. Then she waved goodbye and started toward the commotion.

There were kids everywhere, tanned Florida kids in bright swimsuits and cover-ups, and the salt breeze smelled like coconut oil and roasting hot dogs. There were parents, too, designated to keep an eye on things and make sure nobody swam out too deep or went in without a buddy, a lecture one of them gave Olivia as she neared the fray.

Some girls were burying a friend in the sand not far away, and she quickly turned in the other direction so they wouldn't include her in their plans. She said hi to some boys she knew and waved at a couple of girls, ignoring their beckoning hands. Having been prepped by Alice ahead of time she made her way to the picnic table where the food was being set out and introduced herself to the mom in charge.

Then she took off down the beach.

She didn't want to explain what she was about to do, not to anybody. And while she felt just a dab of guilt that despite the warning she was going into the water without a buddy, she had no plans to go above her waist. She was too smart to take chances, and while she could swim, she had reasons for not being fond of the water. She just needed to get out deep enough to give the bottle a chance to get past the waves at the shoreline.

She walked about fifty yards down the beach and looked for a place to put her bag. Only then did she realize she hadn't quite left the party behind. Jessie Patterson, who must be in her new home room, was sitting on a beach towel just beyond her gazing out at the water. Jessie Patterson, with a bottle of SunDrop soda in one hand and a rainbow tablet on her lap, a pen in her hand.

Sunday Poetry: Your One Wild and Precious Life

Welcome to Sunday Poetry, and yes we have a new photo.  It seemed time.  If this is your first visit you can read about the purpose and inspiration of my Sunday blogs here.    

What's your part?  Just slow down a little and come along for the read–or sometimes, for the listen. No analysis needed or required. Let the poem sink in and move you wherever it may. If you'd like to tell us what the day's poem means in your life, or what word or phrase you've chosen to reflect on in the coming week, or where those reflections have taken you, we would be honored to have you comment. 

Mary Oliver's poetry always moves me.  This poem, The Summer Day, seems especially appropriate for the beginning of July.  How will you spend the remaining days of your summer?  Will you take moments to contemplate grasshoppers?  Will you give yourself one day just to wander through fields?  What phrase, thought, or word here will help you get through the next week?  What will you do with your one wild and precious life?

Our Grand Prize Winner in the Great Pie Prize Giveaway

First a big thank you to all who emailed or contacted me through my Facebook page to say that you had bought your copy of Sunset Bridge or were on the way to the bookstore to do so this week.  It was so gratifying to get that wonderful response, and I'm delighted so many of you are looking forward to reading it. 

A second big thank you to all the radio stations who have aired interviews with me in the past week.  I've done sixteen so far and have five more on my schedule.  What a great way to promote a novel without leaving home, and afterwards it was great to hear from listeners who now plan to buy the book.  Along with that, many thanks to the reviewers and writer friends who have interviewed me or reviewed my novel.  Both take time and commitment, which I appreciate.

A final big thank you to everyone who sent pie recipes, links or stories to be entered in the Great Pie Prize Giveaway to celebrate the Sunset Bridge launch.  It's been such fun to read your entries, and I intend to publish more as the months go by.  Choosing the prizes for each box was delightful and took most of a year to finish.  Who knew there were so many fabulolus pie-related items?  Jigsaw puzzles, pie birds and pie top cutters.  Plus all those luscious cookbooks.

At the end of this blog I'll announce our final winner.  In addition to the four pie prize boxes awarded in June, the grand prize is the choice of a Kindle from Amazon, complete with Wi-Fi and E Ink pearl technology, or the Breville Pie Maker from Williams-Sonoma.

First, though, a few more recipes.  This one sounds delicious, and while Pat sent me the recipe, I found a link to make it easier for you.  It's for Chocolate Peanut Butter Ice Cream Pie from Southern Living.   Sounds like summer on a dessert plate to me.  Yum!

Judy sent me this one for an old standard with a twist.  She copied the recipe off a sewing forum years ago, but due to server crashes, the recipe no longer exists and she's never been able to find it anywhere again.  I'm delighted she copied it when she could and is sharing it with us now.

A Different Kind of Apple Pie

(Judy says: This recipe is not your usual pie crust but it is just wonderful.) 

Crust:

1 ½ cups flour, ½ cup vegetable oil, 2 tablespoons milk (very cold) 1/12 teaspoons sugar, 1 teaspoon salt.

Filling:

6 cups apples peeled cored and thinly sliced, ¾ cups sugar, 3 tablespoons flour, ¾ teaspoon ground cinnamon, ½ teaspoon ground nutmeg.

Topping:

½ cup flour, ½ cup sugar, ½ cup butter

Preheat oven to 350F

For Crust: In a large bowl, mix together, flour, oil, milk, sugar and salt until evenly blended. Pat mixture into a 9-inch pie pan, spreading dough evenly over bottom and up sides. Crimp edges of dough and perimeter of pan.

For Filling: Toss apple slices with sugar, flour, cinnamon and nutmeg. Spread evenly in unbaked pie shell.

For Topping: Mix together flour, sugar and butter until evenly distributed and crumbly in texture. Sprinkle over apple filling.

Place pie on a baking sheet on middle rack of preheated oven, bake 45 minutes. Serve warm with vanilla ice cream, if desired.

And finally, from Cindy, a pie that will not heat up your kitchen if you use her final tip.  Cindy says this it first pie she makes every summer, and you'll see why.

Pineapple Pie

1 box instant vanilla Jello pudding

1 8oz carton sour cream

1 8.5 oz. crushed pineapple, use juice

1 small container Cool Whip

Mix the dry Jello pudding mix and the crushed pineapple. Add Sour Cream. Pour into baked and cooled 9-inch pie shell. Top with Cool Whip, all the way to the crust to seal the pie. Chill and keep in the refrigerator.

Cindy uses a graham cracker pie crust so she doesn't have to turn on the oven.  Sounds like a good idea to me.

Finally, our grand prize winner:  Jean from Florida sent a funny story about her pie making history that I included on my blog the week I announced the second giveaway winner.  She says she never did become a pie baker, but I guarantee she can bake a good tale for us to enjoy.  Now I hope she enjoys her choice of prizes because random.org chose her entry for the grand prize.  I'll let you know which of the two possibilities she picked.

I have so enjoyed hosting this giveaway. I hope you've enjoyed the recipes and stories, and for the five winners, your prizes, as well.  Again, thanks to everyone who participated.  And don't forget the women of Happiness Key are waiting for you in the final installment of the series, Sunset Bridge, available at last.

Treasure Beach: Chapter Five, Part Four (plus Sunset Bridge debuts at your bookstore today)

BEFORE WE LAUNCH IN. . .

Hear those trumpets sound?  Today is the official on-sale date for Sunset Bridge, the third book of the Happiness Key trilogy.  Treasure Beach is a bridge between books two (Fortunate Harbor) and three (Sunset Bridge) and my gift to my readers who didn't want to wait a whole year for more Happiness Key adventures. 

Buying a novel during its first week on store shelves is a very good thing for the novel's author, in this case, me.  Publishers pay great attention to the first two weeks of sales and not so much to anything afterwards.  So if you've enjoyed Treasure Beach and you're planning to run out for a copy of Sunset Bridge, please consider doing it this week or next.  Oddly enough, it does make a difference in how well future books and even reprints will be published.

Now, back to our show. . .

Not sure why you're here or what to do?  Visit this page for enlightenment and instructions.  And don't forget to visit quilter Pat Sloan's website to sew along on the charming Happiness Key quilt that goes along with the series.

Chapter Five debuted this month.  Do you prefer to read  in one big gulp instead of having the story doled out in parts?   Look for a complete chapter pdf on the last Tuesday of each month through July.  In the meantime, i f you're new and you've missed the first four chapters?  Here are links to those pdfs:  Chapter One.  Chapter Two.  Chapter Three.  Chapter Four.     And today for the first time?  Chapter Five.

Treasure Beach: Chapter Five, Part Four

"My news is a little good," Janya said. "The manager at Randall's remembered the names of four customers who bought the soft drink when it was in bottles."

Olivia interrupted. "He told me he didn't remember anybody."

There was a short silence. Janya shrugged. "Perhaps I forgot to mention that I was very flattering. I asked him if he was, perhaps, a relative of Russell Crowe."

"I bet you stirred up a breeze batting those big brown eyes of yours," Wanda said.

Janya just smiled. "One of the customers was you, Wanda. I found phone numbers for the others he mentioned, and I called them and told them I found a bottle with a note in it, and someone had told me they thought they had seen somebody from the family throw it into the water." She paused. "It was only a little lie."

"Don't worry, you'll probably just come back as an alligator in your next life," Wanda said. "Go on."

"No one admitted throwing it, and I am sorry to say, I believed them. They were helpful and pleasant. No one was upset I called."

Olivia felt deflated. "Then we don't know anything."

"We certainly do," Tracy said. "One, we know the bottle was probably thrown from the town beach. That means it was probably thrown fairly recently since it didn't have that far to travel, and thrown by somebody willing to wade out into the water and get very wet.

"Two, we know the paper for the note probably came from Walmart, so whoever shopped for it is somebody who likes a good bargain, but likes bright colors, too. I'd say somebody on a budget with good taste, possibly young, given the purple pen and flourishes.

"Three, we know that the manager at Randall's has a better memory than we thought he did, and maybe he'll remember more. Plus we know three customers it probably isn't. We can build on that."

Olivia knew that because of all the things that had happened to her, she was good at reading what people were really saying, even when they were talking all around it. Now she realized that everybody sitting there knew this search was impossible, but they were going to keep trying anyway. Not because they believed the note was serious. Not because they were particularly curious themselves.

Because they loved her.

She sniffed. "Thank you for trying. All of you."

"We will continue trying," Janya said. "It is important."

Olivia knew Janya was really saying something else.

You are important to us.

Sunday Poetry: I Offer No Apology

Welcome to Sunday Poetry.  If this is your first visit you can read about the purpose and inspiration here.    

What's your part?  Just slow down a little and come along for the read–or sometimes, for the listen. No analysis needed or required. Let the poem sink in and move you wherever it may. If you'd like to tell us what the day's poem means in your life, or what word or phrase you've chosen to reflect on in the coming week, or where those reflections have taken you, we would be honored to have you comment. 

Today's poem is by Nikki Giovanni, a favorite of mine and a professor of English and Black Studies at one of my alma maters, Virginia Tech.  Quilts will speak to many of you, not only to quilters, but to all who wish to leave a legacy at the end of their lives.  "Please someone cut a square and put me in a quilt . . ."

This poem comes from poets.org, a new website to me but one that happily respects copyright as it promotes the works and the poets, too.  It was a pleasure to find and share with you today.

Our Fourth Winner in the Great Pie Giveaway

Today our fourth and final pie prize box heads off to one lucky contestant, and it includes the pictured cookbook from one of my favorite Shenandoah Valley restaurants among many other goodies.  Find out who won at the end of this post.

Sorry you missed the contest?  You didn't.  Don't forget there's still the grand prize.   On July 1 I'll choose the winner of an Amazon Kindle or a Breville pie maker, the winner's choice as long as both are still available. 

Did you miss the rules?  You'll find them here and here.  There's still time to enter, and it's both simple and fun.  Just think pie.  Winners are chosen randomly from all correct entries.

Last week I published favorite recipes, this week some of the stories I've received, with links to pies on other websites.  I'll continue sharing the entries through July, even though the giveaway will have ended.  But we can never hear too much about pie.

From Lynda,  excerpts from her poignant giveaway entry with a link to her favorite lemon meringue pie recipe.

"When I was 21, my husband and I moved into a home next door to my aunt in CA.    (She just passed a year ago at 93)    I was very pregnant with my first son.  My aunt would come over with a lemon pie and tell me that it would bring us luck and speed the labor.    It was the most delicious pie.    I did go into labor the next day and had a wonderful 5lb boy.    My aunt and family always remember  that wonderful pie and all the love that went into it.    It became a very special family tradition.     I try and make this pie and it will never taste like my aunt's.   It was all the love that went into it.  My son would be 50 years next year.   He was called to watch over us."

This entry from Francine came with a link to a beautifully presented Upside Down Apple Pecan Pie from the Just A Pinch recipe club. 

"This pie is the one my nana taught me to make around the age of 8 or so.  I've made it 100′s of time and it won the North Carolina State Grand Champion  slot !! I know Nana's looking down smiling and hollering 'that's my girl.' "

I bet she's right.

And from Adam, a pie that I'm absolutely sure Wanda will steal for her shop.  Banana Foster Cream Pie.  Watch out,  Bonita Springs is right around the corner from Happiness Key.  He says:

"I am already thinking about what pies I will be making for the Bonita Springs 4th of July Pie Baking Contest. My head is spinning with thoughts of caramel, chocolate and coconut. No, no! Banana! Yes! Banana Cream!! Oh my, Banana Cream with Caramel!!! That's the ticket!  So what happens if someone in Bonita Springs finds this recipe and enters it into the contest??!! Oh, dear! Back to chocolate, maybe caramel, how about some coconut…"

Adam, this looks like a winner to me, and nobody here will tell a soul where to find the recipe.

And speaking of winners?  The randomly selected winner of the fourth pie prize box goes to Dee, whose wonderful story about a kind grandmother was posted here two weeks ago.  Congratulations, Dee.  And next week, our grand prize winner will be announced.