Fruit Pie and a Smoke Alarm

The first corn of the season made its appearance at the grocery store two weekends ago. This is where CA earns a few points against CT - fresh, nearly seasonless veggies year-round, I miss that. So, when presented with this display of corn, I *had* to get some - a meal would plan itself around just that. So last week Friday we made oven-BBQ chicken, potatoes, and corn on the cob. Yum! What goes better with such an American meal than an All-American dessert? Nothing! We needed a pie!

I'm not a pie person, really - especially after waiting tables at a pie restaurant for two years in college. However, the fruit bowl seemed to be overflowing with overripe fruit that wanted a purpose. A couple of apples, pears, and nectarines, some blueberries and a bag of cherries... these all sound like pie fruits to me. Do they go together? Taking the list of mix-ins for the apple, cherry, berry, and peach pies in the Joy of Cooking, I figured a couple of mix-ins from each of them with all of those fruits should work together, right? It did! I even made the crust from scratch - because in the moment that seemed like it would be less hassle than driving to the market just for a Pilsbury crust.

One thing the Joy of Cooking suggests, and something I really should know, is that a drip pan should be introduced to the bottom rack of the oven when a fruit pie is baking. Did I remember the drip pan? No. Did the pie drip? Yes. It only really got going, though, right as it finished baking, so the drippings didn't have time to char and blacken and I figured I could easily clean them out that Saturday.

Fast forward to this past Saturday (after a week of enjoying pie for desssert :) - I woke up early with a craving for banana muffins. What better way to wake up than to the aroma of freshly baked breakfast pastries? So I switched on the oven and started mixing. You know where this is going. Those drippings from last week? The ones I was going to clean up before they were baked on? Yeah, I forgot about those. My filled muffin cups were ready to go in the oven, but as I opened the door to slide them in... yup, I was greeted by a wall of thick white smoke that quickly filled the kitchen, the stairwell, and the house in general. D'oh!

The unbaked muffins went into the fridge. The smoke alram never went off (?!!!) but the house was now wide awake.

Did I mention what a wonderful man I live with? He cleaned the oven for me in very short order :) :) and the Saturday morning muffin craving was fulfilled.