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How many times are you going to get the chance to spend the day baking pies inside one of America’s most famous landmarks? It’s safe to say that no one will ever invite me to bake with them at the Empire State Building. I’ll never roll dough on the Golden Gate Bridge, or slide a plump pie into a hot oven at the White House. But Beth Howard, the gracious lady who lives in the American Gothic House in

I want to tell you about how amazing it was to be a pie judge at the Iowa state fair. I want to tell you about the dozens and dozens of pies that passed before my eyes (and my fork): the impressive and the terrible, the artful and the elementary, the impossibly delicious and the, um, not so delicious. But to really understand what it was like to be a pie judge, you have to first understand what it was like to walk th

My pie credentials have arrived! Today’s mail brought my parking permit and admission ticket to the Iowa State Fair, where I’ll be a pie judge next week. They were accompanied by a map of the fair, on which Arlette Hollister, the gracious food superintendent, has thoughtfully circled in red pen the Ellwell Family Food Center, the building where the food judging takes place.

Guess who’s going to be a pie judge at the most iconic state fair in the country? CurvyMama! Yep. I’m packing up soon for another pie adventure. This one’s pretty much the polar opposite of the one that launched this blog last fall: my bus trip to New York City to spend a week making pies with Ron Silver’s crack team at Bubby’s restaurant.  This time, I’m getting on a plane to

You know CurvyMama pretty well by now, so you know that she sees nearly everything in life through a pie lens. And so it is that I bring you a little slice of my younger daughter’s summer road trip. It’s true that Sara and her friend Ariel did not set out to find great pie between Washington D.C. and Michigan. They had other goals in mind (two big music festivals, camping, seeing friends). But they fell u

From West Hollywood, Ca. Nice little pies. That about sums up our experience at Simple Things, a cute little pie shop in a hip little strip of Los Angeles.

From Crescent Springs, Kentucky I could not let National Pi(e) Day go by without doing my duty as a member of Pie Nation. Had I not been obliged to go to Kentucky (yes, again) for work, I would have been celebrating Pi(e) Day in D.C. with fellow pie makers Tarts by Tarts (blogging as Nothing-In-The-House), who are throwing a cool local-radio-station fundraiser tonight. I couldn’t help with the baking from

From Louisville, Ky. CurvyMama was delighted to find that one of the Pie Shops On Our List was in this city where my newspaper was actually paying me to go for a story. So when there was a lull in the action, I made an escape to Homemade Ice Cream and Pie Kitchen.

From Chicago I smelled it before I saw it. And OhMyGod, did it smell good. If my recent visit to a pie shop in Virginia eroded my faith in finding good pie-making, Hoosier Mama restored it. So let me dispense with the quick facts and get on with it, cuz I’m dying to tell you about this gem of a place. Hoosier Mama Pie Company Chicago http://www.hoosiermamapie.com/ This two-year-old pie shop is a sweet, humble l

From Leesburg, Va. CurvyMama’s got another pie-shop report for you. I hopped in my little cherry-red SUV on a glorious fall day and drove out to Leesburg, Virginia, picking up a friend along the way, to try the pie at a place whose name virtually defies a bad review: Mom’s Apple Pie Company Leesburg, Va. www.momsapplepieco.com I enlisted a pie-loving friend (who was kind enough to take time out of a famil