Cider and Pie... Oh, my!

 About a week ago, Ed sent Russ a text message about a charity community pie tasting contest to be held at one of our local hard cider taprooms, Nobel Cider, on Sunday 8/28 at 4 PM. 

Since both Russ and Ed are pie aficionados, I am particularly fond of ciders, Carol is a non-discriminating dessert lover, and the charity was the local Make-A-Wish foundation, this seemed like a no-brainer. We were in!

Pie makers each submitted three of the same dessert pie to the contest, in hopes of having their pie judged one of the top three in the categories "Best Fruit Pie," "Best Non-fruit Pie," and "Nobel's Choice." For a $5 donation, we were among the many "judges." 

This is what typical judges look like:

 Since we arrived plenty early for a ring-side seat, we started with flights of some of the ciders on tap.

Meanwhile, the pie bakers were cutting their masterpieces into small pieces.

 And the pies were arranged on two tables... fruit and non-fruit... with pie names and identifying numbers.

After a brief introduction and talk about Make-A-Wish, judges got in line to select their samples.

Here is my plate, with selected fruit pies on the right and non-fruit on the left and cider in the upper right hand corner.

Once sampled, ballots were collected in the ceremonial bucket.

 There were also some door prizes donated by a few local businesses. 

(Russ won the plaid short sleeved sport shirt, actually.)

One interesting pie that was actually very good was this tomato and hatch chili pie. It didn't clearly fit into the dessert category, but the lingering hotness of the chilis certainly encouraged cider drinking! I bet it will be Nobel's Choice!

Unfortunately we didn't stay until all the votes were tallied, so we don't know if our favorite pies won, nor do we know if the bakers were just ordinary folk or prize winning pastry chefs from local restaurants.

Would we do it again? Certainly!

Though next time, I would have a different strategy. I would linger toward the back of the line and listen to comments as people came by savoring their first few tastes. Once at the table, I would select a normal sized piece of the one pie that looked/sounded like the best to me. And then I would have a scoop of that nice vanilla ice cream that was offered to accompany it. (None of us had the room or the desire to eat ice cream with that combination of sample-sized pie flavors.) 

I would then sit and enjoy my singular dessert... and maybe cast a vote for it, if it lived up to expectations.

To maintain the pie theme, we stopped for a pizza afterward.  

I was so full of cider and dessert that, good as it was, I struggled to eat one piece of pizza!

THE END