Pie Day #1 complete

Whew, what a doozy this first day has been. Today was the pie conference, where industry professionals and supplies came together for a hefty day of pie talks and a wimpy day of pie eating (the real eatin' starts saturday for us). Scot and I had to do quite a bit of educating about olallieberries and their point of origin. Lot's of people seem to be excited to try out "exotic" California pie, I just wish we had more to give away rather than what we've brought for the judging. There's always next year.

Spent a good amount of time talking over some production issues we had various people. We had great chat with Wendy Achatz, co-owner/founder of Achatz Pies. She has an amazing sustainability-through-pie story that was really inspiring to hear about. She has 7 pie shops in Michigan, and thats right, they only sell pie! Not too common in the bay area, come to think about it I can't think of one bakery/cafe that I've been to that all they bake is pie! Have you? Wendy was buying so many delicious Michigan apples from a local farmer, the farmer convinced Wendy to buy the farm! She then learn the art of farming and supplied all the apples for her pies. Business grew and grew, and soon the apple farm couldn't produce enough to fill demand. She had to leave the farm to keep with the strenious pie growth (thats right, I said pie growth). We loved meeting Wendy and hope to try her delicious sounding pies this weekend at the Pie Festival. Check out her site at...

http://achatzpies.com/

The conference ended around 2pm, Scot and I were to head over to the Celebration High School to bake off our 20 pies. We arrived at what seemed like a white-collar prison, really modern building with high fences surrounding it. The front office had no idea who we were or anything about people baking pies in their kitchen. Oh boy! A little nervous, we hit the phones and tried to figure out the situation. Turned out that the office people were extremely friendly and helpful, and the cafeteria is run by a separate entity and sometimes the lines of communication break down. We got on the phone with our contact and chief-in-staff at the APC (American Pie Council), Linda Hoskins. Linda confirmed that we were in the right place, and we had to track down someone....and....and........yeah, it just didn't work out. The person was gone for the day and we couldn't use their facilities. Big bummer, but Linda was able to work out some oven time at our hotel for the latter part of the evening.

Thats pretty much where we are coming from right now. We ended up baking right next a lovely woman named Shannon out of Texas, Pie-O-Neer for Just Pie LLC. Had a lovely time baking next to her, and she made us glad that we weren't putting out apple pie in the competition. Her cranberry-apple pie looked and smelled divine, complete with a cutout of state of Texas and everything. Check her out at www.justpieonline.com/

The kitchen at this hotel is crazy! Dozens of people running around with a sense of purpose and determination, without missing a chance to smile at your or nod in your direction. The surreal part was that we were down there for hours using their massive oven, and not one person asked what we were doing or asked if we any credentials etc.....nothing, zero, zilch, nuthin. Giant trays of cold cuts and salads whizzed out of that kitchen so fast, it was great eye candy while waiting for the pies to bake.

Scot is at the moment babysitting the pies on the cooling racks so nobody takes 'em. I just got the text that it's time to relocate them to the high security pie vault aka our hotel room. Thats all for now, more tomorrow! Our pie judging happens in the morning, keep your fingers crossed for us.

-T