When it comes to sweets, Willy Wonka and Elf have nothin’ over Ally!  I mean, try to imagine three days of being in pie-nirvana, where you are inundated and immersed with pies of every kind: apple, cherry, key lime, raisin, chocolate, berry and berries, rhubarb, peanut butter, cheesecake and more.  Where you have a certified ‘piologist’ and there are pie girls dancing around like ‘QT Pie’!  Then, of course, there’s a ‘Never Ending Pie Buffet’, where for one small price and an orange wristband, the world is your pie!  And don’t forget the crusts!  Oh my goodness, there were the most innovative and intriguing crusts created that really gave the good ol’ flaky pie crust a run for its money!

Competitive food sporting is becoming a major industry in our country. Yeah, we’ve always had the barbecue, chili and burger contests, but now it’s extending to everything from crabs and chitlins to ramps and garlic!  If you’re a rabid foodie, love to cook and have some adventure in you, then you best get your little bahootie into entering some of these contests!

Competitive fooding and entering contests is not just about the winning. It’s about the culture, the ambiance, the tribes of folks that you meet and become friends with and, of course, it’s about chowing down on great food!  When you put yourself out there in a food contest, you’re whisked away from real life to a fantasy world!  Being there in the moment, meeting ridiculously interesting and charming people who have intriguing day jobs—like Ron, the pulmonary physician who competed in the amateur division—and finding like-minded friends from around the country who share your passion for food, is all just the beginning of the journey!

At the Crisco National Pie Championships in Celebration, Fla., we, as in my road-trip girlfriend, Beth, were in a magical ‘Pleasantville’ setting. You know, where the lawns are perfectly manicured, the kids all wear bike helmets as they ride the designated paths and there are no signs of a world in turmoil.  Sometimes it’s good for the soul and spirit to escape for a few days to these settings. It gives you the chance to decompress, leave everything behind, and be a kid again!

Judging is a huge deal in most all of these contests and the duty is not taken lightly.  Think Brinks guards and Ernst & Young accounting to tally the voting sheets, and then there are the “Pie Police” (Yes!  They literally make sure you’re behaving and not poking your fingers in the luscious pies!). There was a lot of judging, pie tasting, making of notes, giving of scores, and the clickety clack of calculators at this competition since there were three divisions: commercial, professional and amateur.

Now, perhaps one of the coolest “kids” we met here was Richard—the judge!

Richard has been judging the pies for decades, he said. At the young age of 93, he sat fastidiously at his table, his walker beside him, and awaited his pie sample.  He took one bite, and without mincing any words said, “Not good.”  We asked him what his favorite pie was, and with a twinkle in his eyes and a wide grin on his face, Richard quipped, “Five feet four and a sweetie pie!”  You can only imagine how the table roared with laughter! That’s just a peek at what can happen at a food competition, and if you’re there, you start to absorb the fairy-tale!

Beth and I not only sampled way too many pies, we also entered the pie-eating contest!  Yep, when you’re at a pie contest, you gotta partake in the hometown fiesta!  We romped on the big air slide with the kiddos, telling them we were just little kids in big grown-up bodies. They bought it and happily shared their personal techniques for getting the best lift, bounce and fastest slide action on the ride!

So who took home the big kahuna prize? Amy Freeze of Avon Park, Fla. was the winner of the 2013 APC Crisco National Pie Championships Amateur Division Best of Show.  She won with her “Sittin’ On a Sandbar Key Lime Pie.” I asked Amy the story behind the name of the pie, and she said she was literally sittin’ on a sandbar thinking of what she would enter, and the inspiration struck her!  That’s seems to be when imaginative thinking happens—when you least expect it! So many competitive food events are about thinking outside the pie box! Andrea Spring of Bradenton, Fla., and a three-time previous winner, was the 2013 APC Crisco National Pie Championships Professional Division Best of Show.  She smacked down an incredibly fabulous ‘ Peanut Butter and Cracker Pie’.

As I write this blog, please know that I have fully recovered from my pie coma and I’m on a majorly strict “PIET”!  Enjoy the shenanigans of our pictures on my PINTEREST BOARD, and, next time, I expect to see you in a competition!

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