After 42 years of living on this Earth, I decided it was high-time I bake a “real” pie.

Oh…several months ago, I had came to the same decision and then chickened-out and made a “galette” instead.  A Galette is sort like a big turn-over.  It’s no-where near the same as a pie – it doesn’t even use a pan.  Sufficient to say, making my galette was not a fun experience.  If you want the full picture of just how bad it was, check-out the post:  “Adventures of a Reluctant Pie Baker”.  My parrot, who helped with the process, learned a few new “choice” words that day…it was that bad.

So tonight, feeling delirious from a fever, I decided to try again and this time for real.  I Googled “Strawberry-Rhubarb Pie” and this wonderful recipe popped up.  Had I printed it, it would have been at least 40 pages long.  Suffice is to say, it was a detailed, step-by-step instruction of how to make the perfect pie and during the course of almost three (yes, 3!) hours, I followed it to the letter.  I even used the dreaded measuring cup and hated measuring spoon.

If you ask me, it turned out quite pretty – (okay, so maybe beauty is in the eye-of-the-beholder).  It’s a heck of a lot prettier than the sad looking galette was, that’s for sure.

After three hours of toiling in a kitchen that was nearing 80 degrees while I was sick as a dog, when the thing finally came out of the oven, I was over-joyed.  I had made a real pie!  Completely from scratch!  Finally I could check “make pie” off my Life List.

Here’s the sad part…(do you have a tissue – this is really, really sad).  My beloved pie was un-eatable!  The rhubarb made wood-chips look  tender!  Can you believe it??  Of all the injustices in my life that dang recipe didn’t say anything about not ringing the water off the rhubarb and putting a mixture that resembled a watery-soup into the crust.  How was I supposed to know that in order for rhubarb to cook right, it needed to be swimming?  Geeze!  Talk about learning the hard-way!

All I can say at this point is I really and truly hope the “third time will be the charm”.