by Lisa Federico

Created on: August 30, 2009

Lisa's Blueberry Almond Pie

My mother is such a good cook that my husband tells people he starts gaining weight when he gets within five miles of her kitchen. It's true; before retiring my mother owned a small catering company, and organized many extremely successful bake sales, spaghetti suppers, and pancake breakfasts because patrons knew she'd be in the kitchen.

My sister took after Mom, and is the head cook in a local, very popular restaurant. She caters, too as do several cousins, and an aunt who owns a little pizza joint that's been in the family for nearly seventy five years so popular and so good there are often waiting lines just to place an order.

Sadly, yours truly flunked in the cooking department. Despite years and years of mom and sis trying to coax me into the kitchen to help prepare Easter, Thanksgiving, and Christmas dinners the furthest I got was peeling carrots and potatoes, and stirring cookie batter. I had no interest in the kitchen, and busied myself setting tables, cleaning up, doing the dishes all of which had to be done, but none of which improved my pitiful cooking skills.

I have a shelf of cookbooks, hundreds of recipes begging for use, and pots and pans and gadgets I've never touched.

However, several years ago I surprised myself, mom, my sister, friends, and probably my whole family when I asked for the recipe for an apple pie mom had made. My husband raved about it over his third piece, and wondered out loud if I could make the pie just one thing as good as mom's.

My husband, who does all the cooking, never complained about my lack of incompetence in the kitchen, that I once burned a hole in the ceiling above the stove in our first apartment and he had to have his cousins come in and make repairs before the landlord found out, that I've ruined dozens of meals with my feeble attempts to cook.

That day I announced to everyone that I would bake the pie as good as mom's and left with the recipe in hand - determined!

Over the next few months I made the pie many times, changing ingredients, putting a different spin on the original recipe, and noting the changes each time so I could score myself during taste tests.

Finally, I modified the recipe and even surprised myself. I baked the pie of all pies worthy of a blue ribbon!

Mom's delicious apple pie morphed into Lisa's Blueberry Almond Pie, and has received rave reviews from every taster and there have been plenty of them. My husband, my parents, my sister, many

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