First Day of Autumn Pie

My husband came home from the store with apples last week. I talked about making a crisp, but he told me he wanted one of my famous apple pies. So what could I do? I made the man a pie! It was the first pie of the season, and with the arrival of the first day of Autumn, a pie seemed a fine way to celebrate.

The apples he brought home were McIntosh, but just about any kind of apple will do. Find any recipe you like and use it. I use the one in the Better Homes and Gardens cookbook; you know, the one with the red and white cover. Oh, that old cookbook is battered and torn, but everything in it is GOOD.

I started out with seven medium-sized apples but only needed six. The part that took the longest was schnitzing up those apples. My husband puts the apple peels out in the woods for our deer. My other ingredients: flour, water, salt, butter flavor Crisco (for the crust), cinnamon, sugar, butter, brown sugar, a pinch of nutmeg. That'll do it!

And soon, the house smelled heavenly, and if you walked in, you'd want some too! And in the evening, we each had a slice, and oh boy, was it good. I have made plenty of baked goods in my life (my husband calls me Baker Girl), but I think my apple pie is probably my best dish.

It's my custom to include a soundtrack song, and I just can never resist this one for apple pie: for, if you want to bake an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the Universe! The song is A Glorious Dawn, with Carl Sagan and Stephen Hawking. The lyrics below are from it.

A still more glorious dawn awaits
Not a sunrise but a galaxy rise
A morning filled with 400 billion suns
The rising of the Milky Way