plans for a tournament of pies

we have been over my haphazard recipe cataloging skills before. did I ever think I'd need to change my habit of just sorting through a pile of recipes-written-on-the-backs-of-whatever to find the one in the handwriting of a lovely Canadian on a square-ish grease-stained piece of blank notepad paper? not really. it's a fine enough system. I know how it works.

but nevertheless, one of my current projects is to sort out all the recipes I really want to keep from the pile where they sometimes mingle with too-ambitious recipe printouts that I only thought I might want to follow someday but never have, to rewrite any that need to be rewritten, and then organize them all into proper usable sections. the fat yellow folder that used to hold them has long ago been repurposed for something else, and I've kept recipes since then in a little black binder. or in a manila folder in the cupboard. or bookmarked in my phone. it's messy.

for my last birthday, Jeremiah bought me some butter-themed fabric with which to cover the new recipe binder, as soon as I might get around to it. there are a handful of savory dinner-esque recipes to finish sorting and writing out to fit. all the more fun things like brownies and brunches and custards and pies are already done and filed in a sort-of-thematic-sort-of-alphabetical way in their sections.

pies are my favorite things to bake. my mother's pie crust recipe almost doesn't need to be in the recipe book, because I've memorized it by now and could probably mix it up blindfolded if I needed to.

and ever since the tournament of RPG books a few summers back, I've been pondering what else to write tournament-style reviews of... so why not pies? it's perhaps not quite as ambitious as this neat pie-baking project (also far less likely to get a book deal, I assume...), but pretty fun anyway.

baking sixteen pies is a lot though. and for a proper tournament experience I might need to bake the winners of opening rounds multiple times as they advance in the bracket... so... I am still not totally sure how I'll plan this out, schedule all the celebratory pie tastings, ration my supply of butter and eggs properly, and all that. but I have gotten as far as choosing eight savory and eight sweet pies which could contend against one another:

chicken pot pie,
shepherd's pie,
mushroom and barley pie,
vegetable cornish pasties,
tomato corn pie,
squash galette (this one or this one? hmmm...),
quiche (not sure what type...),
spanikopita;

and 

pumpkin,
mixed berry,
cherry,
peach,
apple,
key lime,
french silk,
banana cream.

I do not like lemon meringue so it is not invited, even if it is a very classic variety of pie.

what I haven't decided yet is which pies should face which other pies to start with. and should we narrow down all the sweet pies to one, all the savory pies to one, and have those winners face off against each other? or would it really be more fair to have them share the victory?

it hardly matters, since it's all just a silly excuse to bake and eat 1.3 dozen pies (or more) in some too-short span of time. I'll figure it out at some point and see how it goes.

today is pi/e day, which is a great day for baking pies (or for talking about math and Greek letters, a la the legendary Vi Hart-- who seems to have taken down all their great pi- and tau-related youtube videos from back in the day. odd, but I can't say I blame them). but alas, I am not organized enough yet. maybe for next year I can time everything to announce final winners on Saturday, March 14, 2026. let me know if you want to come visit and share the responsibilities of pie-judging and dish-washing with me next year.