Most pie stories have happy endings. And then some of them end with you getting strep throat and missing out on the last three days of your Spring Break vacation and not getting to taste (or actually even finish making) the pie you made the day before you got sick.

*Sigh.* But we won’t focus on these sad things.

A few days after the events shown here, my relations decided that they hadn’t had enough pie. So the same crew mentioned in the above post, plus my cousin Alyssa (who is also an accomplished baker, though she is more of a cupcake girl) made a couple more pies. One of them was the Angus Barn Chocolate Chess Pie that I first made back in February. Let it be noted that this is the first repeat pie I have made since beginning this project. The combination of extreme deliciousness, easily accessible ingredients, and relatively short time until consumption made this an easy choice for a pie we all wanted to eat RIGHT away.

Phone conversation with my uncle at about 5:30 pm: “Oh hi, Uncle Alan. Yes, I’ve got all your kids over here at Nana’s. Have they eaten dinner? Well…er….I actually just fed them all pie and ice cream….yeah…Is there any left over for you? Of course! Come on over.”

The other pie we made was called the Ultimate Rocky Road Pie and needed to be refrigerated for quite some time before it could be eaten. It basically ended up being a massive mess of marshmallows, melted chocolate, and walnuts. We spent some time dipping the nuts and marshmallows into the remaining chocolate scrapings, like fondue. And that’s as close as I came to tasting this pie.

If you’ve never gotten strep throat before, don’t. It’s not a good time. You basically feel like you’re choking on your own uvula and swallowing nearly brings on tears. So I spent the last couple days of vacation lying in my friend Maggie’s bed instead of helping her set up her new apartment, writing her messages on my phone and trying to eat the soft fried tofu she lovingly prepared for me.

My cousin Daniel just got an iPod touch, and so, as you would expect when your 12-year-old cousin gets an iPod touch, you start to get lots of text messages (mainly consisting of rows and rows of emoticons). But he also sent me this picture to show me that the pie had not been forgotten in the freezer. (Although the layer of broiled marshmallow fluff had never been added…ah well. Naked Rocky Road.)

“Hey Jess sorry your not feeling good:( it really stinks you guys can’t come over for lunch…I will take your advice and stay away from strep throat a ya and it turns out that only nana can come to lunch cause everyone else is sick to, so we will have a fun time eating 16peoples worth of food and I’ll tell you how the pie is to.”

🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 (That’s for you, Daniel.)