For sure, mid-September brings days to LA that are just about a million degrees Fahrenheit, give or take a few degrees, but the cooler, autumn's-coming mornings? They're not in the triple digits and they do put us in a very fall frame of mind.
So much so that we can find ourselves touching pie plates with longing, or gazing upon rolling pins, or entering our loved-by-many family recipe pies in the KCRW Good Food Pie Contest, which will have its sixth go-around on Sunday, Oct. 5.
Yep, our big ol' megalopolis has an esteemed pie-making contest. And, yep, Angelenos do wear gingham aprons and get flour in our hair and we even, on occasion, use our windowsills to cool oven-hot pastry.
Take that, naysayers who call us traffic-riddled and asphalt-laden and obsessed with frou-frou foodstuffs. We do homespun here, too, and pretty dang well.
Your role in the Oct. 5 showdown, home cooks of SoCal? Make a pie in one of several categories -- fruit, nut, savory, cooked custard, vegan, and world pie -- more on that in a moment -- and make for the Fowler Museum at UCLA. Oh, cream/chiffon/silk is all summed up in one category, if that's handy for you.
Then have judges take bites, and the pie-loving public, too, and voila! You might head home with a Blue Ribbon. (See, there's that "homespun" thing again, naysayers. Have you come over to our side of things yet? Good.)
As for the "world pie" slate? Cooks in this field will make pies that draw upon the Fowler's art-amazing collection for inspiration. Neato? Totes. Mind-challenging? Absolutes.
Pie is sometimes said to grow waistlines -- and that can definitely be true, depending on how much we consume -- but it can also, when paired with art ideas, grow our minds as well.
There are some contest things to bone up on, like your entry fee, that you'll be slicing pie for the public, and such. So bone up.
And get ready to get your fall on, both in the rolling of the dough and the making of your competitive treat to the sampling of other cooks' submissions. It's a lively and crust-happy day that's museum-adjacent and fueled by fruit, creativity, art, and, fingers crossed, those early autumn breezes.
Seriously, September. Finish up with the fiery temperatures already: We're ready to get our apple pie and our autumn on, stat.
