There have been a lot of sleepless nights at the Phillips' house over the past week. Sure, there's been a lot keeping us busy, and the NHL finals, NBA finals, and Yankee games are keeping us up later than normal. But the main culprit is the key lime pie.

I've been haunted by the immense failure that was the key lime pie. I keep having this dream, where I'm part of an early 1900's comedy group. Essential to all comedy groups of the era was the old pie in the face gag. One of the other guys hits me in the face with a pie, and it's hilarious. Then I pick up my key lime pie and hit him in the face with it. But instead of gravity causing the pie tin to slide off to expose a highly dramatic yet pie-covered surprised face, it stays attached to his face. A few seconds later, he falls down, convulsing. Emergency crews come on scene and try to remove the pie from his face, but they are unable to because the pie is so sticky. Moments later, the guy is dead. Then the dream abruptly ends as I'm being handcuffed and taken away by officers with angry clown faces. See why I wasn't sleeping?

Anyway, I figured that the only way to shake this was to make a new pie. You can't dwell on failures, you have to power through. So I went to the library. Longtime readers with steel-trap memories will recall that I fear libraries. This should be an indication to you about how serious I was. I went to the library and I picked up a book called Joy of Cooking: All About Pies and Tarts. A little pie-making joy is exactly what I needed.

I decided to break the rule I created only days before, to not make a pie that I have never eaten before. I picked "Shoofly Pie," because it seemed simple and looked good. So I fastened the baby gates and went to work.

shoofly2.jpg

The wife came in when it was done, looked at it on the counter, and said that it was the "best looking pie (I) have made so far" (the photo doesn't do justice to the tasty look of the crumbly topping). And I know better than to misquote the wife, so you can believe that I'm not exaggerating. It was so nice looking, I didn't want to cut it. The pie sat there in all its glory for a couple of hours, as it cooled to room temperature (as per the instructions). I had considered charging admission to have people come in and look at it, maybe even allowing them to take pictures. Unfortunately, the boy was already in bed, and even a little extra cash isn't worth waking him up.

I'll stop here, and not fully go into how the pie tasted like I was drinking molasses. It was the best looking pie I've made so far. The nightmares have vanished, and generally speaking, all is right again.