Pie: To Fail or not to Fail?

Apparently not easy as.

Thanksgiving is this week and my mom had asked me what I could bring. Not being the most stellar of cooks (see the "set microwave on fire" incident), I offered to bring the one dish I feel I excel at: Pie. She said she already had enough pies.

In a conversation with my brother, he insisted that I should in fact, bring pie because there is never enough. Then he asked if I would make grape pie. I told him I could give it a shot.

After some internet research, I learned there are two kinds of grape pie: Concord grape and green grape. Since the only way to get your hands on Concord grapes is to know someone who grows them, I aimed for the green grape version, and failing that, raisin pie.

Except there will be no grape or raisin pie. Not that I've made anyway. Because I screwed up at the most basic level of recipe following: the grocery shopping level.

It's not that I didn't have them on the list, or that I forgot them. Instead, I walked by a display of pears and was like "Hey, how about pears instead? Yeah. That sounds like a good idea." Now, I've gone of course with recipes before, but usually not this early on in the game.

Not pictured: Grapes

This set off a sort of cascade failure in my shopping trip. Never having made pear pie before, or heard of it I started formulating a recipe in my head of how you might make a pear pie. That recipe includes apple cider vinegar and smoked gruyere cheese.

Fortunately, after returning home and doing some more internet  research, what I have in mind is not impossible and I was able to find some foundation recipes to build my monstrosity off of.

This may be why mom told me I didn't need to bring pie.