American Apple Pie

Yesterday my friend Bryan and I made American apple pie. He was nice enough to provide the ingredients and the apartment and amazing enough to show me his mad apple-peeling skills. No one showed up until the pie was almost ready to be cooked (we waited for Phillipp to bring some brown sugar), but we had a great time eating apple peels, sweetened and condensed milk, and a chocolate Christmas man while we put it together. (Thank you, Grandma, for teaching me how to make pie.)

I was surprised at how well it turned out with butter instead of shortening and the German version of brown sugar. There is no word for pie in German, so everyone kept saying the word for cake. I insisted they just call it "Amerikanische Apfel Pie." Mike and Samuel brought cream to put on top and Markus brought a chocolate cake to munch on. We also made cinnamon crispos (from the leftover dough) which we dipped in the cream.

Bryan told me that Germans think American pie is too sweet. Someone at church mentioned that to me today as well. Maybe out of the six of us who ate the pie, I was the only one who thought it was superb, but they ate it, didn't they? Also, I think that's funny since at least four of us ate directly from that can of sweetened and condensed milk . . .

Apparently the Relief Society decided that the Americans are teaching everyone how to make cookies. I've got to experiment this week.

Just a reminder about one of my favorite Jack Handys: When you die, if you get a choice between going to regular heaven or pie heaven, choose pie heaven. It might be a trick, but if not…mmmmm, boy!