November To Remember...

Perhaps you've heard that PJP has landed on the November cover of Feast magazine...

And while you can't see it in this photo, immediately above the pie, "Peggy Jean's Pies" is front and center (read the digital issue here:  http://issuu.com/feaststl/docs/november_2014_issue/1?e=2175372/9964884).

I'm just going to share this sentiment without any faux-modesty or fear of judgment...I ADORE THIS MAGAZINE COVER.  I'm really almost to the point of swaddling it in a blanket and stopping strangers at the Hy-vee to ask them if they would like to look at it.  Walk four feet into PJP Buttonwood and I'll be bouncing around and waving my copy around for you to admire...ahem, view.  My goal for this week is to exercise a bit of humility when I thrust a copy at each customer checking out with their pie purchases.  (I bet I don't do well with this goal.  At all.)

I've gotten a lot of questions in the last week about how this cover came to be and so, here is the backstory to this beautiful photo.  By the end of this past summer, we knew we were going to be a part of the November Feast issue.  We were interviewed and local photographer, Aaron Ottis (http://aaronottisphotography.com) spent all day with us, photographing our pies, ourselves, and our baking space.  We had seen proofs of most of those photos and they were so very pretty...well, simply looking at those made us sufficiently happy.

On Halloween, we were busy at PJP Buttonwood.  I was baking away and Jeanne was elbow deep in a mixture that would eventually become Peach Praline topping.  I saw a Twitter notification go across my phone and immediately pulled up the notification, only to see the cover photo of the November issue staring back at me.  All I could say to Jeanne was "OH MY GOSH" (or something like that...ahem).  And all she could say to me with her hands buried in 12 cups of brown sugar and three pounds of melted butter was "WHAT?  WHAT?"

Me:  We are on the November cover of Feast.

Jeanne:  

Me: COVER. MAGAZINE.

Us:

Suffice it to say, I was super excited and Jeanne was a little overwhelmed.  She immediately started running around and looking for her glasses and grabbing at my phone (mostly while dripping butter everywhere she went...it is an occupational PJP hazard).

We immediately read the issue online, but I didn't actually see the real-life copy until this past Saturday and I became an instant smitten kitten.  That something made at PJP Buttonwood looks so beautiful and that so many people from different areas of the Midwest will see it is more than our minds can process.

And then.

And then, I saw this...

World Pie Domination in print makes me feel something...something I don't even have a word for.  Happy?  Yes.  Proud?  Of course.  Validated?  Well, yeah, I think maybe that is it.  It is like stopping the World Pie Domination train and having 100 new people get on because they want to be a part of the journey to WPD.  And OH MY WORD...we are humbled and we are so excited...