SomePlumPie
I spent most of today prepping and packaging 320 tarts for this weekend’s True/False Film Festival. The tarts will be gifted to the filmmakers tomorrow as they start to arrive in Columbia prior to all the festival events starting Thursday (along with a lot of other top notch swag, I’m presuming). It is well documented that I would rather bake 320 tarts than ever tie the little ribbons on each one because I have zero patience for that sort of thing. Thankfully, Jeanne came in for a few hours and helped me tie them…so if one artist gets one with a double knot bow that looks like Martha Stewart herself tied it and then another artist gets your standard tie-it-like-a-shoelace-bow…welp, hopefully they read here and it all makes sense. Guess who tied this one? Ahem.
A number of vigilant PJP fans have been in the store and asked if we are using new stickers on our pie boxes. And yes, yes we are. The short story is that they are magical. The longer version of the story is that our Sysco rep sent in a super nice guy named Blake from Date Code Genie to see us and after he did his demo, Jeanne basically threw dollar bills at him so that he would order the machine for us as. soon. as. humanly. possible. It lowers our sticker cost from .09 each to .02 each and it is thermal, so we don’t have to order ribbon for it. Plus, it can’t get out of alignment and make stickers that say “lueberry” instead of “blueberry” or my personal favorite…”merican apple”. It really takes very little to keep us happy, obviously. (Lueberry and merican aside, our old printer was in the top five things I loved the year we purchased it and I’m pretty discerning about that sort of thing.)
In other random news, last Thursday was February’s Epic Pie Tasting event. All guests absolutely loved our take on a Southwestern Chicken Pot Pie and the Vanilla Wafer Banana Pudding pie. Without question, we will start to drop the vanilla wafer pie into rotation (though, it will be hard because Team PJP and I can basically eat almost a whole box of vanilla wafers in less than 10 minutes, so I’m not sure how we will muster having a bulk stock in the store without making ourselves ill.)
The Southwestern Chicken Pot Pie is, however, an entirely separate issue. It was delicious, for sure, though making it requires black beans and corn and red peppers and a staunch debate on the use of hot sauce. And ordering black beans and corn in vast quantity feels like a gateway drug to becoming a restaurant - which I’m not interested in. Also, I’m not sure I’m ready to become the person that knows the ins-and-outs of large scale canned goods ordering. Never say never at PJP, but I’m 100% making it at home…where I have normal person supplies of black beans and we like our spice level mild, thank you very much.
Finally, if you are curious about what failed miserably at pie tasting - Pear Ginger pie and Plum Pie were tied for last place. The pear ginger was overly gingery and the plum pie was just meh. On a random note, Jeanne’s account on Instagram is SomePlumPie, so it would have been great if that one were a hit, right? (That said, don’t race to follow her. She never posts but once a month or so, she logs in and likes EVERYTHING every single person she follows has posted. So if you sort of want to see your phone light up and say that SomePlumPie liked 47 of your photos, well, there you go.