Pie

M ost people think of Thanksgiving as Turkey Day. Maybe it's my Midwestern roots, but no matter how succulent the bird, I have room in my heart for only one love on the fourth Thursday in November: pie. I divide the year into two seasons, pie and no pie, with the pie season running from the first strawberries and rhubarb in the spring through cherries, blueberries and peaches in the summer and finally, to the fall, when the true glories of...

The Food Network said today that  Dangerously Delicious Pies founder Rodney Henry of Baltimore will be a finalist on the ninth season of "Food Network Star. " The judges will be Alton Brown, Giada De Laurentiis and Bobby Flay in the competition to name the best and brightest new faces in food television. The season premiere will be at 9 p.m. Sunday, June 2. The network says that each episode before the Aug. 11 finale will feature a first-round Mentor Challenge, second-round Star Challenge and an elimination determined by the selection committee, including returning judges Food Network executives Susie Fogelson and Bob Tuschman.

There is, of course, one good and entirely selfish reason why Baltimore should embrace the concept of the NFL expanding by four teams instead of two: It means we get our team, period. Any shred of doubt is eliminated. No more maybe. Final score: Baltimore gets the ball. Go Rhavens!In other words, it's overwhelmingly, irrefutably, 100-percent-and-no-less self-serving for us to agree with the XTC four-team idea, which was posed publicly for the first time the other day by Jerry Jones, the Cowboys' owner and cultural icon.

Linda Settles from Havre de Grace was looking for a recipe for brown sugar pie that duplicated the one her grandmother used to make. She said her grandmother had five daughters but none of them remember how she made the pie. Jeannie Armstrong from Dayton, MD found a recipe for the pie in a cookbook she bought at an antique store years ago. It was first published in 1915 and revised in 1944. I tested the recipe that she kindly sent in and found that it needed a little tweaking.

When a chill hits the air, pumpkin displays replace summer melons in the supermarket's produce section. And with them come questions from readers about cooking with pumpkins. How does canned pumpkin stack up to fresh? What's the difference between pureed pumpkin and pumpkin pie filling? "Unless you're dead-set on experimenting, use the canned variety - one of the few foods better canned than fresh," Doris Townsend writes in The Cook's Companion. Why? Because supermarket pumpkins tend to be stringy.

There was a time earlier this season when the Orioles couldn't find playing time for Felix Pie. Now, with center fielder Adam Jones out for the remainder of the season with an ankle sprain and left fielder Nolan Reimold dealing with an Achilles tendon injury, missing Pie for the past few days has been a blow to the club's starting lineup. Pie, who hadn't played since leaving Friday's game with back spasms, ran, threw and swung a bat Monday and arrived at the park early Tuesday to swing again before pronouncing himself healthy.

TORONTO -The Felix Pie experiment hasn't officially ended, but his grip on the starting left-field job has loosened significantly. Pie was held out of Saturday's starting lineup for the fourth time in the past five games, and Orioles manager Dave Trembley acknowledged that he wants to take a longer look at Lou Montanez. "I don't think you grade Pie after 54 or 55 at-bats or whatever he's had, but competition is a healthy thing," said Trembley, the first time this season he has acknowledged that the left-field job isn't set in stone.

It was a chance to throw a pie in the face of a teacher -- with no danger of being suspended."Do you accept the challenge, Mr. Flanagan?" English teacher Richard Thompson asked seventh-grader Danny Flanagan at Westminster's West Middle School on Friday."

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. -Not long after meeting Felix Pie and starting a working relationship the Orioles hope will turn the former can't-miss prospect into a quality major leaguer, Terry Crowley asked the former Chicago Cub to do him a favor. Crowley gave Pie the phone numbers of David Ortiz, Miguel Tejada and Daniel Cabrera, and suggested the 24-year-old outfielder call his fellow Dominican countrymen, who know the Orioles' longtime hitting coach well. "It wasn't so much, 'Ask about Crow as a hitting coach.

Seldom-used Orioles left fielder Felix Pie on Friday night became the fourth player in franchise history to hit for the cycle and the first to apologize afterward. In the Orioles' 16-6 thumping of the Los Angeles Angels - a game in which Orioles heralded rookie right-hander Chris Tillman earned his first career victory - Pie accomplished what only Aubrey Huff, Cal Ripken Jr. and Brooks Robinson before him had done in an Orioles uniform. Batting eighth, Pie doubled in the first, homered in the third and singled to lead off the seventh before coming to bat again in the Orioles' seven-run inning.

Center Stage is throwing a pie party on Sunday night at Liam Flynn's Ale House . The event is a promotion for the theater's current production of "Bus Stop. " The public is invited to show up at Liam's with their homemade pies, which will be judged by a three-person panel of experts. You don't have to bring a pie to the Pie Lab, but the winner of the pie contest will win four tickets to any Center Stage production this season. All entrants, regardless of their pie's quality, will be entered to win tickets to "Bus Stop.

"This isn't rocket science," assured John Azzolini, as he methodically attacked a lifeless mound of dough with his trusty rolling pin: four words that were music to my ears. John's a brilliant electrical engineer at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, and I was a guest at the house he shares with Mary Ann, his bride of 41 years. Both are native New Yorkers and they share an Italian ancestry: Her maiden name was Vinticinquo. What better locale than the kitchen of their lovely North Laurel home for me to receive the secret ingredients that make a genuine New York pizza?

Karen Licarowitz from Baltimore was looking for a recipe for a no-bake brandy Alexander pie. Barbara Aswad from Gambrills sent in a recipe for the pie that she said appeared in an article in The New York Times by Craig Claiborne in 1975. As it turns out, that was not the first time the recipe had appeared in the Times. According an article by Amanda Hesser in the Times magazine written in 2006, the recipe had originally run in paper in January 1970 and at the time was one of the three most-requested dessert recipes.

Pining for homemade pie, but don't want to crank up the oven while summer's still upon us? Then skip those preheating rituals in favor of no-bake pies. Also known as icebox pies, these delightfully retro desserts require minimal fuss and kitchen time, making them ideal summertime desserts. A no-bake pie generally begins with a cookie-crumb crust, which cradles some type of filling. Think pudding, custard and mousse. Creamy cheesecake, perhaps. Or airy whipped cream and fresh fruit combos.

It is no longer amazing that our major political party, the Democrats, are hell bent on spreading gambling across our state when just a few years ago they said no thank you to Gov.Robert L. Ehrlich Jr., a Republican. If this isn't obvious to the readers by now I don't know what else to say. Once again I can see that the politicos have sliced up their piece of the pie, and now they are satisfied. We will probably once again vote them all back in for the next four years and listen to our fellow Marylanders complain.

Melvin G. "Mel" Trimble Sr., a colorful and loquacious character I got to know some years ago, had one of the more interesting and necessary jobs with the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad and with its successor company, Chessie System. It relied upon his powers of persuasion and absolute patience. Mel, who was 89 and lived at the Charlestown retirement community in Catonsville, died late last month. After graduating from City College in 1941, the South Baltimore native began his B&O career as a stenographer in its real estate department.

CHICAGO -- Orioles center fielder Adam Jones stayed in Sunday's series finale against the Chicago White Sox just long enough to break his 0-for-13 slump at the plate. Jones, who hurt his back in an at-bat that ended with an RBI single in the top of the first, was removed from the game before the start of the bottom half of the inning. He was diagnosed with mild mid-back muscle spasms, an injury that could keep him out of the Orioles' lineup for a couple of days but isn't initially believed to be serious.

Bonita Burbank from Redmond, Ore., was looking for a recipe for what she called mock apple pie. She said this was a popular recipe back in the 1970s and that it was made with Ritz crackers in place of apples. Many readers sent in the recipe for a two-crust pastry version of a mock apple pie that appeared on the box of Ritz crackers back in the day. (In fact, several readers sent me the recipe cut from the side of the Ritz box.) I also received several recipe versions from the Internet.