My Greatest Idea to Date, RETRO Lab Pie Day

My oh my, how do I love pie! Work parties are a chance to cut loose and enjoy each other other than IMing one another from across the room. Our organization, The Institute for Simulation and Training has a cozy pie day every year where each employee gets to sample one piece of store-bought pumpkin or pecan pie. It's nice, but it lacks the flavor and energy it takes to get me going before celebrating a holiday. Therefore taking a cue from my superiors, I instituted a RETRO Lab Pie Day the Friday before Thanksgiving. The only rule for Pie Day is that all pies had to be as homemade as possible. On top of mounting deadlines, school work, and making personal holiday plans now they all have to make pie. Moo hahaha! Does my domineering evil know no bounds?!?!?

My first plate, the savories.

Ok, so assigning a pie day is far from evil and we truly had a great time. For a lab of fifteen total people we had 10 tens. Even I was shocked and impressed by the showing! I supplied a Tomato and Goat Cheese Pie inspired by Lick My Spoon's post about this regional speciality of my home in SE PA. Tomato Pie I remember as a Friday night treat my Mom would spring for once all our chores were done. The sweet and acidy tomato flavor takes me way back in time, and LickMySpoon's recipe was the first I've come across so I had to try my hand at it. My apologies for no accompanying recipe, but in the spirit of Cat Cora I cooked from the hip. I can tell you I used the Publix whole grain dough and spread goat cheese all over the dough before putting on the tomato filling, and lastly topped each slice with a chiffonade (I just wanted to say it) of fresh basil.


We had sweet and savory pies. Pies for vegans. Pies for vegetarians. Pies for the all-over glutton (I'm in that last category). It was a victorious expression, nay, a triumph for pie and for our lab. I am going to shut up now and let you all bask in our Pie Day Slide Show. (PS-for all managers, bosses, etc. reading this, do a pie day! Eating and baking are fabulous team builders.)