Pie Extravaganza!

This morning I dragged myself out of bed a little earlier than usual to go to the Evanston Farmers' Market with my in-laws Gary and Sue and my husband Vaughn.

Oh the plethora of goodies!

The market was in a parking lot behind a parking garage and in front of the building where Sue works. There were about 30+ vendors from Illinois, Wisconsin, and Michigan. It was about double the size of the Athens Farmers' Market!

Vaughn and I were amazed by 1) the amount of produce 2) the variety of produce that each vendor had. We bought several kinds of lettuce that we had neither tasted, seen, nor heard of before. To or bag we added little golden plums that both Vaughn and I mistook as huge golden cherries.

Cherries

Plums

The other things we bought were shitake and crimini mushrooms, various cuts of beef, some raspberry jam, and sour cherries and tart Lodi apples for pies.

After picking up a fabulous cherry pitter and a silicone baking mat I set to work pitting the two quarts of cherries while Sue went running.

When she returned I made dough for the crust (following Alton Brown's recipe) and Sue prepped the cherries and apples for pie stuffage.

The cherries were surprisingly sweet for being sour cherries. The recipe called for ... 1 1/4 cups of sugar! We nixed that only added a half cup, which was plenty!

Here's the result:

Something fishy is going on with the color and quality of the photo on here. This upload looks a lot different from the image on my computer...

Once I figure that out and fix it I'll post a new one!