Hikers

One day I had plans to hang out with my good friend, Sheana. She had seen a flyer for a pie contest that was happening that morning. Pie was one of the first things Sheana and I bonded over, especially for breakfast! But it was another beautiful day in sunny Southern California, so we also considered going on a hike. By the time we got around to finalizing our plans, we’d missed the 10:00am deadline for entry into the pie contest, so the decision was made for us and we went on a hike.

Bikers

It just so happened that the hike we’d chosen was right near Neptune’s Net, the Malibu seafood spot and biker bar that has been featured in many movies and TV shows. We’d heard it was an LA destination that also had pretty decent food, and we’d worked up an appetite on our hike.

It was a fun scene, overlooking the ocean and packed with a bizarre mix of bikers and tourists. We got fish tacos.

And crab cakes.

Then topped off the meal with frozen yogurt and an ice cold beer.

Bakers

Needless to say, it had already been a pretty solid day. But all during the hike and our lunch, we kept coming back to the pie contest. On the drive home, we kept talking about how it probably would have been fun. All of a sudden it occurred to us that we didn’t need a contest as an excuse to make pie. Cue detour to the grocery store to pick up the fixings for a peach pie filling, and yeah we cheated and bought a ready-made pie crust.

You can never have too much butter, so we dotted some extra on top of our peach filling.

We did at least re-roll a second pre-made crust for the top of the pie. We slit some air vents in a pretty pattern, used a fork to the crimp the edges, and gave the whole thing an egg wash.

I think maybe I was a little heavy-handed with the egg wash… This golden beauty came out of the oven, but when we cut into it the filling was still a bit runny. It also likely didn’t help that we were too impatient to wait for the pie to cool and set.

We each sliced ourselves a piece, then popped the pie back in the oven with a foil covering to prevent further browning of the crust. The second baking did solidify the filling, and we happily munched our slightly runny slices while that happened. Yes that is three scoops of ice cream on one slice of pie! It’s days like this that make me appreciate how good life can be.