I probably would have tried to put a softer spin on it, but I get where the man who gave us Lake Wobegon is coming from: pumpkin pie can be pretty boring. I know more than a few people who consider it almost an obligation to indulge every fall, compelled less by love than out of respect for tradition. How did it become so? And why do so many of us feel as if pumpkin is America’s most overrated pie?…

If you’re not from around here, you may not know that we who call North Carolina home are commonly referred to as Tar Heels. In colonial times, North Carolina settlements were a major source of pitch and tar, derived from pine trees and used to seal the hulls of ships.  So widespread was the production of tar that North Carolinians acquired the nickname tarboilers. Tar boiling being dirty, smelly work, the nickname was seldom used as a compliment or term…

I don’t know if it’s cabin fever, post-holiday depression, or jitters about all the drama unfolding in our nation’s capital, but the world seems to be a trifle cranky this week. The reason I think so is because I got an email on Wednesday from a reader who, after last week’s post about presidents and pies, gave me a good scolding for stepping out of line and mentioning the pie preferences of our now former president. He didn’t like it…

We have begun the final countdown to the 2016 Lowcountry Pie Getaway in Charleston, South Carolina this coming weekend. We’re at capacity – thirteen of you will be arriving from all across the country – though our event is, by many measures, a modest one. You’d never know it, however, if you happened by The Pie Academy today: it looks like the staging area for a baking battalion armed to invade a small nation. A baker’s dozen of rolling pins…