PIE INSPECTOR

With the holiday season approaching, I have taken on an extra responsibility, in addition to all the other things in my busy schedule these days.    I have volunteered as an under cover pie inspector for a consumer's group called, Pies Unlimited.

This work involves long hours of patrolling many bakeries and food markets.  Reading ingredients, poking at pies for freshness, and occasionally buying some for sampling purposes only.    This is tough work and I have learned to deal with crowds of people at pie counters and suspicious store managers.   

The following is a summary of different stores selling pies and what you can expect in terms of quality and price.  

Price/Costco deals in quantity.  They have the biggest pies measuring 16 inches in diameter.  But, I question their freshness, since I visit this store often and have noticed some pies still displayed after 3 to 5 days from my last visit.  Their price is not bad at $7.99 for one of these monsters.

Albertson has smaller pies and sometimes I can find a bargain, such as two for $6.00.  These pies fall in the middle in regards to quality, but not bad when you need a pie immediately.  

Safeway always has medium size pies for about $6 to $7.   After reading all the ingredients, including some I have never heard of, I would not recommend buying their pies.  Any time the ingredient section on the label goes beyond 50 words, I suspect something in there that may not be natural.  

Food Value on the other hand has great sugarless pies for a good price of $6.99.  I have sampled a few of these and would recommend their pies any time.  

Oasis Fine Food has organic pies containing only natural ingredients.   None of those words such as benzoate, potassium sorbate. polysorbate or LARD.   Of course their pies are not cheap starting at $10. 

There is a way to avoid all this stress in regards to where one should go to buy a pie.   Nothing beats home made pies and you can save yourself a lot of trouble, such as driving during peak hours of traffic, crowded stores, a fight with somebody over the last pie in a store or sacrificing your health for a pie of lessor quality.  

Of course, everybody does not bake and many people will continue buying pies from markets.   This will keep me out there on the front lines inspecting those pies.  It is a tough job, but somebody has to do it.

PS--This is a fictitious story written in the 1990's for a writing class when I lived in Eugene.  After I took up with Celia in 1997, I let her read this to get her thoughts about its content, she actually believed I really did this.    

Did you believe it?