A squirrel decided to nibble on our phone line—also the line for our Internet—thus rendering us phoneless and without Internet over the weekend, and we didn’t get back on line until yesterday. Hence my tardiness with this post.

On Saturday, October 2, my husband, Clif and I went to the Manchester Apple Festival at Lakeside Orchards in Manchester, Maine. This is the seventh annual fair, but we had never been before. I was expecting a nice little fair with a few booths and lots of apples. Instead, it was a good-sized fair with crafts, food, activities for children, and a soundstage with some very good music by a snappy duo called Perpetual Motion. There was no admission—a nice feature. This meant that families with modest incomes could still come and have a good time listening to music and nibbling on a few goodies.

I went there primarily for the apple-pie-judging contest. I am particularly keen on pies, especially apple pie. I love to make them, and I certainly like to eat them. Long ago, with my grandmother’s help, I mastered making dough and rolling it out, and I still use her pie-dough recipe, with very good results. Such good results, in fact, that I’ve never really wanted to try any other recipe.

I haven’t been to many pie-judging contests, and I wanted to see how this one worked and, of course, take a look at the pies. I was also hoping that samples might be available after the judging so that I could try a few of the entries. This was the case last year at D.R. Struck’s apple-pie-judging contest. After the event, slices of the judged pies were on sale, and proceeds went to the local food pantry. It was a lot of fun to sample the various pies and to compare my taste with the judges’ tastes.

The booth for the pie judging was easy to find, and we got there a little early, which turned out to be to my advantage. There were twelve pies entered in the contest, and as I was talking to the women who were running the booth, I discovered they were still looking for judges. They asked me if I would like to be one of the judges. Would I? Of course I would! And they signed me up.

Interestingly, out of eight judges, only two were women. I’m not sure why this was the case. Was it because women, ever weight conscious, were intimidated by the thought of sampling twelve pies? Was it because the men, less weight conscious, were thrilled by the thought of sampling twelve pies? I do not know.

But this I do know. When twelve pieces of pie must be tasted, you cannot eat very much of any single piece, no matter how much you might like it. You can take two, maybe three, small bites of each one, and that’s it. Otherwise, by the time you get to pie number six, you are in big trouble. Your palate will be overwhelmed, and your appetite will be gone.

As judges, we were asked to rate the pies by appearance, by the taste of the crust, by the taste of the filling, and then for overall taste. The contest organizers had devised a scale that went to 100, and while the actual scoring was simple enough, adding it all up afterward was not so much fun. I am sorry to say that I am a mathematical ignoramus, and I even find it a challenge to figure out how much to leave for a tip at a restaurant.  (Fortunately, the man to my left took pity on me and added up my columns.)

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Supplied with water, napkins, judging sheets, and pencils, we commenced with the judging. As to be expected, some of the pies tasted better than others. As I sampled each pie, I was struck by how different they all were, by how much variety there was in something as simple as apple pie.

My favorite—number 6—received a nearly perfect score. It was everything that I thought an apple pie should be. The crust was flaky, and it had a good taste. The filling was perfectly cooked, smooth—buttery even—and nicely spiced. Taken together, pie crust and filling, here was a piece of pie that anyone would be grateful to eat.

When the judging was over, I asked the two men beside me what their favorites were, and they agreed with me—number 6. It seems that a majority of the judges thought that number 6 tasted best, and it was the winner of the contest.

Alison Ames was the woman who made the winning pie. Congratulations to her!

And what fun to be a part of the contest.