Easy As Pie

I have been known to be overcome with unbridled enthusiasm.  No, it's true.  Years back, my daughter Deb and I went up to Apple Hill in Camino during the season and Boa Vista Farm had a deal on apples.  Buy twenty pounds and get twenty pounds free.  Who could pass up free?  I bought forty pounds.  Poor Deb gets suckered into a lot of my schemes, like the time we made orange marmalade (but that's another story for another day).

Faced with eighty pounds of apples, she agreed to help peel and slice for pies.  We worked until our fingers were so cramped they wouldn't straighten out, and we weren't halfway done.  I couldn't open my hand enough to wave goodbye as she abandoned me to my folly.

It happened that Steve needed something from a particular hardware store across town.  I browsed the shelves while waiting for him and came across this strange-looking implement. 

Holy moly!  I'd never seen such a thing before (now they're everywhere), but it was exactly what I needed.  With a few cranks of the handle, it peels, cores and slices an apple in a minute.  I did in a couple of hours what had taken two of us all day to accomplish.  Of course, I called Deb to tell her of this wondrous implement.  Her hands were still so sore she could hardly hold the phone.  As I recall, she hung up on me.

A couple of days ago Joel brought me a big bag of gorgeous apples from his trees.  Last night I had a guest over for dinner.  Start to finish, crust to filling, I had a pie in the oven in less than an hour.

If I were stranded on a desert island (that had apple trees), this is the tool I'd want with me.