Happy Birthday Dad!

Jeff turned the big Two-Eight on July 6th! Since I had a few pounds of strawberries left over from my jam making adventure, I decided to make a strawberry pie to celebrate the special day. After gorging ourselves on dinner downtown, we came home to this jewel of a treat I prepared the night before.

The experience made me realize I'm not the woman I should be, since I had to borrow all the pie-making tools from my friend Rachel. She also pointed me toward this great recipe, which I tweaked a little (see my recipe below). I did, however, spend way too much money on [necessary?] Pampered Chef pie-making gadgets a couple weeks later...Guess I'll be making more pies soon.

 This simple recipe tastes bomb, and was easy enough for a novice pie maker like myself.

Ingredients:

• 1 (9") pie crust, baked
• 1 quart fresh strawberries
• 3/4 cup white sugar
• 3 TBS cornstarch
• 1/2 cup ginger ale

Arrange 1/2 - 3/4 of the strawberries in the baked pie crust. Mash the remaining berries and combine with the sugar in a medium sauce pan. In a small bowl, whisk together cornstarch and ginger ale. Stir cornstarch mixture into strawberry mixture.

Place the saucepan over medium-high heat and bring ingredients to a boil, stirring constantly. Continue to boil for 2-3 minutes, still stirring. Remove from heat (make sure the mixture has thickened) and let cool slightly for a couple minutes.

Pour the mixture into the prepared pastry shell. Chill for several hours. Serve with whipped cream, or I used Lite Cool Whip (since we had just finished our third batch of Slutty Brownies).