Christmas dinner was fantastic. Mom’s “new” technique of cooking the turkey outside of the oven in a giant slow cooker creates the most moist and amazingly good meat ever. We do put it into the oven as soon as the thingy pops out telling us it’s ready inside.

While its skin is browning we pop in some dinner rolls and really work the heck out of that conventional oven.

This holiday season, between Thanksgiving and Christmas pie baking I helped mom to try and keep those crusts from burning. As you probably know just like we do, you’re supposed to cover them with foil.

Well, if you’ve attempted this feat of magic, you know how tough it can be. I thought I’d be slick this year and break tooth picks in half and joust the overlapping pieces of foil into the edge of the crust.

And to be fair, that actually worked rather well. Except for one thing. I discovered, via some online research that I wasn’t supposed to press the foil down on the crusts. Well, it does make a difference.

So, I thought I’d invent the Pie Crust Protector. Of course, as great as this idea is, someone’s already done it. Pie Shields they’re known as. Oh well.

But as you can see by the embedded Amazon link above, they are readily available and rather inexpensive. I’m ordering 2 of them as soon as I’m done with this post. Having them might just make me want to delve deeper into baking homemade pies.

Which reminds me, I need to start posting up about my bread machine adventures. Let me tell you a little sneak peak: I am a damned good (bread machine) baker! More on that soon!

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