Day #1 - Stupid Pie

Inspiration comes in many forms, mine happened to come from Oklahoma, some friends came to visit me and my husband, Tom, for Super Bowl #45 and they brought with them a cookbook from the "Pioneer Woman", after browsing the book, I noticed that some of the recipes were the same or very similar to my grandma's, I promptly got down her cookbook (this is what I chose to keep when she passed away) and started to compare one recipe, Chocolate Sheet Cake, and realized that it was virtually the same!  I decided a few days later that I would put myself on a journey this year to cook my way thru grandma's cookbook.  I have to let you know that I am not a writer, so I am going to do the best I can, here we go!

My first recipe is called "Stupid Pie" and after making it I realized that it is probably named that because any "stupid" can make it.  I noticed that a lot of grandma's recipes were handwritten on scraps of paper, backs of envelopes and sometimes typed nicely on a card and some were cut and taped on the pages of the book.  I also decided to make today the  first day of my journey, because my husband was going to watch the Daytona 500 with our friend Sean Sweeney.  I told Sean Sweeney that there is going to be a lot of taste testing going on so he'd better be ready to participate in my journey.  I am not a good one for tasting my own cooking, I want other people to taste it and let me know if it's good and if it's not then it's going in the trash.

These are the main ingredients in "Stupid Pie", I know it looks kind of strange, but trust me, it came out tasty!

First thing you need to do is separate the egg yolks from the whites, be careful and don't get any shells in the egg whites and then you want to beat those egg whites until their stiff:

Then you are going to add a cup of sugar and a tsp of vanilla and mix.  Then you are going to add 20 Ritz crackers that are crushed and 1 cup of nuts(I used walnuts, because that is what I had in the cabinet)

Mix this all together and pour into a 9 inch pie pan(ungreased)

and bake for 30 minutes at 350

After we ate some yummy tri-tip and brisket(frozen left over's from the Super Bowl) and some homemade potato salad (thank you cousin Carol for that recipe, best potato salad EVER), we decided that our food was digested (after watching a movie), we cut into the pie and topped it with Cool Whip and of course I made Sean Sweeney take the first piece, I watched and waited for his reaction and he said it was good, so my husband tried a piece (he is not an adventurous eater at all, not saying he doesn't like to eat, he just doesn't want to try "new" things), he said it was good too, so I tried my piece and it was pretty darn good.

I was born and raised in California, not anywhere near my grandma, but I remember the summer visits to Illinois or the visits when she would come to California, my grandma was always happy and always cooking!  I believe that everyone has a "story" and I am going to try and share my families "stories" with you.