Let them eat pie!

• Pie contest entrants

Pie contest entrants
• Dishing up

Residents at Windmill Ponds loaded up their plates with samples of 19 pies that were baked by both staff and residents.

Talk about it

The staff and residents at Windmill Ponds came up with a creative way to beat the winter blahs this week. They held a pie baking contest.

In observance of National Pie Day, which was Friday, January 23, activities director Vicki Hinrichs thought the contest would be a fun option for residents and staff members alike.

“It gave us something fun to do in the middle of winter,” Hinrichs said. “A lot of residents don’t get the chance to bake much anymore, and this gave them a reason to bake.”

She added that 10 residents – men and women – as well as nine staff members joined the competition, while others served as judges.

The resident pies included mincemeat, pecan, mystery, rhubarb, lemon meringue, New England squash, coconut cream, lemon, apple and peach coconut.

The staff pies included mock pecan, apple, apple crumble, blueberry cheese, orange delight, squash, cherry surprise and banana apple.

Voting was done by about 25 willing residents as well as staff members and “celebrity” judges, which included Irene Vagle of KIKV-FM, Mark Anthony and Sarah Casello of KSAX-TV and Lowell Anderson of the Echo Press.

The winners were:

Best pie baked by a resident: Delores Smith’s Mystery Pie. The mystery ingredient was Ritz crackers.

Best pie baked by a staff member: Vicki Hinrichs for her Orange Delight Pie.

Both winners received an apron designed and painted for the occasion by Windmill Ponds resident Hulda Rossum.

Tags: pie, contest