Cherry Pie!

My friend Sydney is known as much for her pies as she is for her quilts.  She makes a killer cherry pie.  I love pies.  I love the movie Michael because pies are featured so prominently.  The movie even has a song about pie, sung horribly and happily by Andie McDowell.  Pie is happy food.  What's better than a luscious fruit filling nestled between layers of tender crust?  Nothing, I say. Unless of course it's a cream pie, which I might, on occasion, choose over the most beautiful fruit pie.  I love chocolate cream pie and banana cream pie and coconut custard pie and...  Sorry, I got away from myself!  Since Sydney's last pie was cherry, I'm giving  you a recipe for cherry pie from allrecipes.com, a terrific Web resource for great food, with ratings so you know what you're getting into!

CHERRY PIE (from allrecipes.com)

" If you 've never eaten a fresh cherry pie, you 're in for a treat with this recipe. It 's a bit of work to pit the cherries, but once this is done, there 's not much left to do: mix the cherries with almond and vanilla extracts, sugar and tapioca"

Ingredients:

1 recipe pastry for a 9 inch double crust pie 4 tablespoons quick-cooking tapioca 1/8 teaspoon salt 1 cup white sugar

4 cups pitted cherries 1/4 teaspoon almond extract 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract 1 1/2 tablespoons butter

Directions:

1.	Preheat oven to 400 degrees F (205 degrees C). Place bottom crust in piepan. Set top crust aside, covered.
2.	In a large mixing bowl combine tapioca, salt, sugar, cherries and extracts. Let stand 15 minutes. Turn out into bottom crust and dot with butter. Cover with top crust, flute edges and cut vents in top. Place pie on a foil lined cookie sheet --- in case of drips!
3.	Bake for 50 minutes in the preheated oven, until golden brown.

Photo credit: http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&rlz=1G1ACGW_ENUS356&q=cherry%20pie&aql=&oq=&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wi