You fat bastard, you fat bastard!

I love pies. Meat pies, specifically. I can't remember a time when I didn't love them. They've been part of my diet ever since I was in primary school. Whenever I'm in a place I've never been, I love to go to the local bakery and sample their pies. So to celebrate International Pie Day here are some random thoughts and recollections associated with pies.

• I was born in Bendigo and so my favorite pies are still Gillies Pies bought from the corner stall on Hargraves Mall. I think they have changed slightly over the years but there's something about the fusion of the meat & gravy with the pastry that makes the taste like biting into the warmth of home. I guess the fact that this is a childhood favorite kind of skews my opinion but I'm prepared to live with being less than objective on this one
• The Gillies marketing has always featured a boy with pie, out of which are flying four-and-twenty blackbirds. As a kid, whenever I heard a crow, I used to think of pies
• When I was in about grade 2, the price of pies in the school canteen went up from 50 to 55 cents. I remember thinking 'Gee... one day, pies are going to cost a dollar!'
• I don't know why but somehow I got the impression as a child that the only reason to put tomato sauce on a pie was if it was too hot and needed cooling down. When offered sauce in shops, I would even ask if they were really hot before deciding whether or not to have sauce
• In primary school, we (my siblings and I) were given money to buy our lunches every Wednesday. We had to order them. You'd write what you wanted on a brown paper bag and put the money in it. The class's bags were put in a laundry basket and it was taken to the canteen. At lunch time, it would be brought back with the money taken out of the bags and the appropriate food put in them. I used to order 2 pies. Occasionally, the mums volunteering in the canteen would think 'Gosh, that little boy can't possibly eat 2 big pies... he must mean 2 party pies' and I would have to go back at lunch time and explain. Eventually, I just started writing '2 big pies' on the bag (in case my $1.10 wasn't enough of a clue)
• One of the funniest pie anecdotes was when Bruce and I were travelling to a volleyball tournament in Swan Hill (or it could have been Melbourne) when we were 14 or so. We stopped on the way in some smallish town and went into the shop for a bite to eat. Bruce thought he'd have a bit of fun and said to the guy working there "I'd like a round pie, please,"
  The guy looked in the pie warmer, came back to the counter and said "We've only got square ones," at which Bruce shook his head, said 'Tch,' looked at me, rolled his eyes, then said to the guy despairingly "It'll have to do..."
  I still laugh when I think of this
• Party pies are just the most fantastic party food there is. True
• I used to run a public swimming pool, which involved a lot of early mornings. We sold pies there, and when they were delivered at about 7am... and I hadn't had any breakfast yet... and they were still warm... Well, sometimes I'd just have to eat one (or two... sometimes three) straight out of the baker's tray. Yum!
• I used to work at ABC radio on weekends with Ashley Walsh. When the AM program came on on Saturdays, we'd be off the air for 45 minutes so I would walk to Cherub Lane Bakery on North East Rd and buy a pie. They're very nice. Chock full of very lean mince and baked on the premises. I would take it back to the studio and eat it there. Ashley would call me Fatty Finn. I don't know who that is
• I eat pies pretty quickly. Even I am shocked at how fast they go down so sometimes to slow myself down, I'll adopt a method of eating a pie which I call the top down method. What you do is take off the 'lid' first and if it's firm enough, rip bits off and use it to scoop out some of the meat and eat it like this. Then, proceed to break off bits of the top of the outer crust, scoop up some meat, and work your way round. You should be left with just a flat bit of pastry with a very light layer of meat. Pick this up & eat it. It really helps you appreciate the flavour of the pastry eating a pie this way
• These days I get my pies from the Bakers Tray in the Adelaide Central Markets. They're similar pies to the Cherub Lane ones: packed with yummy lean mince (not like the meat & cartilage pies you get from Balfours). They sell cold pies for $1.50, which is amazing. So I'll buy two (I'm a big boy now, so they know I don't mean party pies), bring them to work and heat them for 20 minutes in the kitchen upstairs. Three-dollar lunch... gotta be happy with that!

Shit. I've left the oven on.