What do you do when it is 100 degrees out and one of your closest friends comes to spend her birthday with you? Well, I for one crank the AC and put my sweet friend to work, on her own birthday pie.

Dolores is the first friend I made in high school when my family moved from Washington to California. I had gone to school for almost a full year without making any real friends when I met her at the beginning of the following school year. She was a freshman and I was a painfully shy sophomore. She had a bit of trouble getting me to open and up and even talk to her (really, it was bad, I would not talk to anyone), but she was incredibly persistent, and we have been friends ever since.

I really am so thankful to have a friend like her in my life, I fully believe that my high school years would have been much harder (is that possible?) if she hadn’t helped me to come out of my shell.

Anyway, we spent the day making pie. A pie for dinner and a pie for dessert. Dinner was a savory pie filled with onions, zucchini, spinach, rice, Parmesan, and eggs (to bind it). Dessert was a classic cherry pie. Have I mentioned I like pie?

Happy birthday Dolores!