Wood Stove, Pies, and Friendship in Mineral King

(Today’s post is about cabin life in Mineral King rather than hiking. If this is boring to you, tune in again next Friday.)

In a former life, I was a baker. Pies were the specialty of the outfit where I was employed. It was a long time ago. Now I only bake pies for special occasions, and it amazes me that one pie makes the same huge mess as 8 or 12 pies do.

For 27 years there has been no oven at my cabin. Last fall, Trail Guy and Cowboy Bert remedied the situation.

We have some once-a-year neighbors in Mineral King, and over the course of the last 28 years, they have become cherished visitors to the cabin next door. Our friendships have progressed to the point where they are now comfortable hanging around in our back yard! Last year I knew they were coming, so I baked them a pie.

This year, I baked them 2 pies in a wood stove oven!

It was a big project. My dear friend PC peeled and sliced the fruit, I rolled out the crusts, and Michael operated the stove. Honestly, it took all three of us.

We had to rotate them very carefully and thoughtfully. It sounded something like this:

“Don’t open the oven yet. There is one in the back right corner and one in the front left. Pull the front one out and set it on the stove. Then rotate the back right to see if it is getting dark. If it is darker than the front one, take it out. Put the former front one in the back right, but make sure the darkest part is toward the front of the oven.  Okay, GO!”

“Did you reset the timer? How many 10 minuteses has it been? Do you think we can pull them if the crusts look brown?”

The apple pie took 50 minutes and the peach pie took 40. I think both needed more time, but the peach pie got sort of burned-ish anyway. No one complained. All were complimentary. I don’t much like pie (unless a thing is ice cream or dark chocolate, it is rarely worth the calories to me), but I certainly enjoyed the project  process.

It was Cathy, my bona fide Mineral King Expert friend who thought that inverted colanders would be good cooling racks. She was right, of course.

P.S. Homemade pies in a wood burning oven are good campaign props, don’t you think? If you live in the Everett school district, vote for Ted Wenta!