Oh, the things you do for family!

 I have something shocking to confess.  Maybe you should sit down.  Okay, here it is:  I am not a big fan of desserts.  [insert gasp here]  Of course if you put a piece of cake, slice of pie, or a scoop of ice cream in front of me I'll wolf it down like everyone else 'cause I'm a hypocr-, er, I mean polite person.

So while Stephanie is visiting me she asked if we could make something sweet -- a reasonable request to which her reasonable aunt agreed.  Now what to make?  Well last year when she visited we baked a cake (a vegan chocolate cake -- yum!) so this year we decided to bake pies.  Stephanie has fond memories of tasting a bite of strawberry rhubarb pie so she asked if we could make that.  Of course as fate would have it guess what I hate more than anything else in this world?  You got it -- rhubarb!  Oh, the things you do for family!

I am convinced the only reason people say they like rhubarb is because it's prepared with a ton of sugar.  Case in point:  we also made a peach raspberry pie (just to shut me up about the rhubarb) and it called for HALF the amount of sugar for the recipe.  Okay.  Just saying.

We used the rhubarb from our garden (Paul loves rhubarb.  I know, right?), and bought local strawberries, raspberries, and peaches from Tacoma Boys.  We used two recipes I found online, and the pies went together easily and quickly, probably because I used prepared dough.  That's right.  I feel no shame in admitting that I totally suck at pie dough preparation so I use the kind that comes rolled up in a box.

The pies looked beautiful, and tasted great.  Of course I can only vouch for the peach raspberry pie because the other had, well you know.  Paul said they both tasted great but his favorite was the strawberry rhubarb, and Stephanie?  Well her favorite was the peach raspberry.  I love that girl!

Strawberry Rhubarb Pie (from Cooks.com):  The pie was pretty runny, but Paul said it was delicious.
 http://www.cooks.com/rec/view/0,1837,153188-255201,00.html

Peach Rasberry Pie (from Allrecipes.com):  The pie had peaches and raspberries!  Do I really need to say more?
 http://allrecipes.com/recipe/peach-a-berry-pie/detail.aspx