You can tell spring has officially sprung when I start baking pies. I can't help but want to when the fruit is just sitting there at the market on Saturday morning, begging to be taken home and plopped, freshly washed and patted dry, into a patiently waiting pie crust. Dust the fruit with sugar and cinnamon and throw another crust on top of it to keep it snug and safe and you have the perfect dessert. And the aroma that wafts from the oven while it's baking is an absolultely divine treat.

This desire all but clubbed me over the head while S. and I did our shopping this weekend - so many berries just sitting there, waiting for us when we got to the market in the morning! I wanted to grab one of those fist-sized strawberries and indulge, right there in front of the stand. But I held back, I kept my urges under wrap for the time-being. I was a good little domestic goddess, I promise.

I carefully choose some strawberries and some blueberries to take home with us. Cradled in our shopping basket, then carefully stowed in our SUV my beautiful berries made it all the way home with us to my kitchen. I then worried about what kind of pie crust to make and hemmed and hawed over what to add to to these perfect berries in order to make the most scrumptious pie I possibly could.

You see, S. has been begging me to bake him a pie for months. MONTHS. OF. BEGGING. He didn't care what flavour - as long as it was fruit and it was baked and it was good. I did make an attempt about a month ago and it backfired so much I ended up with sad, bland tarts with soggy blueberry-cranberry filling inside pitiful, undercooked, out-of-the-package tart shells (yes, flog me now, I used pre-packaged tart shells). The horror.

So I stood in my kitchen, last night, about an hour before our friends were supposed to arrive and worried. I worried that I would make yet another disastrous attempt at pastry (because I am so not the goddess of pastry). I worried that I would allow my emotions to get the better of me as I had many times before and throw the whole mess of crumbly pastry in the garbage and yell at S. to go and buy ice cream for our guests to eat for dessert. I worried that I would never be able to bake a pie for my husband, who really, truly deserves pie because he really is so good to me.

BUT. As you can see above, I made a pie. I made a scrumptious, fully-baked, well-filled pie. From scratch. I accomplished something I had thought was out of my reach...something that until last night, was the bane of my existence. My personal 'white whale'. My unattainable. A delicious blueberry pie. No fanfare, no whipped cream, no craziness. Just a pie. Made with gorgeously ripe and tasty blueberries, a little cinnamon and some brown sugar. Oh, and the pie crust, while not the flakiest of pastries, was good. Something definitely to work on, but good nonetheless.