Experiments in Strawberry

I've been pondering the various elements of Helen's strawberry birthday pie. I got to tinkering in the pie lab last night with somewhat mixed results. First of all, I have to admit to a rookie mistake. It's terribly embarrassing, but I feel compelled to confess. I wanted to experiment with combining strawberries and a graham cracker crust. I also wanted to play around with a cooked strawberry pie (as opposed to glazed, uncooked berries). But it wasn't until I got the frankenberry pie in the oven that I thought "hmmmm, one generally uses graham cracker crusts for icebox pies, not baked pies." So yes, I scorched the edges of the crust. Badly. Very very badly. So badly that I couldn't bring it into work in it's pie form, despite the fact that people in our building will eat anything. This is also why you're viewing the pie in extreme close-up, sans edges. The good news is that the rest of the pie was totally edible, and in fact the bottom of the crust was quite lovely. For the filling, I used a recipe from Ken Haedrich's cookbook Pie that called for some manner of mint flavoring as well as lemon juice and nutmeg to flavor the pie. After calling Susan from the grocery store to ascertain that peppermint extract was probably the same thing as mint oil, that's what I went with. I was pleasantly surprised by the filling - it was much less jammy than I thought that a cooked, all-strawberry pie would be. The berries held their shape somewhat, and the crumb topping that I put on top was a nice addition. Scooped out from the burnt parts, it came out rather like a strawberry crisp. Still, there was a lot going on with this pie - cinnamon in topping and crust, nutmeg and mint in filling.....when re-heated it smelled a little bit like potpourri. It had a strange aftertaste too - I think that might have been the mint. I'm currently thinking that mint is not going to make it until the final pie, unless there is a groundswell of popular support for it. I liked the different elements of this pie very well, but it was very much a practice pie. In trying out different recipes, I didn't really consider the pie as a whole, which in terms of edibility is an issue. Still, it can't be that bad, since I'm eating some as I type. Although I do get queasy every time I think about finishing the whole thing on my own. Perhaps I can freeze some of it....