And now, I bring you to the Life of Pasta . . .  for Christmas, my gifts included a pasta maker and The Complete Book of Pasta and Noodles. I predict a new era on this blog, as I learn to make not only delicous Italian dishes but Thai, Japanese, Chinese and Indian noodles. I’m so excited to get started and could not wait to tell my buddy Brian, aka The Food Geek about my cooking haul. (No competitions! But I do want to have Brian over for dinner.)

Who knows, though — there could be a Pasta Fest in my future.

Browse the Web site for bios of the competitors and esteemed judges, the rules, event details and MORE!

We’re hoping for a nice turnout of pie enthusiasts. What’s extra fun for me is that people planning to attend are bringing their families — so, kids, coffee, pie, wi-fi and brutal, nail-biting competition; what could be better?

Meanwhile . . . The Food Geek and I have been thinking, baking, testing and eating pie. I wasn’t going to bake another test pie this weekend but lo and behold there was a big sale on a certain kind of berry and I attained a special secret ingredient (by traveling to a small, locally owned grocery where I was the only English-speaking customer) which meant: test pie.

Saturday afternoon there may or may not have been smoke pouring out of my oven into my kitchen. I may or may not have run upstairs to crank on the attic fan yelling, “NOTHING TO SEE HERE! DO NOT BE ALARMED!” (Kinda surprised the smoke detector didn’t go off; pretty pleased the fire department didn’t feel it necessary to show up.)

Such as my pie baking sometimes goes . . .

I can’t tell you about my test pies . . . nor am I to reveal the specific kinds of pie that will be submitted for the competition. It will be a blind test, meaning the judges will not know who made the slice before them as they judge it. That’s a good thing, I think.

I cleaned my oven today. I’ve made my final decisions about my pies for Saturday. I’m ready to rock and roll. Get ready, Geiger. I’ll see you downtown.

Cran-Raspberry Lattice Pie

On Friday, Jamie Schwartz @brownautogal of Brown Auto in Charlottesville pondered via Twitter who might bake the best pies in Charlottesville. In a moment of extreme hubris, I replied that I, of course, am the Pie Master and then challenged The Food Geek, Brian Geiger to the C’ville Pie Down; a pie-against-pie event to see which one of us can produce the best pies.

Since all this interaction took place on Twitter, a panel of judges self-assembled rather quickly. The four include our Simon Cowell, @stevewhitaker, our Randy Jackson, @joemeade; our Paula Abdul, Cindy Maisannes @cmaisannes and our not-Paula, Sara Gould @sajego. Others, of course, jumped into the conversation with offers to host, taste and of course, attend what now looks like THE C’ville blogger/Twitter(er) event of the season.

I’m suddenly afraid; very afraid.

The judges began their discussion of parameters; format, number of pies, location, etc. on a wiki to which you can add your two cents.

The date is still to be determined but it will likely be a Sunday afternoon. Stay tuned for additional details.

Meanwhile, I’ll be pondering my best pie offerings. It’s shaping up to look like an apple and what we think our “best” pie is — if you’ve tasted any of my pies, feel free to let me know which you think is my “signature” pie. I, of course, have some strong contenders, but have not yet decided which I will enter into competition. I’m excited though; it should be an all-in-good-fun event and a great way to gather some of our favorite online friends in person.