Last weekend Devin and I celebrated our fifth pie-iversary. A pie-iversary is a holiday that desperately needs a new name (suggestions?). I made it up because in 2008 Devin single-handedly baked me two pies—the single-handed thing is not hyperbole; he’d just had surgery on his right wrist, so he could only use his left hand. Incidentally, he’s right-handed. He biked the pies over in the rain with a plastic bag over his cast and a kettle of tea in his backpack.

Since then, he’s done at least a hundred similar things. We joke that his motto is, ‘Go big or go bigger’ because his gifts and projects are always like this: thoughtful and ambitious. There was nothing else significant about that day. Neither of us remember if we even ate any pie together, but somehow the date has always stuck with me; and every year I try to celebrate it. Usually I do something sneaky to avoid having to bake (the biggest stretch was buying him a pint of Boston Cream Pie flavored ice cream), but this year I felt like making the real deal.

I modified this recipe for blueberry pie and this one for shepherd’s pie. Shepherd’s pie is a cheater’s pie because you can cook all of it on the stove (hooray!), but we stuck it in the oven for a little bit to give the top layer of mashed potatoes a little crisp, and I made a heart out of fresh sage from our CSA. Our four year-old neighbor heard we were making dessert and decided to come over for dinner. She discovered that she loves ‘chicken-peas’ (chickpeas). Devin and I discovered that I can bake. It was a two-course pie meal enjoyed by all!