They were the words any shameless pie judge yearns to hear: “We have 17 entries and four judges,” said Sue Horton. “Do you all want to taste them all?”

Horton is the contest coordinator for The Puyallup Fair’s Home Arts Department, and the woman to whom I owe some of the tastiest and most shameless hours of my life.

This year, peach pies stretched across four tables, and spectators filled two rows of chairs beyond them. They were waiting to watch other people eat, and rate, pie.

There would be ribbons.

There was, to my astonishment, some disagreement among the judges on Horton’s proposition.

The judges were me; Marlene Angell, a Washington State University food adviser; Pierce County multi-media celeb Dorothy Wilhelm; and Scott Arend, food blogger for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

They apparently have limits, standards and waistlines.

Angell, for example, does not determine whether a bottom crust is soggy by eating a chunk of it. She turns the slice over and uses the scientifically accurate fork-poking method.

Arend’s trained palate allows him in one small bite to evaluate even a complex filling – and we are talking peaches with variants including red-hot candies, pineapple, almond extract, macadamia nuts, rhubarb, vodka, coconut, blackberries, blueberries, raspberries and something called cinnamon whiskey.

Wilhelm, though adventurous in all other areas, is seemly in her sampling.

In the end, we agreed on the full culinary tour of the classic example of American ingenuity and skill.

Theodore Roosevelt once said, “Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.”

He might have been talking about finishing the Panama Canal, taking San Juan Hill, fighting for a Square Deal for ordinary Americans, or pie.

He might have been extolling the skills of pie winners Kim Arnold, Kathy Scott and Kelly Maguire.

They’ve been building their skills since they were kids. They grow the ingredients they can and get the rest locally. They improvise without overdoing it. They work within rules they find reasonable.

Their crusts are slim, blistered and just brown enough. Their fruit holds its shape and celebrates its flavor. Their fillings keep to their place in the pan.

Serial pie champ Kim Arnold, whose Rosey Peach Pie earned best of the bites this year, has a history of discovering that her family has eaten the secret ingredients set aside for her fair pie.

The University Place wizard of substitution has, by necessity, grown wise to the spritz of color and the shift of flavor a few raspberries can add when the pomegranates have vanished.

Kathy Scott is deft enough with crust to top her peach and blueberry Fourth for July Pie with 13 sugared stars. But she’s moderate with the heat. She invented the recipe with 30 Cinnamon Red Hots, then worked down to 20 to make a point, and dashes of red, without insulting the palate. She achieved perfect pie diplomacy.

At their Des Moines home, she and her husband, Gary, don’t try to force peaches to grow up stunted and resentful. Instead, they buy them east of the mountains and grow their own Gravensteins. Already, Gary has put up 48 quarts of apple filling.

Kelly Maguire of Kent was a child eager to grow up, and saw her way in pie. She learned the basics and earned her time in the kitchen with the women at Thanksgiving. She mastered classic pumpkin, pecan and lemon meringue.

Now she invents with her reliable friend, rhubarb. It’s tart, subtle and complementary, she said. It sets the flavor of the peaches glowing. And it makes her neighbors happy.

She’s proud to have what she calls “a competitive bone.”

It’s more like a competitive whole skeleton.

She plans her fair campaign well in advance. Through the summer she develops an array of pickles, jams, cakes, breads and pies destined to sit next to ribbons in display cases.

She takes them to her neighbors and asks what they think.

“A little criticism here,” she begs them.

They say “Yum.”

Speaking as a once-a-year pie judge, I concur.

Kathleen Merryman: 253-597-8677
kathleen.merryman@thenewstribune.com
blog.thenewstribune.com/street Somewhere along the line, a candy-deprived editor substituted "Hot Tamales" for "Cinnamon Red Hots" in Kathleen Merryman's column. "A peach pie with 30 Hot Tamales in it would be awful," Merryman said.

SEE IT, SMELL IT

The Home Arts Department on the second floor of The Pavilion hosts contest judging, cooking and craft displays every day of the Puyallup Fair, which ends Sunday. Today, you can catch a cooking demonstration by Sherry Fry from 3:30-5:30 p.m. Wanda Hunter will show how to cook a skillet dinner from 6-8 p.m.