The Malibu Pie Festival? The one some friends and I entered on a lark so we could have the fun of planning and shopping and baking together? I won. First place in the apple pie category for a Classic Apple, and third place in the fruit category for a Meyer lemon. As Laura Ingalls' mother would say (in those marvelous books, not that sappy TV series), you could have knocked me over with a feather.
It was fun. A gorgeous day, a festive crowd, a blues quartet filling the Malibu Country Mart with great music, everything low-tech, low-key and friendly. (That's one of the pie festival judges, Barry Bostwick, in the photo. He's asking a question about my Meyer lemon pie, which is hidden behind the pitcher. You can see Melissa's rustic fruit galette in the foreground. Barry passed on both our pies and went with berry instead.)

It was pie heaven. There were pie t-shirts, pie mugs and whole pies for sale. There were scores of pies to judge and pie-eating contests to cheer along. The members of Malibu Methodist Church, the organizers of the festival, ran things like clockwork. Karen, Melissa and I? We're already planning our entries for next year.