Lattice-Topped Blueberry Pie

I'm normally the crazy person, the only one in my family willing to stand in summer's hot heat in open fields crouched over berry plants, or drag myself through the thorny bushes of my beloved blackberries and raspberries.  I can stand the occasional surprise stink bug attack or spider scare, for the money saving tactics employed at a u-pick.  I was well intentioned and did my duty during strawberry season, dragging Shane along once and  going by myself, for somewhere close to 25lbs of strawberries.  I hulled, washed and froze them, bagged them and labeled them, by myself.  I did the same with the raspberries, except without any help.  But I hit my limit.  In years past I've seen just how many of my berries get eaten by the people who don't do the work and I decided enough is enough, I won't be doing blueberries.  They're Shane's favourite berry you see, the one he eats frozen all. year. long.  I told him if he wanted them for his freezer stash this year, he better get picking, I wouldn't be going.  Though I did agree to wash and freeze them.  He declined.  He won't have berries.  And I better not see him eat my stash of darling raspberries, or I might have it kick his butt.

So from the store I bought a few pounds of berries to make into our favourite treats.  First on the list was pie, naturally.  There are four blueberry pie recipe in the book, this was the only one for which I had all the ingredients on hand.  And what luck!  It tasted like heaven on earth!  Seriously, beautiful bright flavours, a perfect blueberry pie consistency (not too thick or too runny).  The crust was dynamite, standing up wonderfully to the filling, crispy and light.  It was the best blueberry pie, and I'm not kidding.  I brought most of it to work and at the end of the night one of my residents broke into the kitchen and slathered it all over a chocolate chip cookies (using a ten of hearts playing card as a spoon).  He thought it was delicious too, he told me so himself...sort of.


Baking notes:
-Like the saying 'easy as pie', it really kinda was.  The process was smooth and incident free.  There was no really long cooling periods, and the baking time was perfect.
-The pie crust came together easily, the shortening kept the pie crust very tender.
-The filling is cooked in advance while the pie crust chills in the fridge for twenty minutes.
-The crust rolled out easily, but the lattice crust was hard to layer with the hot filling making the dough very soft.
-I know it's not the most beautiful pie, but for me it's a show stopper, I'm quite bad at them.
-As you can see my lattice crust sort of disappeared, I don't really know what to do about this.

The recipe for Lattice-Topped Blueberry Pie is not available online. (boo!)

25/569