I feel like I’ve been going through sort of a renaissance lately.

…a pie renaissance, that is…

I don’t know what it is, but I guess I’ve just really been eating a lot of pies the last couples of weeks.  Some might even say a freakish, unhealthy number of pies, especially considering my recent New Years resolutions and their distinct lack of clauses regarding the consumption of delicious baked goods and even pies in general!  Mind you, I do recall something or other about “being more conscious of the things that I eat” so as to trim my bulbous waistline down below the threshold of Grimace from those old McDonald’s commercials in time for bikini season here in a few months, but nothing specifically about pies – that’s for sure!

Which is really an oversight and a shame, I’m starting to realize here because frankly, pies are delicious and I just think that the world would be a much happier place if we all spent a little more time eating pie and a little less yelling at each other … which would actually end up going hand-in-hand because at that point our mouths would so be full of pie that it would be just plain rude to argue, anyways! Think of all the global conflicts and divorce proceedings and sibling rivalries that could be undoubtedly thwarted simply with an open heart and enough pies to go around … it’s revolutionary, is what it is…

Personally, the kind of pie that I’ve just been eating up like there’s no weigh-in tomorrow is the simplicity in a shell that is the classic pudding pie – not only are they delicious and have a tendency to bring back a nostalgic quality of when my aunt used to make them special for me each year for Thanksgiving, but they’ve also got an uncanny variety of options that take up an entire shelf at the grocery store and best of all, they’re easy enough to make that I can usually whip one up in the span of a single commercial break and still be back to How I Met Your Mother without missing one iota of Barney’s crazy, playboy antics!

…that Barney, he loves the ladies…

I mean, sure, who doesn’t enjoy a nice flourless chocolate lava cake with homemade vanilla bean ice cream and a sweet caramel reduction sauce, but sometimes a guy just wants a quick and easy dessert that’s still going to taste great without having to spend hours in the kitchen slaving over a hot stove intermixed with even more hours slaving over a hot Google trying to figure out what in the heck a “caramel reduction sauce” is in the first place!  And who’s to say that you can’t get a little fancy with pudding pies like I’ve been doing lately without devoting an extra hour of kitchen time attempting to wrangle your own culinary prowess – just mix in a little whipped cream, maybe sprinkle a few Hershey’s chocolate bar shavings on top for ambiance … as they say, the pudding pieman is only limited by the pudding packets in his pantry and whether or not his wife recently used their one and only whisk without washing it afterwards…

Really, I could go on and on all day about the perfect pleasures of pudding pies and their proud place in the pantheon of delicious desserts, and if my refrigerator didn’t just *ding* to inform me that my latest culinary creation a la pudding has finally set and is now readily awaiting consumption, I just might be motivated to hang around and chat a little longer about the delicacies of assorted graham cracker crusts and the delightful nuances between chocolate and dark chocolate and, dare I even mention chocolate turtle-flavored offerings from the pudding angels (and Bill Cosby) at Jell-O Headquarters?!

Maybe we’ll just have to save that commentary for Part 2 of my Pudding Pie Special Report – Pudding + Graham Crackers = Deliciousness, but until then, show somebody you love them, or even just show yourself that you care about you by taking the 5 minutes to mix up a pie that will keep a smile on your face long after you come to terms with the fact that you’re never really going to achieve those crazy New Years resolutions that you haphazardly scribbled down on a cocktail napkin at the bar in an alcohol-motivated self-help session last month!

At least you’ll always have pudding…