Come in, sit down. The coffee's on. I'm Dolores, and around here they call me the Pie Lady, which I'll take, since I've been called worse by people I've beaten.

I have entered the two-crust fruit pie division at our county fair every August since 1988. I have four blue ribbons hanging over the stove (1994, 1996, 1998 and now 1999), a handful of reds, a white I don't talk about, and one year I don't hang anything from at all, which you'll find at the bottom of this page because a person ought to be honest about her losses.

My daughter-in-law set this page up for me on her computer because she got tired of copying out the crust recipe for people. So here it is, and the rest with it. I don't hold anything back. A recipe isn't a secret; a secret is what your hands know after four hundred pies, and I can't type that for you. But I can get you close.

Enough for one double-crust 9-inch pie, or two single crusts.

Butter for flavor. Shortening for flake. Both, and both cold. Everybody has an opinion on this and mine has four ribbons.

1. Stir the flour, salt and sugar together in a wide bowl.
2. Drop in the butter and shortening. Cut them in with a pastry blender, or two knives, or your fingertips if your hands run cold. Stop when it looks like coarse crumbs with some pieces the size of peas still showing. Those pea-sized pieces are your flakes. Don't chase them.
3. Sprinkle on 6 tablespoons of the ice water, a little at a time, tossing with a fork. Squeeze a handful. If it holds together, stop. If it crumbles, add another tablespoon. Wet dough is tough dough, but dough that's too dry cracks when you roll it, so err one spoonful on the wet side until you've done it a few times.
4. Gather it into two balls, one a little bigger than the other (the bigger one is the bottom). Flatten each into a disk, wrap in waxed paper or plastic and chill at least 30 minutes. An hour is better. Overnight is fine.
5. Roll on a floured board from the center out, turning the dough a quarter turn every few strokes so it doesn't stick. Roll to about 1/8 inch and about 2 inches wider than your pan. Fold in quarters, lift it into the pan, unfold. Don't stretch it to fit; stretched dough shrinks back in the oven.

The one rule: don't overwork it. Every time you touch pie dough you develop the gluten and it gets tougher. Mix it as little as you can get away with, roll it once, and if it falls apart, patch it with a scrap and a dab of water rather than balling it up and rolling again.

For the top crust: roll out the smaller disk, lay it on, trim to an inch past the rim, fold the edge under and crimp with your knuckle and two fingers. Cut four or five slits so the steam gets out. Brush with milk or a beaten egg and sprinkle with sugar if you want it to shine. I do, for the fair. At home I skip it.

This is the 1994 and 1998 pie. Nine-inch, double crust.

Use two kinds of apples. One tart and firm that holds its shape (Granny Smith), and one that cooks down soft and sweet (Jonathan, or a Golden Delicious if that's what the store has). All Grannies and the pie is sour and every slice looks the same; all soft apples and you get applesauce in a crust.

1. Heat the oven to 425°F. Line the pan with the bottom crust.
2. Toss the apple slices with the lemon juice, then with the sugar, flour, cinnamon, nutmeg and salt. Let it sit ten minutes while you roll the top.
3. Pile the apples in, mounding the middle; they cook down. Dot with the butter. Top crust on, edge sealed and crimped, slits cut.
4. Bake 15 minutes at 425°F, then turn the oven down to 375°F and bake 40 to 45 minutes more, until the crust is golden and you can see the juice bubbling thick through the slits. If the edge browns too fast, lay strips of foil over it.
5. Cool on a rack at least 2 hours before cutting. This is the hard part. If you cut it hot the filling runs everywhere and you've made apple soup.

Put a cookie sheet on the rack below to catch the drips. You'll thank me the next time you clean the oven.

The 1996 and 1999 pie. Lattice top.

Sour cherries, not sweet. Montmorency is the pie cherry. They come in for about three weeks in early summer and I pit and freeze enough to last the year (a paper clip, unbent, makes a fine pitter, but a real one is $4 and worth it). Frozen ones work fine in the pie; thaw and drain them and save a little of the juice. Canned tart cherries in water will do in a pinch. Canned cherry pie filling will not do, and if you enter it at a fair the judges can tell from the door.

1. Stir the sugar, cornstarch and salt together in a saucepan. Add the cherries and juice. Cook over medium heat, stirring, until it bubbles and thickens and turns from cloudy to clear, 3 or 4 minutes. Off the heat, stir in the almond extract and butter. Let it cool a bit.
2. Oven to 425°F. Bottom crust in the pan. Pour in the filling.
3. For the lattice: roll the top crust and cut it into ten strips about 3/4 inch wide. Lay five across one way, spaced out. Fold back every other one, lay a strip across the other way, unfold. Fold back the ones you didn't fold last time, lay the next strip, and so on. It sounds worse than it is. Trim, fold the bottom crust edge up over the ends and crimp.
4. Bake 15 minutes at 425°F, then 375°F for 35 to 40 minutes, until the lattice is golden and the filling bubbles.
5. Cool completely. Cherry sets up as it cools; it will look loose when it comes out and that's right.

The almond extract is the thing people ask about. Cherries and almonds are cousins, and a quarter teaspoon makes the cherries taste more like cherries. More than that and it tastes like a candle.

Not a fair pie (the fair is in August, and a custard pie in a hot exhibit hall is nobody's friend), but I make four of these every November and people expect it. I use canned pumpkin and I am not ashamed. I have cooked and strained a fresh pie pumpkin and the canned is more even, every time.

1. Oven to 425°F. Line the pan with the crust, crimp the edge high (this one's full to the top).
2. Whisk the sugar, salt and spices into the pumpkin. Whisk in the eggs, then the evaporated milk. Pour into the shell.
3. Bake 15 minutes at 425°F, then turn down to 350°F and bake 40 to 50 minutes more, until a knife stuck in an inch from the edge comes out clean. The very middle should still wobble a little. It finishes on the rack.
4. Cool 2 hours. Keep it in the refrigerator if it's not being eaten that day.

The bottom crust on a pumpkin pie is the one that goes soggy on people. Two things help: put the pie on the lowest rack so the bottom gets the heat, and use a glass or dull metal pan, not a shiny one. If it still bothers you, blind bake the shell for 10 minutes first.

"Blind" just means baking the shell empty, before the filling goes in. You do it fully for cream pies and any filling that isn't cooked in the shell (banana cream, chocolate cream, lemon meringue), and partway for custards like pumpkin if you want a crisper bottom.

1. Line the pan with the crust, crimp it, and prick the bottom all over with a fork. Chill it 20 or 30 minutes; cold dough shrinks less.
2. Press a piece of foil or parchment down into the shell and fill it with dried beans or pie weights right up to the rim. (I've used the same two pounds of navy beans for this since 1985. They don't cook; they just get browner every year.) The weight keeps the bottom from puffing and the sides from sliding down.
3. Bake at 425°F for 15 minutes. Lift out the foil and beans.
4. For a partly baked shell (pumpkin, quiche), that's it; fill and bake as the recipe says. For a fully baked shell, put it back in for 8 to 10 minutes more until it's golden all over. If the bottom puffs, press it down gently with the back of a spoon.

Brush the hot fully-baked shell with a little beaten egg white and it seals the crust against a wet filling. Old trick, still works.

I have judged the junior division twice, so I have sat on the other side of the table. Here is what actually happens. Your pie comes in on a paper plate with a number on it. Nobody knows whose it is. Three people look at it, cut it, taste it, and write on a card. The card at our fair has five lines, and they go roughly like this:

1. Appearance. Evenly browned, not pale, not burnt at the edge. A neat crimp all the way around, not perfect but even. Slits or lattice that look like you meant them. No filling boiled over onto the crust. The pie should look like one somebody would want to be handed.
2. Crust. This is the big one. They lift the slice and look at the bottom. Is it baked through and golden, or is it pale and doughy and wet? A soggy bottom loses more ribbons than anything else on this page. Then they taste it: flaky, tender, a little salt, not tough, not greasy, not crumbly like a cookie.
3. Filling. Set, not runny; the slice should stand up on the plate. Fruit tender but not mush. Not so much thickener that it's gummy. Enough filling that the top crust isn't sitting an inch above it in a cave.
4. Flavor. Does it taste like the fruit? Sugar and spice should back the fruit up, not bury it. This is where most cherry pies fail; people are afraid of sour and put in so much sugar you can't taste the cherry.
5. Overall. Would I eat a second piece.

Things that will not help you: fancy cut-out leaves on top (they burn), a store-bought crust (they know), a foil pan (shows you didn't care), and a filling out of a can. Things that will: cooling it completely before you bring it, bringing it in a plain glass pan, and making the same pie you've made thirty times before. Which brings me to 1997.

I'd won in '94 and '96. I was feeling good about myself. That spring a magazine had a peach pie with a brown-sugar lattice and I thought, Dolores, the judges have seen your apple and your cherry, give them something new.

So on the morning of the fair I made a peach pie I had made exactly twice. The peaches at the stand were a week short of ripe, and I bought them anyway because I'd already decided. Underripe peaches don't give up their juice, so I put in the full amount of cornstarch the recipe called for, which was written for ripe ones. The brown-sugar lattice, which had been so pretty in the magazine, went dark at 425° before the filling had even started to bubble, so I tented it in foil, which steamed the top crust soft. And because I'd started late, I brought it to the hall still warm.

Third place. White ribbon. The card said: "Crust pale and soft on top. Filling gummy. Peaches hard. Flavor good." Marlene Foss won that year with a rhubarb she'd been making since Eisenhower, and she deserved it, and I told her so, and it took me until about October to mean it.

What I learned, and what I'd tell anyone entering anything:

• Don't experiment on fair day. Bring the pie you could make in your sleep.
• Buy the fruit for the fruit, not for the plan. If the peaches aren't ready, make the apple.
• Start early enough to cool it. A warm pie is a runny pie.
• Read the judge's card like it's a friend telling you the truth. Because it is.

In 1998 I brought the apple. Blue ribbon. This year, the cherry. Blue ribbon. I still make that peach pie at home in July, with ripe peaches and a plain lattice, and it's very good. It just isn't a fair pie, and it took a white ribbon to teach me the difference.

Neighbors in the kitchen: Rosa's Kitchen Table · Canning Season (Ruth Ellen's cherry-canning advice is sound, I checked) · Sourdough Sam · Sunday Gravy · Betty's Backyard Vegetable Patch

Coming when I get to it: pecan pie, the lemon meringue (with the meringue that doesn't weep), and a page of pictures once my son gets the pictures from the fair developed and figures out the scanner.