My Friend and I Created a Pie Contest for Our Hometown and This Is What We Learned — Life in the Kitchen

Three years ago I lamented to my dear friend Joya Rose that I missed the chance of a lifetime to enter a pie contest in Los Angeles. She said we should create our own in our small town of Santa Barbara, and we did just that.

This was our third year running the #SBPieContest. There were 27 pies to be judged, broken out into seven categories: sweet, savory, special diet, kids, wildcard, traditional, and people's choice. We raised about $2,000 this year, and all proceeds went to Foodbank Santa Barbara County.

We almost canceled it repeatedly, first due to the Thomas Fire (the largest fire in Southern California's recorded history) and then to subsequent mudslides in Montecito. Our community was hurting, but we decided to carry on. These natural disasters were devastating and the effects are still being felt, with heartache and grief all around us, but people rallied together because of one thing: pie!

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