I have $3 and 20 minutes. Give me a pie!

I guess since this is the inaugural post, I should come clean about something. I hate cooking. I've never really grasped some of the most basic techniques, and I'm totally fine with that. I take shortcuts. I leave ingredients out of recipes rather than go back to the store. I cut corners. And if you ask me to cut batonnets or chiffonade something, my knee-jerk reaction would be to punch you. My adventures in veganism are slowly changing that, but I just wanted to give you fair warning that none of my "recipes" will ever grace the covers of Food and Wine. This first post is a fine example of that.

I went to a birthday celebration last night at a local brewery, Yazoo. They're a vegan-friendly brewery, and to be honest, until yesterday, I had no idea not all beer was vegan. So much to learn. I slurped down some Hops Project and then started drooling over the catering spread. Buttercream birthday cake,  cookies, little bags of donuts to go. My sweet tooth was about to jump out of my face.

I held it together til I got home, then began tearing through the cabinets for a birthday cake substitute. I asked my sweet tooth if it would, perhaps, enjoy a nice organic peach. In a shower of expletives, it told me where I could put that peach and demanded pie. Fortunately, I had picked up the simplest of pie ingredients at the Dollar Tree, so I was ready for just such an emergency.

1 Bama 9-inch graham cracker pie crust
1 Can Musselman's apple pie filling
3 Greenbrier Farms graham crackers (These do contain honey, so Teddy Bears cookies would be a fine substitute.)

I filled the pie crust with filling, then crumbled graham crackers on top...kind of. (My crumbles were a little big because, as I'm sure you'll soon discover, I don't always cook sober.) I popped it in an oven preheated to 350 degrees. 20 minutes later was noshing on pie. It was a little crumbly, so I had to scoop it out with a spoon. So just think of it as a vegan apple crumble rather than a pie. For $3, I refuse to argue semantics.

I topped the pie off with a scoop of coconut milk ice cream. Ice Cream Magic
 has a personal ice cream shaker that makes about 1/4 cup of ice cream at a time. All you need is coconut milk, sugar, salt, ice, and flavoring. I got mine at a clearance sale for $3, and it has paid for itself a hundred times over.