Story By Preston Drews

Thanksgiving is upon us yet again — a time for sharing fabulous foods and spending time with friends, family and that one weird relative. Heading into this cornucopia of wonderful food empty-handed is a major foul; the easiest way to dodge this social faux pas is to bring a simple, yet delicious dish to keep your rabid family at bay. My personal go-to has always been a good old fashioned pumpkin pie. I’ve brought several different variants to family gatherings. While they’ve never been a full-blown disappointment, at times they have been quite a let-down. Opening this Thanksgiving season, I sought to make sure there’s never a bad pie on the table again.

I decided that it was time to turn towards the thoughtful writers here at The Clackamas Print for help. So, which pumpkin pie should be brought to everyone’s upcoming Thanksgiving feast? After serious deliberation we came to a consensus — no one had any idea. In order to find out just which pie we should all be flocking to buy, we needed to ask some seasoned pie connoisseurs. What better professionals to ask than the students here at Clackamas Community College? Mission in mind, we set off to the Community Center on Nov. 18, with several pies in tow.

Upon setting up shop in front of the cafeteria, it took only minutes for willing contestants to line up in front of our spread; slices from numbered pies were offered to each of the participants and after each slice, they were provided with a Saltine to help cleanse their palettes. Moving from delicious slice to delicious slice they were tasked with describing just what they thought of each one. The final step for our tasters was casting their vote on which slice they thought was the best. Counting up the endorsements lead to a tie between the Shari’s pumpkin pie and a pumpkin pie from Fred Meyer’s.