"Tales from the Kitchen" will feature funny, touching, or interesting stories from DVO's staff and from you! If you'd like to submit a story, please email josh@dvo.com

My wife's family has a tradition called Pie Night ever year. We gather and bake and share stories and have fun. No, it's not held on March 14th (3.14) - it's a tradition that takes place the night before Thanksgiving every year. The pies are used for the Thanksgiving feast dessert, to share with neighbors, and even for breakfast the next day.

We have a large family, and we love pie, so we make a LOT of pies. Usually it's 6 or so pumpkin, a few cherry, a lemon meringue, and more. A few years ago, my wife and her sister were put in charge of the pumpkin pies. The crusts were made first and turned out golden, flaky, and perfect. Next, they mixed the pumpkin ingredients to form the pie filling. They poured the mix into the crusts, and baked four of the most perfect-looking pumpkin pies you've ever seen.

Once the pies are done, we can't always wait until the next day. We cut a piece of pumpkin pie, added a dollop of fresh whipped cream, and took a bite.

YIKES! It was terrible. Inedible. After some sleuthing, we figured out my wife thought her sister added the sugar. She thought my wife added it. You guessed it - we left out the most important ingredient: sugar! We made a late-night run to the store for more ingredients, and stayed up really late making more pumpkin pie.

Now, every Thanksgiving we make sure that sugar is added to EVERY pie. And we have another story to share every pie night!

Story submitted by Josh Tenney (Director of Support & Newsletter Coordinator at DVO)