Punkin Pie!
I am female. I was born more than 50 years ago, so I was raised in a traditional home where the daddy gets up in the morning, goes to work, comes home to the little wife, the kids and a hot dinner on the table. Needless to say, that's not me, BUT I do have the skilz! Since the biggest cooking day of the year is upon us next week, I want to share a story of my first pumpkin pie. I was dating my husband, he had volunteered my 21 year old baking skills to his family... guess who was making the pies?
I was in college & had no car. If you are assuming mastadons were still roaming in the Montrose area of Houston, you are correct. I had to WALK all the way to Freaky Foods on Richmond Avenue to buy the ingredients for two pumpkin pies. Since this was before the Cuisinart had been invented AND Pillsbury wasn't marketing any pre-made crusts yet, I made pie dough using the two knife method for cutting-in the shortening. Add some icewater, then chill the dough. Sprinkle flour on the countertop to roll it out, place it in the pie pans, crimp the edges like Grandma did. Set everything in the refrigerator to chill, again. Well, my day is through, right? Wrong.
Oh, yeah, I still needed to make the innards. Pumpkin did come in cans in 1971, but you still needed to add the canned milk, spices and eggs to make the filling. I was doing this up right! There was even whole nutmeg to grate into the mix. By now, the tiny apartment kitchen was totally covered in a thick layer of flour and it was beginning to cover furniture in the living room, me too probably. I preheated the oven to the proper temperature, got the chilled crusts out of the fridge. Carefully pouring the filling all the way to the top of the pans, I soon realized that it was going to take at least an hour or more to clean up the mess in the kitchen. Opening the small oven, I gingerly placed the two pie pans on the shelf, pushing it ever so gently into the oven, only to have the shelf tilt backwards spilling the still liquid custard all over the bottom of the very hot oven. It was a monumental disaster. As the custard hit the bottom of the hot oven it hissed, sizzled and smoked. Turning off the oven, I opened all the windows and doors, tried to fan the smoke and smell out, finally gave up and sat there staring at the kitchen
I was still sitting there trying to figure out where to start when my husband-to-be showed up. When he finished laughing at my mess, he kissed me and told me that he always thought the best pies came from Luby's. We left my tiny apartment, bought a couple of pies at the closest cafeteria and lived happily ever after...the kitchen did get cleaned up, but not before Christmas.
How does this ANY of this relate to real estate? When it comes to important things like making the biggest investment in your life, hire a professional. Your time is best spent doing what you do best, let a REALTOR do what she does best.