There are currently 51 people signed up to bring a homemade pie to Slow Food Huron Valley's fifth annual "Pie Lovers Unite!" — a pie extravaganza taking place in Ypsilantion Sunday, July 24.

Just like previous years, there will be a pie contest, pie music, pie prizes, pie walks and "Pie-ku" — people making up hilarious, touching and otherwise goofy poems about pie.

Although desecrated by ersatz simulacra and in danger of extinction, an extraordinary homemade pie, even a good pie, symbolizes everything that is right in the world.

I've organized Pie Lovers Unite! since its inauguration in 2007, when the Sustainable Table's "Pie Across America" tour rolled into town. Their enormous tour bus was driving coast-to-coast in search of the country's best pie, and I knew we could be a contender.

Of the dozens of pie stops they made, our shindig in Ypsi ended up winning the tour's "Best Pie Event," and Executive Director Diane Hatz confided that Elisha Talley's Michigan Cherry Pie was her favorite of the whole pie tour experience.

Pie deserves to be celebrated for the skill involved in making a great one, for the sense of anticipation and well-being generated when it's on the menu (for breakfast, lunch or supper), and for the ways in which we come together around seasonal and regional traditions when we enjoy it.

I'd like to bring your attention to this quote I first read in Pascale la Draoulee's book American Pie:

"By the turn of the century, it was not unusual for an American to eat a slice of pie daily. In 1902 when an Englishman suggested this was gluttony and that, perhaps two slices a week would be plenty, the New York Times responded thusly: 'It is utterly insufficient...as anyone who knows the secret of our strength as a nation and the foundation of our industrial supremacy must admit, Pie is the American synonym of prosperity, and its varying contents mark the calendar of the changing seasons. PIE IS THE FOOD OF THE HEROIC. No pie-eating people can ever be vanquished.'"

That's right: no pie-eating people can ever be vanquished. May we ever be a pie-eating people. But to be a pie-eating people, we need to be a pie-making people. And that is why I am going to tell you these secrets.

How to Earn Your Family's Undying Devotion and Win the Pie Contest at Pie Lovers Unite! :

• Decide in advance which category will play to your strengths: Best Fruit Pie, Best Non-fruit Pie, Best Pie Crust, Best Kid's Pie (if you're 15 and under), Best Savory Pie, Best Use of Local Ingredients


• Call up the best cook you know (hopefully it's your mother or your grandmother) and ask for their best recipes and their best advice. Have a nice conversation about pie baking. I learned that my pie-baking guru, my grandmother, experienced utter failure with the first pie she ever made for my grandfather when she forgot the sugar. She learned from that disaster and went on to decades of triumphant pie-baking.


• Use the best ingredients. Go to the farmers' market and find your favorite fruit grower, the one who knows the variety names for everything they grow, for the ultimate best-tasting fruits.


• If you're really intimidated, enter a less competitive category. I'm telling you now — Savory Pies, Best Pie Crust and Kids Pies have been sadly underrepresented at Pie Lovers Unite!


• Make sure to include a recipe with your pie, and make your pie unique by giving it your own special design or decoration.


• Understand that pie judges are going to be tasting a lot of sweet, sweet pies. What will make yours pop? Consider judicious use of: salty, crunchy, tart, and spicy relief for the palate fatigued judge.


• Also, I'm going to tell you who some of our judges are so that you can attempt to anticipate what will turn their heads:

Kyle Norris, Michigan Radio — how about a pie that tells a story?

Brandon Johns, Grange Kitchen and Bar — something with pork perhaps?

Richard Andres, Tantre Farm — prefers the fruit pies I believe

Angie Martin, Frog Holler Organic Farm — this angelic farmer/singer loves all thins local

There is one spot for a pie judge still open, and your comment outlining your PIE CRED could get you a spot on the judge's panel!

Whatever you do, make your pie with love. Whether it's playing your favorite music while you're baking, harvesting your own fruit, or using your grandmother's secret recipe, invest your pie with all the love you feel for the people who will be eating it, because they can taste it. And that is the real secret of pie.

P.S. - Contrary to popular belief, this is not a fundraising event. We've started requiring tickets because space is limited and we need to cover costs, but what we really want is for everyone to bake a pie. Especially kids.

Since people who bring pies get in free, I'm guessing that 75 percent of the participants will be bringing a pie. Tickets are required, but pie bakers and volunteers can get free ones, and there are still some spots available.

Kim Bayer is a freelance writer and culinary researcher. Email her at kimbayer@gmail.com.