81 days down; it's time to call in the big guns.

Oh man. What did I get myself into?

There are 284 days -- that's about 40 weeks -- until the Fourth of July pie bake-off and I feel like I'm running out of time.

In the past 81 days, I've research and tested countless pie crust and fruit-pie recipes and so far, everything's been mediocre at best.

Since coming out of the closet at work, I've found tremendous support and encouragement, but to be honest, I'm feeling anxious realizing I've got to step it up if the quality of my pies is ever going to match my trash talk.

(I've been bragging that The Food Network someday will offer me my own series, plus wads and wads of cash to license Pie Shark merchandise. If that's not cocky...)

But despite all this talk, I've totally been spinning my wheels in the peach pie category, baking three fairly shitty test pies in a row.

Oh, what do I expect? I'm a newbie. A novice. I can't possibly master pie baking in one year's time.

Or can I?

I'm hoping a lesson from Maida will help. Since getting her book, I've spent nearly every spare minute reading it, absorbing every nugget of pie wisdom, hoping to transform my lame-ass attempts into Pie Gold.

This weekend I intend to bake at least one pie from Maida's book and I will follow her instructions to the letter. And those instructions are pretty detailed. She even tells you exactly what size eggs to use. There's one recipe that's nearly three pages long!

Help me, Obi-Wan Maida. You're my only hope.