1) Some pie is usually better than no pie. If you don’t know how or don’t have time to make pie, by all means buy some and serve that. Costco is your best bet here for mass produced, but local bakeries would be even better.

2) Follow-up to the first point, some purchased pies just aren’t worth the money or the calories. There’s a lot of crap out there. I saw Marie Calendar’s frozen pies on sale (2 for $9), and that would probably be the lower limit, although it makes me sad to see people buying them. I personally would rather skip dessert than eat many of these.

3) If you want to make a pie, there’s a whole range of quality, from short cuts to fully from scratch. I give my opinion on some short cuts below—not all short cuts are worth it, but as a general rule, see #1, and just make something.

4) Some people are all about the homemade pastry crust. While they are much better, you can save time here. Buy the Pillsbury pastry crusts, as they are the best we’ve found.

5) For graham cracker, or cookie crusts, just make your own—they are easy, and so much better than store bought. You can crush them in a gallon ziplock bag with a rolling pin, or even use a blender or food processor. Use lots of butter for binder, and you’ve got a great pie foundation.

6) If you use margarine in a homemade pie, you are anti American, and anti happiness. Puppies die. Don’t use margarine.

7) If the recipe calls for Cool Whip, rethink the recipe. I’m not a fan at all. Some people will disagree with me on this, and say CW holds up better, and maybe it does in some cases (not convinced of that, though). But real whipped cream is going to win out in flavor 10 times out of 10.

8) If the recipe calls for a pudding mix, maybe rethink that one as well. Now, you can get decent results out of a mix, and it is a time saver (see #1 above), but homemade is SOOOO much better. Homemade does need patience, as it’s really easy to scorch, but it’s worth the patience.

9) If you’re making a pie where lemon or lime is the primary flavor, please don’t use bottled juice (i.e. lemon meringue, key lime). Fresh squeezed is so much better. If you need lemon juice for another pie where it’s NOT the primary flavor, such as in a berry pie, bottled is fine for that. Good quality bottled orange juice in pies is usually fine to use, rather than squeezed (Tropicana or Kirkland, for example, are good).