Desperation!!

Okay, in our house we have no self control when it comes to tasty baked goodness.  So when we crave something, we have to have it.  This week, my mom was craving cherry pie, but we didn't have everything to make it.  Nor did my dad and I receive her text message telling us to pick some up for her when we were at the store.  So I had to remedy the situation as soon as I found out.  With the encouragement of my mom and her friend, Tori Sunshine, I whipped up a pie out of what we had.  

  I made a pie crust out of nowhere, since we didn't have everything to make my regular recipe.  I used a pinch of salt, 2-1/4 cups of all-purpose flour, 3/4 cup of Earth Balance, and some water, and whirled it up in the food processor.  I couldn't believe it, but it rolled out better than any pie crust I've ever made before(I had an incident with butter-flavored Crisco one time...).  We didn't have any of the Comstock cherry pie filling that my mom loves, with the unnaturally colored gel.  We did have a can of Oregon dark cherries in heavy syrup though, so I drained the cherries into a cup, and made a gel on the stove.  I used the leftover syrup, added about a 1/3 cup of sugar and 2-1/2 tablespoons of arrowroot powder, then cooked it until it thickened.  I folded in the cherries and set the pan aside.  I placed my bottom crust in a 9-inch glass pie plate and then added the cherry filling.  This was were I did something stupid.  There wasn't enough filling, so I added a jar of maraschino cherries that we had in the fridge.  I thought that they would be fine, and be like the cherries in the cherry pie filling. Boy, was I wrong. 

 Anyway, I topped it with the crust, but I ripped it a little bit on one side as I was pulling the parchment paper off.  I added some scraps of pie crust over it in an eight-pointed star shape and some leftover strusel topping that I had in the freezer.  I baked it in a 375 degree oven for twenty minutes with foil covering the edges.  I removed the foil and baked it for another 15 minutes.  I took it out of the oven, and then we descended on it like starving wolves (hehe).  It was pretty good, until my sister ran across a maraschino cherry.  It was kinda hard, and a little discolored...Ew.  But other than that horrible lapse of good judgement, it came out pretty good.