Wow! Get your eyes full of those pies! How in the world the women on the Big Bob Gibson BBQ team from Decatur, Ala. managed to get that meringue to stand so high in this heat, I’ll never know–but I’m glad they did. Every year at 6 p.m. on Friday, the pies come out and the folks lucky enough to get an invite come to call.

“These are even better than your grandmother’s pies,” Carolyn McLemore said, and well, of course I can’t agree with that–but they were awfully good. (Truth is, if you’ve been reading me for a good while, you’ll know that I didn’t actually start eating pies until after my grandmother died six years ago, so I wouldn’t even be able to judge.) 

They served peanut butter, coconut and chocolate pies, but my favorite was something else entirely: The cornbread salad. My oh my. I make one from time to time, but you wouldn’t even know they’re the same thing. The cornbread was mixed with beans, corn, onion, tomatoes and cheese and topped with a thick layer of savory sour cream. Yum! Listen–this is not a festival devoted to healthy eating, OK?–Jennifer Biggs