Cookbook Author Patty Pinner shares her favorite pies and the bites of wisdom that come with them.

I learned more than pie-making while rolling pastry and peeling apples in my mama's kitchen. That's where life lessons were taught. If she was making Chocolate Meringue, I'd hear a story or two about the friend who gave her the recipe and, usually, there was a lesson tucked into those stories. To my young ears, it seemed like Mama and her lady friends had a whole social life based on pie. As an adult, I love to bake the pies that she made. But I equally cherish the stories jotted in recipe card margins-which pies Daddy loved, who gave her the recipe, and snippets of stories that take me back to childhood days in a small town where many of the stories worth telling were done so over pie. During the day, I work at the post office. But at night I bake pies, just like Mama did, filling up my old farmhouse kitchen with the same aromas of cinnamon, brown sugar, and nutmeg. It just made sense to share these special pies and the rich bites of wisdom that go with them. So, after many nights in the kitchen with bags of flour, bushels of fruit, pen, and paper, Sweety Pies: An Uncommon Collection of Womanish Observations, with Pie ($23; Taunton Press) came to be. Please enjoy a sampling of my autumn pie recipes, pastry pointers, and personal thoughts that I'm honored to share with the readers of Country Home.

To Make A Good Pie, You Need A Little Pie-Making Savvy:
My mama used to tell me, “You can’t have a good pie if you don’t have a good crust.” Over the years, I’ve learned a few tricks:
1. In order to have a good crust, you don’t want to overwork the dough. Your cooked pastry should have a balance between flaky, crispy, and tender.
2. Keep everything cold, even the bowl and the utensils used to make the crust. As soon as I know I’m going to make a pie, I put everything—the ingredients and the utensils—into the bowl I’m going to use and put it into the refrigerator.
3. To avoid a soggy crust, slip the pie into a preheated oven as soon as you’ve filled the crust.
4. I prefer to use glass pans as opposed to metal. Glass distributes the heat better and it allows me to check the bottom of the crust for doneness.
5. To put a nice little sheen on your double-crust or single-crust pastry edge, brush the pastry with milk or egg wash (egg or egg white and water). If you like, sprinkle the pastry with sugar before baking.