As seen on AOL.com “You’ve Got…” Series
TV Series Sizzle Reel – “This American Pie”
Click below to view the 2-minute promo reel, guaranteed to make you hungry for a slice of pie.
TV Series Synopsis
Pie is comfort. Pie builds community. Pie heals. Pie can change the world. That is what Beth Howard, journalist, blogger, and former pie baker to the stars in Malibu, always believed. But when Howard’s 43-year-old husband dies suddenly and unexpectedly, she must put her theory to a personal test. As part of her grieving process she packs up the RV her husband left behind and hits the American highways and byways in search of the real healing powers of pie. During her journey she interviews an eclectic array of people – pie bakers, shop owners, apple growers, social activists, philanthropists, cartoonists, song writers, 92-year-old grandmothers, and even a pie-delivering bike messenger – people who make the world a happier place, and who help Howard ease her grief, all because of an iconic American dessert.
ABOUT THE SHOW
“This American Pie” is a docu-reality series of one-hour episodes hosted by Beth Howard. Howard seeks out fellow pie bakers, pie lovers, and people who use pie to help others. She goes into their pie shops, their commercial kitchens, their fruit orchards, their homes, and beyond to explore not only their pie baking techniques and tips but to learn about their real lives. She always wants to know “Why pie?” but she delves further with quirky questions like, “If you were a pie what kind would you be?” and more pressing ones like, “How can pie change the world?”
In the pilot – er, pie-lot – we follow Howard as she teaches others (from 9-year-olds to 30-somethings) how to make pie, enlists her friends to help her make 50 pies to give away for free on National Pie Day, visits her old Malibu pie baking employer, and stops off at several legendary diners to sample the pies that made them famous.
Traveling in the RV around the USA, every episode of the series is a new adventure in people, places, and pie. With the arrival in each small town, big city and everywhere in between, we meet new characters in their own environments. The stories are as plentiful, rich, and abundant as the many flavors of pie we get to taste along the way.
Every episode will contain elements of the following:
1. Art/Culture – authors, bloggers, artists, anyone doing anything pie-related in the arts but not physically making pie
2. Social Responsibility – maybe “responsibility” isn’t the right word but there are people out there who are giving back to society using pie as a vehicle (like Mission Pie, Pie Lab in Alabama, etc.)
3. Pie Shop/Bakery/Diner –go to at least one (possibly even two or three) pie shop in each episode, interview the bakers, why they got started, why pie is important to them, then we sample the goods!
4. Anatomy of an Ingredient – exploring some fruit or other pie ingredient, where it comes from, who grows it (interview farmers, growers, etc). And let us not forget the nutritional and health aspects of pie! Gluten-free or agave sweetner anyone?
5. Pie Event/Community – pie auction at a senior center, pie contest, state fair, anywhere community comes together with pie as the centerpiece. And in keeping with Howard’s own process, we’ll bake pies for grief groups.
Examples of future segments include:
• The Ultimate Pie Connoisseurs – Inside the lives of truckers and their favorite truck-stop pie
• We’ll be the Judge – Howard is invited to be a pie judge at Crisco’s National Pie Championship in Orlando, Florida
• Blueberry Wars – The competition is fierce. Who’s got better berries – Oregon, Michigan, or Maine?
• Cream of the Crop – Where does whipped cream come from? We gain a closer connection to our food by talking to dairy farmers (*We do variations on this segment for other pie ingredients as well – flour, sugar, butter, eggs, fruit, etc.)
Howard documents her story daily on her blog, The World Needs More Pie (http://theworldneedsmorepie.blogspot.com/). She writes about her own journey through grief, about the inspiring people she meets, about the many valuable lessons learned along the way, and, of course, about the pie.
So give a piece a chance. Grab a fork and come along for the ride.
MORE VIDEO
CBS This Morning – Visits Beth at her Pitchfork Pie Stand
Kohler – Tour of the American Gothic House kitchen & Pitchfork Pie Stand
Des Moines Register – Tour of the American Gothic House
Anderson Cooper 360 -Beth delivers pie/comfort to Newtown, Connecticut
LA Times – Baking Pie and Living in the American Gothic House
