Creative cooks have been devising pie recipes to call their own for ages -- at least since that baker of nursery rhyme fame decided four and 20 blackbirds would make a perfect pastry filling. The cook's need to make a pie her own continues, as we discovered when we asked readers for their best pie names and recipes.

We received so many fabulous entries that it was tough to whittle them down to just five finalists, so we thought we'd share some of the many stories that warmed our pie-loving hearts. Mommie's Sweetest Sweet Potato Pie from Fae B. Thompson, Grandma K's Polish Pie from Kathy Evans and Lucy Singleton's Big Bull Pie from Eve Stelzenmuller conjured thoughts of warm smells from the kitchens of mothers and grandmothers, as did Christine Castelloe's recollection of Poor Man's Pie. When she was a child, Castelloe's grandmother let her reroll pie pastry scraps. Then her Grandma would bake them in a tin, covered with a bit of milk and sugar. "After 15 minutes or so, she would remove the 'poor man's pie' and break it into pieces for us to snack on. I have fond memories of time spent in the kitchen with my grandma, and to this day, baking is my favorite type of cooking," Castelloe writes.

Mary Davidson sent in two lovely memories with Miss Hattie's Presbyterian Sunday School Hobby Horse Picnic Pie and Mother & Daughter's Bridesmaids' Shoes Pie. The first recalls a coconut pie she ate as a child picnicking in Pullen Park. The second remembers the shop Mother & Daughter on Fayetteville Street in Raleigh as "the place for Raleigh area brides and bridesmaids to get their dresses. ... Mother & Daughter carried white satin shoes that they would dye to the exact same color as the bridesmaids' dresses." Her Bridesmaids' Shoes Pie, spiked with lime, "turned out to be the very color of the dress (and shoes) of a certain Benson, N.C., bride."

Other pie names celebrate a certain élan, such as No, I'm Not Like Those Pushy Yankees Mama's Pie, sent in by Susan Mazzara with this conversation, remembered from a Christmas when her mother asked her to make a pie:

" 'What kind do you want?' I asked.

'Oh, just whatever kind you want,' she answered.

'OK,' I said, 'I'll make a pumpkin pie.'

'Well,' she said, 'how about making something chocolate?'

'OK,' I said, 'I'll make a chocolate cream pie.'

'Well,' she answered, 'it would be good if you made something with pecans in it.' "

Mazzara's recipe, often revisited, calls for cocoa and chocolate chips as well as pecans.

I Told You So Pie came to be after Marilyn Chappell, who relocated to the Triangle from Northern climes, rose to the challenge when her husband suggested she couldn't win a pie contest at the N.C. State Fair. Since the first time she entered, Chappell has taken home first, second, third, fourth and Best In Show prizes.

Catherine Alguire's Let's Have the Neighbors Over on This Beautiful Summer Night Pie and I Have to Moan Just Thinking About It Pie made us wish we lived on her block, while Carolyn J. Stocks' The Joy of the Lord Pie made us wish we were on her prayer list.

G. Adilah Shabazz Abdul-Rasheed submitted a lovely story of her son Naim's recent interest in making bean pies of the type popular in American Muslim communities.

In the long-held favorites category, Agnes DaCosta submitted Apple Pie in a Paper Bag to Die For, Baila Colglazier offered I Stole This From Bishop's Chocolate Pie (of special interest to former residents of Peoria, Ill.), and Ann Hardesty gives us Chocolate Angel Strata Pie.

Sue McDowell searched the 1969 version of Beth Tartan's cookbook "North Carolina and Old Salem Cookery" to find Hypocrite Pie, which masquerades as a custard pie, but has a layer of dried fruit below the surface. And we're not sure if Betty Lou Ellis has taste-tested her recipe for George Bush Is President and Ain't Nothing Going Right Pie. It calls for two tough crusts with baloney in between, half baked.

Our final entry came in late, from Melody Watral, who says her husband usually asks for her Bustin' My Butt Blueberry Pie when she already has a lot on her plate, as she did in the weeks before our pie name contest deadline.

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