Danielle, her sister Ashley and I took a lovely drive out into the country on my second day in Calgary. Did we go to look at beautiful scenery? Experience some fresh, crisp Alberta air? Nope, we went for pie.

Linden is a small town about an hour and a half outside the city. Lots of open spaces, cows, hay bales, and fields of canola (not corn, we googled it when we got home). We talked a lot about what life must be like out there, and basically everything we know we learned from Pioneer Woman and reading Black Heels to Tractor Wheels

Country Cousins is a cute little cafe in Linden run by (is there a politically correct way to say this?) Mennonites. They have a full lunch menu (we ate salads in anticipation of what was to come), but I think the real reason people go there is for the pie. They serve every kind of fruit pie you can think of, but oh yes, there’s also chocolate cream pie, peanut butter cream pie, banana cream pie, coconut cream pie and MORE.

After lunch, I had a delicious slice of warm peach pie with homemade vanilla bean ice cream. It was absolutely dreamy. I also got a slice of peanut butter cream pie to take home, which I ate the next day. The peanut butter cream pie was an interesting concoction; a pastry crust with little peanut butter crumbles sprinkled on top, filled with a plain custard, then topped with whipped cream and more peanut butter crumbles. I was surprised the custard wasn’t peanut butter flavoured, but I guess the Mennonites know what they’re doing because it was delicious.

I just remembered I also took a slice of chocolate cream pie home, but it mostly melted in the car, and after one bite I decided it wasn’t that great; the chocolate wasn’t chocolately enough. Danielle and I think there should be a hybrid chocolate/peanut butter version. It’s already on my to-bake list.