In my family, "pie" means "apple pie." Especially on holidays: an apple pie (specifically my unscrewupable version, which was handed down from my mom) is just what's getting made. Except more pie is good pie, and so I always make a second pie that's...something else. Usually pumpkin, because pumpkin seems obvious. But this year, for our Friendsgiving, I wanted to make something a little more decadent and fancy-looking...except given my history with baking, I figured a test-run was in order so as not to leave our friends who braved holiday traffic sitting around our dinner table all pie-less because I effed something up.

Little confession: I didn't actually make this pie; my son (who - heart swell heart swell - has announced that the "wants to cook things" when he grows up) did. (Minus the actual reading-of-instructions part, because he is four.)

And CHECK IT OUT.

Alright, so summer is technically over (or maybe not technically-techically, but we're post-Labor Day, in any case), and frozen drink recipes are typically the kind of thing I post closer to mid-July than mid-September. But it's Sunday, it's warm and sunny out today, and whatever: this thing is really good.

What I made for today's poolside festivities: the pretty cocktails pictured above, which I very helpfully called exactly what they are: Frozen Pineapple-Mango CocoRitas. The recipe was inspired by the video you can see on my FB page here, in which designer Thaddeus O'Neil and mixologist Jillian Vose collaborate on three custom cocktails, all featuring CORZO Silver tequila - basically, I just saw that drink that they made in a coconut and decided to make my own coconut-y thing using ingredients that I already had sitting in my refrigerator. I even gave mild consideration to the idea of going out in search of actual coconuts in which to serve my CocoRitas, but: eh. Getting straight to the drinking-them part sounded better than running out to Trader Joe's.

Suggestion: make these this weekend, while the sun is still shining and you don't feel ridiculous drinking frozen-tropical things. Or choose not to care about matters of seasonal propriety, and make them all year round (I recommend the latter; they're quite delicious).

Oh, man, this is a dirty drink. Or, rather...not the drink itself, but the name I came up with for it. I totally did not mean it to mean what it means, but then someone at our Fourth of July party asked me what the drink I was serving was called, and this just seemed like the obvious answer, and then it was out of my mouth and there was no taking it back.

"Oh, this?" I said. "It's called a Salty Squirt."

Ew, I know. Go yell at the people who named the most delicious soda in the world "Squirt."