I didn't succeed in making spinach pie. It was more like spinach cake.

I probably should have just slept. It would have meant cuddling my magnificent miqo'te and being more awake for pig and cow hunting in the evening. As it was, I annoyed my magnificent miqo'te and had to drag my ass around to swing an axe at pigs. She had much more energy than me for picking off cows.

After those couple times I carried her to bed when she overdid the cider I could conceivably have asked her to carry me. She might even have done it. And never let me forget.

I think the problem I was having was the wrong kind of butter. Olive oil would have probably been ideal, but that would be more capital investment on top of the feta since (if I'm reading google right) the nearest olive grove is at least a thousand miles away.

So after a little research I tried clarified butter, which is butter without the milk solids...essentially milk oil. Recipes online said this involved boiling butter for 45 minutes and then filtering out the solids with four layers of cheesecloth. I wrote a recipe to render it straight from milk. Felt more like alchemy than culinary, but it worked.

And it worked to make filo. It came out nicely flaky and crunchy and contained the spinach properly. With the proper crust and the toned-down leek content I had something Tsu'na had to admit was good. It took a little longer to write a spanakopita recipe since it involved so many ingredients, but getting it right means I can mass-produce them. Given masses of spinach and leek.

I let Hartman know I had something to demo, so he called the customer, who came in around dinner time. He and the woman sat down at a table, I brought out a beef pif pie and a spinach pie on a tray, and we waited on her verdict.

"...Is this vegan?"

"No, because it uses cheese and butter. But it is vegetarian. Is that okay?"

"I think so. I hear 'vegan' tossed around so much, but I don't think anyone I know's that picky. I love how flaky this is!"

"Thanks."

"So will you be dressing up?"

"Dressing up? Like...tuxedos?"

"No, for Halloween."

I felt myself sort of go blank for a moment. Late October. The 31st is Monday. The picnic's on Sunday. So, sure, Halloween theme. Which had never occurred to me.

I looked at her. She looked at me.

"...I was away for way too long."

"Excuse me?"

"Overseas deployment. We didn't really think too much about the little holidays out there, but still...how the hell could I forget about Halloween?"

She didn't know what to do with this, or with me. She was looking at me a little like I'd grown another head. She was there to order food, not a Guy With Issues. Hartman stayed quiet.

"Sorry. Costumes. Sure. What did you have in mind?"

"Just nothing too scary. We'll have children there."

"...Skeleton body suits?"

"That sounds fine."

"Okay, and do you want us to bring candy?"

"We'll take care of candy. Though...I heard you do fruit pies. Can you have pumpkin pies for dessert?"

Back when I was in government contracting, the term for this was "requirement creep." The customer always wants more. Always. The typical salespuke response to it was, "Not a problem! It'll just cost this much more!" The developer's response to the salespuke was often, "Yeah, I can handle that. Give me another month and...What do you mean, two days?"

In this case I was both the salespuke and the developer. Hartman waited to see how I'd respond.

"Sure, that shouldn't be a problem. Though we'll need to adjust the price."

Later, when I discussed it with my co-developer, she had some concerns.

"You want me to do what in two days?"