Here a photo of an ugly lime pie I made some time ago:

Here's an even uglier pie I made at home in L.A.

Both of these pies were really yummy as well. As for making an attractive apple dessert, I would recommend torta di mele, which I have made several times, although I don't think I have photographed it.

Both those pies look yummy, Lars!

When I make lime pie I usually add a drop or two of blue food colouring, to cancel the yellowness.

I've added blue food coloring on occasion and ended up with a turquoise pie! I don't do that anymore.

Here's one that was too blue

I've decided that yellow is an okay color for lime pie.

Yes, I've found it best to dip a toothpick in the blue colouring and just touch the tip of the toothpick to the pie filling and stir it in well before adding more in the same fashion :-)

lol! Ugly-but-good food beats pretty-but-bad food every time in my book!!! I'm reminded of the French bakery that I walked past every day in London many years ago... the baked sweets in the window were absolutely gorgeous, and very expensive, but I finally stopped one day to buy something good. I took it back to the hotel room, took one bite, and tossed it straight into the garbage can. It had the taste and texture of cardboard with kindergarten paste on it. But it was really pretty! :p

Lars, your pies aren't ugly at all -- although, that blue one is a bit weird. LOL!

Oh that turquoise pie! LOL!

It just occurred to me that the only colour I just can't bring myself to eat is blue. It makes me very uncomfortable. The cherry pie looks rather inviting in its gory puddle, but I'd find it hard to even sample the turquoise one.

Your pies look pretty to me, and delicious. Even the turquoise pie I would eat, i love pie (or cake, or cookies...) i might hesitate at the color, but would definitely eat it.

Years ago humorist writer Irma Bombeck was discussing the chore of cleaning out the refrigerator and she admonished that "there is no such thing as blue food". - LOL!

I'd take a piece of any of those pies anytime.

Madonna

Addressing the post title, I do not recall, in recent memory, plllog posting any photo good or bad.

Maybe we need a 'Gallery of Regrettable Food part one', ...'looks good, tastes bad', 'looks bad, tastes good'.

I have plenty of both.

I will sample anything no mater the color. Or the visual. Especially a Lars creation.

I make an excellent braised chicken thigh dish that I've started adding fresh tumeric and oil marinated annatto to boost the visual color being so grey/ugly. Addition of edamame helps. or any green.

A young friend, working for Martha at the time, had gorgeous pie crust...not made by Martha but her 'assistants', ...made a few pies but did not know about lemon zest/pith. Lol. Gorgeous pies but so bitter and not edible.

Good idea on the photos gallery, sleeve. It could be the cooking forum food hall of shame. :)

Haha! There are (at least) a couple of groups on Flickr.com of disgusting/regrettable food. I haven't looked in awhile, but I used to enjoy them very much, and shared some of my own, scanned mainly from the pages of old cookbooks. 1 was called 'Magically Revolting', and another was 'Gee That Food Looks Terrible', IIRC...

And looks have no bearing on how good a pie is, IMPE.

Here is one of my contributions, Chili Mostaccioli, ca. early 1960s:

I like those two pieces of parsley - they have no idea what they are doing there!

The turquoise pie tasted the same as the yellow one and the green one. I did top all of them with whipped cream, and so that improved their appearance. The cherry pie tasted especially good, despite being runny.

I could probably add quite a bit to the ugly but yummy gallery.

There are people in Los Angeles that make models of food for Japanese restaurants, and these models are completely inedible.

I made a cake with turquoise icing for my birthday when I was ten or eleven, and I put brown (chocolate) polka dots on it. No one wanted to eat it at first, but it tasted quite good.

I was also taught (in a color theory class) that there was no blue food, but there are edible blue flowers, particularly borage.

In nature, blue often means poison. I was at a butterfly sanctuary once where they told us birds knew not to mess with the Ulysses butterfly because it was poisonous. Blue turned me off of M&M's (no loss).

Sleevendog, I did recently post a picture of my happy little sourdough starters. :) I don't usually take pictures of food. When I did my kitchen remodel, I took a lot of in progress pictures, and for awhile after that I kept the little digital camera in the kitchen and tried to get in the habit of taking some food pictures, but it's not really my thing and I don't even know for sure where the camera is. I took the starters picture with a mobile device and e-mailed it to my computer to post, which was something of an ordeal. I should look for the camera in my desk. It might be there....

Because I wasn't busy cooking last night's dinner, however, I thought about taking a picture of the ugly pie while it was cooling because it was so ugly. I forgot before I'd wrangled a device to do so. I was having a laugh about the gap between appearance and taste, after I got home, and felt I had to say something if I was talking about ugly pie and didn't have a picture to share. Thank goodness Lars had some pie pictures to share, though only the blue one is really that out there. :)

Oh, duh! I have about a third left. I'll take a picture of it if enough ugly shows. ;)

Not as ugly as yesterday, but still pretty bad. And SO good cold.... (I love cold apple pie.)

Ugly rhubarb pie with burnt sugar top but tasted good!

Well, I certainly make plenty of ugly food, but it usually tastes good so that's good enough for me.

I'd eat Lars' pie without hesitation, even the lovely turquoise one, it reminds me of the ocean, a lovely tropical pool, just jump headfirst right into that pie! (grin)

Lars, I'm afraid you'll miss cherry season, although you'll be here for peaches, blueberries, raspberries and possibly the first early apples. That's what freezers are for, though, so I'll make sure I have some ready for pie, I LOVE cherry pie. I'm also saving rhubarb, though, as I remember you haven't ever tried that.

Annie

Frozen cherries will be fine for pies, I think! I love cherry pie too, which is why I've gone to the trouble to make it with fresh cherries, even though they were the wrong type of cherries. My father tried to grow cherries in Texas, but it did not get cold enough in the winter, according to him. He loved cherries too.

I used to give the blue M&Ms to my kid sister [evil grin].

The turquoise pie reminds me of the movie "Waitress". I believe she made a 'mermaid' pie topped with pastel mini marshmallows.

It reminded me of the leek soup in Bridget Jones' Diary. :)

The pie looks fabulous. All of them. I'm a crust lover. Not a mile high pie lover.

I have iCloud that immediately puts cell phone pics in my photo file wireless. Using a camera and down-loading would be a PITA so I get that.

I document everything so I can look back years past being a harvest seasonal cook.

Using a mobile phone would be even more of a PITA because it's in a different part of the house in my purse, and usually doesn't have any charge. The camera, if I find it, has penlight batteries, and nothing else sucking up charge.

I totally get documenting your harvest. I grow lemons, herbs and the occasional jalapeño, none of which look particularly interesting when picked, and all of which stay in the garden until needed or cut back for regrowth. Your high yield garden and growing seasons and preservation are a whole different story.

When I was experimenting with sourdough recipes, I took pictures of most loaves after I cut them. If I'm cooking, however, I rarely have time to spare a thought for pictures, and I don't need them to show what my lasagna looks like, or what a pie by my hands looks like unless it's preternaturally ugly, or what Mr. Picky's fried shrimp looks like. It's just food.

"It's just food."?! You're saying that on the cooking forum?! lol!

I LOVE seeing pictures of food! It makes me want to try new recipes or variations. And they can be educational! for example, I now know not to add blue food coloring to a lemon/lime pie. ;O)

Well you can add blue food colouring, you just have to be careful not to add too much :-)

Colleen, I have added blue food coloring with success (one drop only), but I got carried away one, as you can see. The color comes out better if I just add green food coloring.

I seldom take photos with my phone, but when I do, I transfer them to Dropbox, and then I can easily access them from my computer. If I use my good camera, I take the memory card out and insert that into my computer to download the photos, which happens almost instantly. For me, it is easier to use the memory card than Dropbox. Also, my phone sometimes switches itself to selfie mode, which is the last thing I want! I use the phone as a backup camera, such as when I run out of battery power, like I did at the Uffizi. I went through two or three camera batteries while I was there, which was over four hours. Some of the batteries may have been old, and then they don't hold as much of a charge.

LOL, PM! I was contrasting "just food" to Sleevendog's documentation of her harvests and what she does with the food coming in from the garden, so she can refer back. That's not just "just food". That's recording using pictures rather than writing in a diary or something. You can't tell what's in a lasagna from a picture, and even when they taste different (usually different sausage), I can't tell one tomato/meat lasagna from another and I've made dozens. I don't think you could learn anything about lasagna from looking either, other than how brown the cheese was, or maybe from a cut piece how firm it was or not.

The cut pie is more informative, I guess, than the whole pie would have been. You can't see how truly ugly it was, but it does show the filling. The lady next door when my mother was a tween/teen wasn't over fond of her (my mother and the boy next door spent a lot of time together chopping down old cars for drag racing), but one day she taught her how to make an apple pie. This pie uses thin sliced apples (not thicker little triangles), which are dusted with a couple tablespoons of sugar, some cinnamon, and tapioca, and refrigerated overnight, then baked. I like it much better than a cooked apple filling or sweeter pie. The tapioca makes the filling that firm, that it doesn't drip when cool. Not that there's much goo. Just the juice/sugar from baking. I'm not sure you could learn all that about the filling from the picture, but that's what else is there besides how lumpy and dull the crust is. :)

Okay, here's the lasagna which I started thinking of making during the it's cold soup thread, just for you PM.

Bodacious oven, plllog! The lasagna looks great and I love the Polish baking dish! :)

Thanks, Desertsteph. I like it. :)