"Pulling out all the stops," is a musical term. A "stop" is a piece on an organ that stops the flow of air from the bellows to the pipes. Now, the organ is, in some ways, a rather crude instrument. The ability to regulate dynamics was a function of how many pipes were sounding at any given time, because you couldn't regulate the velocity of air from the bellows. So when an organist wanted to really crank the instrument up and let 'er rip, they pulled out all the stops, allowing the air flow to reach every pipe, generating a lot of noise. Hopefully the organist's skill matched his enthusiasm.
On this pie, you are truly pulling out all the stops. Believe it or not, there are times when I look at a recipe and think, "I could use 1% milk here rather than whole," or "I could make do with vanilla extract, not waste time and money on a vanilla bean." And yeah, for a pie at a pot-luck, for everyday pie, you can get away with a couple of cost or fat saving techniques. But not this pie, not today.
