Happy Pi Day!

Yeah, yeah, I know. The 16th letter of the Greek alphabet is pronounced “pee,” not “pie.” To say otherwise is to sound like an uncouth American. Or worse yet, like a Brit pronouncing “tortilla.” But I’m going to let it go today because a) we all need a totally contrived holiday, and b) nobody wants to hear me being any more pedantic than necessary.

So, happy March 14. 3/14. Or, as most of the rest of the world would write it: 14/3. Which blows up the whole model once again. Darn.

Either way, today is as good a day as any to make any pie: berry pie, pumpkin pie, pecan pie, apple pie, pizza pie, shepherd’s pie, spanikopita pie, sweet, savory, large, small, round, square, triangular… Challenge the definition of a pie. My friend claimed he was observing the holiday by eating a couple of hamantaschen for breakfast. Another friend challenged this, claiming that pies had to be round. My wife pointed out that hamantaschen were triangles that started out as circles, therefore they were multidimensional pies. I pointed out that it didn’t matter because pies aren’t round, pie are squared.

And it went downhill from there.

At the end of the day, I threw together a small batch of gluten-free blackberry apple hand pies from scratch, which are round when placed together on a plate. But since pie is a theoretical construct serving only to bring happiness into this world, it doesn’t really matter. All that mattered was they were delicious. And now gone.