I have some super-duper friends, I’ll tell you.  They are as good as gold… as sweet as pie.

One of my good friends mentioned today…. that she hopes I write about pie tonight.  I think this is my first request for a topic.  So pie she will have.  By the slice or even the whole of it.

Of course I have to mention that I used to love pie when I was a kid.   Like it was some kind of drug.   I had two favorites.  Butterscotch…. and Pecan.  Oh my goodness, my Grandma Jeanette K passed on some crazy-good recipes when it came to those gems.  And it really helped that my Mom and my brother could bake like crazy.  Especially my big brother Ed.  Mmm, how I loved that pie.   But I wouldn’t eat just one slice.  I always at 3.14 slices.   Just for good measure.

But when did all this madness begin?  Well I’ll tell you.  Where almost everything else seemed to originate.  Back with those ancient Egyptians.   Early pies were in the form of flat, round crusty cakes.    They were called galettes.  The crusts were made up of ground oats, and wheats, and such.  But the yummy treat inside was honey.   Yes, my honey pie.

And get this..  …. . to revisit the age-old  question of which came first, the chicken or the egg..  Well perhaps it was the pie.  Sometime before 2000 BC, a recipe for chicken pie was written on a tablet in Sumer (that’s in Egypt).   Ooooh.  I got to get  ME some Chicken Pie.

But hold the phone here.  Maybe my friend wanted to know about pi…. and not pie.  You know today is March 14…. in the year 2015.   And looky there at the first digits of the mathematical pi.    It is 3.1415.  THAT Pi.

If you really wanted to celebrate with the big math-dogs….  take it out a few more places….. and you should have clicked your heels at 9:26:53 a.m. (3.141592653).   I know I did!  Those nine digits are more than enough for most applications requiring pi.

The first calculation of pi was done by Archimedes of Syracuse (287–212 BC), one of the greatest mathematicians of the ancient world. Archimedes approximated the area of a circle by using the Pythagorean Theorem.  I like to call him Arch-ey and the Pythags.   Like a Rock Group… only smarter.

So what is Pi?  Well… basically…. Pi is an infinite, non repeating decimal.  Pi (π) is the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter.   And…. as I mentioned….. that good old tasty Pi is a constant number.  That means that for all circles of any size, Pi will be the same.  3.14.

In other words…. If you cut a Pecan Pie …. from edge to edge… right across the center…..  it will take your knife 3.14 times that exact distance…. to go ALL the way around the outside of the pie.  But don’t cut that crust off yet.  That would be a crummy thing to do.

And if your pie comes up missing… do you know what would Archey and Jeanette say about such a thing……   perhaps…..

Let pie-gones be pie-gones.  OR maybe….

If at first you don’t succeed, pi, pi again.

I’ll take the Pi Road, you take the low road.

Live and Let Pie.

Pie for a Pie, Tooth for a Tooth.

Oh… thanks for putting up with all of this.   But if you are tired of reading my meanderings, perhaps you might enjoy something else… like….
J.D. Salivator’s A Catcher in the Pie