Pi Day

Today is Pi Day.  3/14.  Pi, the number that expresses the ratio of a circle's circumference over its diameter, was first calculated in ancient times and was first celebrated in 1989 and is now celebrated around the world by math teachers and student.  Our school has celebrated Pi Day for the last few years by working math problems, building objects using the 3.14, and walking in circles.  This year the math teacher decided to celebrate it by having her Math Counts Club members bake pies.  The members then raffled off tickets to win the pies and will sell pieces of pie today at lunch.  The money will be donated to a local charity for purchases for school children.

Both of my children are in the Math Counts Club and thus were required to bake or bring in two pies each.  I have never baked a pie in my life that didn't come out of a frozen box.  I am more of a cake girl.  I rarely eat pie unless the filling is pumpkin, chocolate, or peanut butter.  The thought of cutting up pounds of apples to bake into a homemade crust that has to be rolled out with a rolling pin causes me to sweat.  I immediately got online and began to find delicious no bake pie recipes that called for ready made graham cracker crusts.  The less work the better.

Somehow my house ended up being the pie house on Sunday.  I had four kids making eight different pies in my small kitchen.  I made my girls look up recipes, write out a grocery list, and then we headed to the grocery store where I spent $50 on ingredients just for my girls' four pies.

Back at the house we decided to start with Darcy's chocolate cookie pie which we made simply by unwrapping cookie dough and plopping into a pie pan and baking.  While that was baking we started on Natalie's two pies which her mother had decided would be chocolate pies made out of pudding mix and whipped topping.  Easy to do.

Darcy's chocolate chip pie

Madison's first pie was an Oreo mud pie made with Oreos, chocolate mint cookie ice cream, Cool Whip, and chocolate syrup.  Layer it on the Oreo crust and you have a pie!  One that must be frozen however.

Heather's two pies were key lime and required baking.  Darcy's other pie was a candy bar pie which required cooking on the stove.  By the time those were both completed my kitchen was a wreck.  With all the cooking, dancing, slinging of ingredients, cracking of eggs, and sloppiness of four teenagers my floor was so sticky that Elliot was stuck in one place.  Three of the girls disappeared and Madison and I cleaned up the kitchen so that she could finish her last pie, french silk.

When that pie was finished the kitchen had to be cleaned again, and I'm still mopping my floor this morning.  The pies got done and were packed off this morning for Pi Day.  The excitement was catchy this morning at school, but knowing how these pies were made I'm glad I won't have to eat any of them!