As I’ve said before, Pi Day is a HUGE deal in my family. As everyone knows, it’s absolutely IMPERATIVE to eat pie on Pi Day if you expect to be able to do even the simplest math problems with ease. I personally suspect a lack of observance of this ancient tradition is the reason why so many people profess to “hate” math. And believe me, as someone who grew up going everywhere with a mom who wears an “I Love Math” pin every day, I have heard so many people claim to hate math. Or at least, a lot of the staff at the Seminole Publix. Oh what a slice of pie can fix!
I decided to make two pies, beef curry pot pie for dinner and chess pie for dessert. The beef curry pot pie recipe I saw about a week ago on foodgawker. I decided on chess pie after looking through one of my pie cook books (a past pi day present from my dad). I realized that though this is a Southern classic, I have never made it before! Natch I paired the filling from the book with my mom’s hereditary pie crust recipe!
So, after going over these three recipes, I made a massive grocery list, and then went through the kitchen crossing off things we already had:
Secret fact: I am pretty OCD about long grocery lists.
This step in the process was actually really good because I knew we had cornmeal and baking powder, but checking the cupboards revealed that both were pretty out of date! I’m not sure what happens with expired cornmeal, but I wouldn’t want to risk a tragic Pi Day case of food poisoning.
Curry Beef Pot Pie
This is called a pot pie, but it’s the looser version, a thick stew with a biscuit on top.
I probs should have taken more pictures of the process of making it, but I was hungry!
Chess Pie
Making the chess pie was pretty awesome because it only requires one crust as opposed to most pies I make which have both a top and a bottom. The only weird part about this is that my original pie crust recipe is for two pies, so I had to cut everything in fourths (luckily I ate my pie on Pi Day last year so this math was easy peasy). Unfortunately, this left me with things like “1/8 cup of water” and “1/4 of a beaten egg”. I definitely accidentally over-egged the crust by accident at one point, but adding extra flour seemed to make everything turn out okay by rolling time:
Rolling pin magic!
I also got to use my North Carolina pottery pie plate my mom gave me in preparation for last year’s Pi Day!
Pie definitely tastes better on pottery, extra tastiness if it is pretty!
The top of the filling ended up more brown than golden, but the inside was still tasty!
It is way tastier than it looks in this picture!
Steven made some whipped cream Steven style when he got home to go on top!
I think I would declare both these pies a resounding success!
