Pi(e) Roundup

What does pi sound like?

Pie Man — Tue, 15 Mar 2011 02:07:10 +0000

Go to YouTube and there are lots of answers to the question, from the annoying to the child prodigy. But I like this one created by Michael Blake. He assigned digits to notes and numbers to chords, and with a little artistic license developed a nice melody and eye-catching video.

Julia’s pie crust recipe

Pie Man — Sat, 26 Dec 2009 17:57:24 +0000

Recipe: Julia Child’s pie crust recipe

Ingredients

5 1/4 cups pastry flour or all-purpose flour
1 tbs kosher salt
1 1/2 sticks (6 oz) frozen butter
1 1/4 cups (11 oz) frozen vegetable shortening
1 cup ice water

Instructions

Mix salt and flour. Cut frozen butter and shortening into small chunks. Using a mixer, mix butter into flour, tossing handfuls of chunks in at a time. Then toss in handfuls of shortening chunks. Mix until dough looks like lumpy cornmeal.
With mixer running, add water a little at a time, until dough begins to come together. It is moist enough if it comes together into a ball in your hand.
Turn dough onto surface to complete mixing. Divide into four balls and flatten into disks. Put into refrigerator for at least an hour before rolling out.

Quick Notes

You may freeze dough disks for about a month.

How to make pie dough from Steve Krizman on Vimeo.

Microformatting by hRecipe.

Pie and politics

Pie Man — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 06:05:13 +0000

In pursuit of pie, candidate Obama and Ohio governor walk into a shop owned by a staunch Republican. “How’s business?” the future president asks. A political point is scored.

Anita Bryant became one of the first to take a protest pie in the face. Gay activists “pied” her during a television interview while she traveled the country in support of anti-gay legislation. “At least it was a fruit pie,” she said.

The Biotic Baking Brigade has claimed responsibility for several modern pieings, and is the group most frequently cited in one list of people who have been pied.

Harvard math dept knows how to party

Pie Man — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 04:46:17 +0000

At 3:14 every 3/14, Harvard Math throws a Pi Day party, complete with a pie-eating contest. The thriller is the pi recitation contest, won in 2008 by James Niles Joyal, who recited it to 3,141 digits, tripling the school record.

Joyal is a well-rounded individual. In addition to being a memorization master, he is a pianist, composer and screenwriter currently working on his MFA.

Pie chart: Fox uses Florida math

Pie Man — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 04:19:47 +0000

Fox News has been ridiculed for pre-overcounting the number of Republicans ahead of the 2012 election. Their editors and fans believe the criticism is further evidence that reality has a known liberal bias.

American Pie, the sequels

Pie Man — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 04:01:50 +0000

Hollywood has yet to discover a finite number of American Pie sequels. No. 7 came out this month. The core gag (literally) throbs through each one.

In praise of pi

Pie Man — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 03:49:02 +0000

Ever since the first geek (Archimedes) theorized pi in the Third Century BC, no geek has been able to corral it into a fraction or a finite decimal. God knows they’ve tried — It has been calculated out to a trillion digits even though a 12-digit truncation is accurate enough to calculate the circumference of the earth within a millimeter.

pi is an irrational number. pi is a transcendental number. pi is never capitalized, even at the beginning of a sentence.

It’s an expression of perfection that is never attained.

4 and 20 blackbird pie

Pie Man — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 03:18:13 +0000

Recipe: Four and Twenty Blackbird Pie

Summary: 14th Century chefs created “sotelties,” aka food sculptures. They became more entertaining when animals — and even dwarves — were stuffed into them (post-baking to preserve their lives).

Ingredients

2 handfuls flour, the best that you can get
2 good eggs
A little salt
Small pan water
Piece of fat, size of two good eggs
4 and 20 blackbirds, alive

Instructions

Put flour on the table and with a knife stir in the eggs and salt. Put water and fat in a small pan, let it all dissolve together and boil. Afterwards pour it on the flour on the table and make a strong dough and work it well, however you feel is right. When the dough is kneaded, then make of it a round ball and draw it out well on the sides with the fingers or with a rolling pin, so that in the middle a raised area remains, then let it chill in the cold.
In the bottome thereof make a hole as big as your fist, or bigger if you will, let the sides of the crust bee somwhat higher then ordinary pies, which done put it full of flower and bake it, and being baked, open the hole in the bottome, and take out the flower. Put into the said crust round about the aforesaid pie as many small live birds as the empty crust will hold. And this is to be at such time as you send the pie to the table, and set before the guests: where uncovering or cutting up the lid of the great pie, all the birds will flie out, which is to delight and pleasure shew to the company.

Variations

Lord Minimus and the Queen

May be stuffed with live rabbits, turtles, frogs or dwarfs. Perhaps the most famous dwarf pie was served in 1626 to Charles I and Queen Henrietta Maria. Jeffrey Hudson was only 7 years old and 18 inches tall when he burst out of the pie, wearing shining armor. Queen Henrietta, only 15 at the time, dubbed him Lord Minimus and he held the job of Queen’s Dwarf for 18 years. Then he held the post of slave in North Africa for 25 years.

Cooking time (duration): 50 mins, plus bird-stuffing time

Diet type: Macrobiotic

Diet (other): Raw

Meal type: dessert

Microformatting by hRecipe.