Wednesday, March 14, 2012

Happy Pi Day


Did you celebrate Pi Day today?

Pi Day is celebrated by mathematicians every March 14th because like Pi, March 14th can be written as 3-14, or 3.14.

It is also celebrated by Scientists and, in general, geeks the world over.


Like this guy.

Peanut Head tells me that scientists like him take Pi out to the hundred thousandth digit which is 3.14159. In 2015 we'll be able to take our Pi date out to the ten thousandth digit because we'll write Pi Day as
3-14-15. How cool is that?

Super cool, let me tell you. Just nod and agree. Or nod and roll your eyes. I'm flexible.

We celebrated Pi Day today in our 6th grade classes, and we had a lot of fun with it. We started on Monday when we decorated enough digits to put Pi up in the hall to the 100th digit. We couldn't even put all of them on the same wall, we had to wrap them around and go back down the other direction.


It was pretty neat to see all the digits up on display, and to see the pride the students took in pointing out the digits they decorated. They were all so different.


I've been anticipating this day for over a year now. Last March I spied this Pi cookie cutter, and I knew I had to make it mine.


I made a bazeellion Pi cookies with it last weekend.


My plan was to decorate all of them and make them into perfect Pi specimens like the very talented Bridget of Bake at 350.


I carefully measured, sifted, whipped, and concocted her very special Royal Icing so that my cookies would be ever so perfect like hers.

I decorated exactly two cookies like the one above, and then I was done.

And while I wouldn't go so far as to say my cookies even came close to hers in terms of Pi Perfection, I did think they looked pretty ding dang cool.

And then I tasted one.

Excuse me while I stop and interject . . .

BLOGGER! Why, oh WHYEEEEEE do you not provide me with emoticons with which to illustrate my feelings?!!!! I need a projectile vomiting emoticon STAT!

I'm even at a loss for words to express my violent feelings. How do you spell AAAACCCCKFFFFPTTSPEW-E-E-E-E-PTUI? I know no other way to make vomiting noises with print. Please insert your imagination here.


All I can say is that these pretty Pi cookies are not made for eating, just like some couches are not made for sitting. If I had to describe the taste of Royal Icing, the closest I could come would be to say that it tastes like Milk of Magnesia with a hint of sugar. Except hard, like chalk, and perhaps a wee bit close to cardboard.

I decided right then and there that I wasn't going to defile a bazeeellion perfectly good sugar cookies with gravity defying sugar cement.

Instead I took store bought canned frosting and sprinkles with me to school and we let the kids decorate them themselves. That was a much better idea anyway because I didn't lose twelve hours of my life that I cannot get back by decorating them. 


And I had a great Pi Day as a result.

How about you? What did you do? And, just curious here, but what do you think of Royal Icing? Is it me, or is it from the Devil?





6 comments:

  1. We made pizza pie and ate key lime pie for dessert for pi day.
    I am with you on the royal icing. Blech!

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  2. I love your tshirts!
    I gave my daughter's teacher cake for pi day- its still a circle so it counts!

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  3. I have never eaten royal icing, but I made Valentine's Cookies for our Ward using www.sweetopia.net's recipes and they were all gone within ten minutes. Personally, I'm all for letting the kids decorate them. Sounds like fun!

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  4. Happy Belated Pi Day to you too. Last year a fellow teacher made Pi cookies too... One year for Christmas he made me a Pi plate in his pottery class... lol

    I wore my fancy dancy Happy Pi Day button... and the winner of our annual Pi Day Contest was a 6th grader who recited Pi to the 86th digit!!

    Math Geeks Rock!!

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  5. I hate royal icing with an extreme passion. Gross. I'm glad you didn't waste your time with more than two cookies.

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  6. I thought about taking the apple pie out of my freezer then promptly forgot. That's about the extent of my Pi day.

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