The month of March brings with it some monumental celebrations such as St. Patrick’s Day, which is celebrated by eating corned beef and cabbage, Skittles and lots of green beer. This is a special day for some – but just another typical day for the people of Wisconsin.
“March Madness,” a month-long basketball tournament, whittles 64 college basketball teams down to two for the national championship. Unlike Wisconsin, New Mexico has no idea what March Madness is.
And my favorite day to celebrate is March 14, National Pi Day. That’s right. 3.14159265 … to do with a circle. We all remember that day in math class. Our eyes and minds were opened to a mathematical equation that would change our ordinary lives into that of Einstein, Pascal and Little Caesars Pizza.
We could now divide anything round, like pizza, cake or pie, into equal portions for anyone “around” the table. See what I did there? That was a circle joke inside a circle joke, otherwise known as geometry.
I was in the grocery store buying a few things to gear up for my favorite March holiday, and I noticed a rhubarb pie in the frozen section – and it said “fresh.” How is that even possible? If you’re not sure what rhubarb is, it’s just fruit celery that no one eats.
On Pi Day, I try to eat one of my favorite pies for each meal. I start off my day with an entire chicken pot pie, followed by a pizza pie for lunch – and end the day with shepherd’s pie.
Pie baking contests are a big thing on Pi Day. Bakers from three counties around show up with their prize-winning and not-so-prize-winning recipes. At these contests, there are pies with or without lard, butter, single crust, double crust, nut, fruit – and nothing on the list is approved by the National Diabetes Council.
Last year, the first-place pie was a sweet potato pie. Now, as far as I know, a potato is not a nut or fruit; it’s technically a vegetable, and they are trying to trick everyone with the sweet part. Why don’t they just make a mashed potato pie and put sugar in it? I don’t know; do I put whipped cream or gravy on it?
Hundreds enter the pie baking contest, but only one wins. What happens to all the imperfect hopes and dreams of the contestants? Well, that’s how pie eating contests were invented. We have all these pies left over; let’s see if we can get a fat guy to wolf down three or four pies in under a minute.
This whole pie eating contest sounds like fun, but it goes against everything we were taught as children. When you’re 8, it’s a bad thing to eat too much pie – but 30 years later, it’s socially accepted.
Two years in a row I lost the contest. Twice I was down to the last pie – and I lost because it was sweet potato, and I have standards. 
Tim is a Florida dairy farmer and comedian. Visit him at Tim the Dairy Farmer.
