Happy Pi Day!

There are times when you can totally spot my nerd flag flying high: release dates for personal highly-anticipated video games, when sci-fi television shows are awarded the opportunity to appear on cable television for more than one season, superhero comic book movies, the day of the PC’s birthday (August 12th!), and Pi Day. But not Star Wars Day (May 4th) because I actually don’t like Star Wars. Yes, I said it; but we can still be friends, right?

Today is Pi Day. Get it, 3.14? Hilarious!

There are a number of ways you can celebrate this momentous holiday. Of course, you could call up all your friends and recite as many digits of Pi as you can. This is impressive and only slightly annoying. Well, honestly it can probably come off as more than just slightly annoying to some. If you don’t want to do that, you can go the much easier (and less annoying to friends you probably want to keep) route and feast on pie. Pie for Pi Day! My personal tradition is to watch the movie Pi (such a good movie, if you haven’t seen it) while eating pie. It’s a great time.

Considering Pi Day is today, that doesn’t leave much time to bake a homemade pie from scratch — although I do have that planned for my weekly baking project as we head into spring and summer. So to get a pie quickly, not to mention with some seriously minimal effort, you only have to go as far as your local retailer’s frozen food section wherein you will find a variety of Marie Callender’s pies!

We picked up a Marie Callender’s banana cream pie, which just so happens to be my fiance’s favorite.

The pie, a creamy banana filling inside a crumbly crust and topped with thick whipped cream and sliced almonds, tasted good and we have been enjoying it. It’s a tasty pie without being too rich or filling. Unfortunately, while the pie tasted good, we first had to look at it when it came out of the box, and it was looking a little sad.

Pies are delicate, even if they are frozen, and I think that Marie Callender’s could package their pies a little better and a little tighter to protect them from all the handling they go through to be placed in grocery store freezers.

When I opened the box the pie came in and removed the plastic bag from around the pie tin and plastic protection top, I immediately noticed that we had a crust issue. It was missing from around more than half of the pie and a section of one side was crushed in, displacing the crust away from the tin and breaking apart along the rest of the pie. It looked like this pie had seem some trauma on its way to the grocery store.

Luckily, the pie did taste good, displaced crust and all. In fact, I woke up this morning to find that there was just one lonely piece of pie left in the tin. Also, I found out today while talking to my aunt about Pi Day, that the delicious chocolate silk pie we had at our family Christmas dinner last year was a Marie Callender’s pie. I had no idea.

The next time you’re in the mood for pie with minimal effort, use this coupon for $1.50 off Marie Callender’s pies at any national retailer from now until March 21, 2013.

How are you celebrating Pi Day? For inspiration, ideas, how-to’s, and more, check out Marie Callender’s blog!

I was selected for this opportunity as a member of Clever Girls Collective, and the content and opinions expressed here are all my own.