Gather ’round, lovelies. It’s story time.

Years ago, Beloved and I were living with a good friend who had recently lost her mother. The friend’s mother collected fine antique furniture and had left it to her daughter. The catch was that roomie needed to go home to rural Colorado to collect it. Her plan was to fly home, have a quick visit with her family, then throw the furniture in a Uhaul, and drive back to Brooklyn. We couldn’t let her do all this alone, so we offered to join her.

The plan was that Beloved and our friend were going to share the driving. Though I do not drive, I am great with maps and offered to serve as navigator*/DJ/rodeo clown.
*This was in the days before GPS, when a navigator was actually a thing and maps were printed on large, ungainly paper.

At some point during the planning of the trip, we decided that because we weren’t in a big hurry (and wanted to entertain ourselves), we would stop in small towns on the way home and sample and rate the local diner’s pies. The trip was dubbed Pie Across America, and we took it very seriously. If the diner had 6 kinds of pie, we ordered a slice of each. We each tried the ones that interested us and wrote our reviews in the communal Pie Journal. Our rating system was thus: pies were rated on a stretchy-pants scale: a rating of 1 pair of stretchy pants meant it wasn’t worth the calories and 10 pairs meant the pie positively otherworldly, pie of the gods, if you will. The overall winner was at a diner in the mountains in Colorado. It was a tart cherry pie served with homemade cinnamon ice cream. I still have dreams about it…

I’ve long since lost the journal, though my memories of the trip still entertain me. What I have retained, though, is my love for pie. So today, Pi Day, is all about beautiful pie designs. Is the idea original? No, not very. But it gave me a chance to relive my trip, so let me have my fun.

Unfortunately, I can’t talk about these pies’ flavor, but they sure are pretty!