A number expressing the ratio of the circumference of a perfect circle to its diameter (or any excuse to make and eat pie!)

Thursday, March 17, 2011 by Marianne 5 Comments

It’s a big holiday week ’round these parts: today is, of course, St. Patrick’s day (and I will be celebrating my Irish heritage by eating as many potatoes as possible, hopefully in the form of colcannon and boxty) and Monday was my favorite sort-of-about-math-but-really-about-food holiday of them all: Pi Day! Yay pie!

In honor of this very serious and important holiday, I made not one, but two pies for supper: pizza pie…

…and buttermilk pie.

The pizza recipe came from Four Nights a Week,a local food blog that you should definitely check out. I adapted the Butternut Squash with Wilted Spinach and Blue Cheese recipe into a pizza by sprinkling the blue cheese onto the dough; topping it with the roasted squash, raw red onion and spinach; and baking the whole thing at 550 F for 10 minutes. It was a hit.

The Buttermilk Pie recipe comes from this NPR story. I use the not-as-sweet version and it is delicious!

I’ve also been doing some knitting. Spa, Knit and Spin 2011 was, as always, at the end of February and, as always, Nance and I headed up to Freeport for a lovely weekend of knitting, yarn-buying, eating, drinking, and relaxing. I was a champion shopper this year, blowing most of my budget on Thursday even before we arrived in Freeport.

We stopped at the lovely KnitWit in Portland where I picked up some glorious Road to China Light in Blue Tourmaline:

(We also stopped at Halcyon Yarn in Bath so that I could pick up Vintage Modern Knits. I went to Spa with an agenda, and one of the items was to buy the book and yarn to make the Madeleine Shawl. I did both, and cast-on before the Spa festivities even began!)

I also picked up a skein of Quince & Co. Chickadee in Parsley:

I have been dying to try Quince yarn and I was thrilled to find a huge selection at KnitWit. The colors are gorgeous and the yarn is squishy-soft and delightful.

I also bought a Three Bags Full project bag, won a L’stell Ditty Bag and bought a gorgeous skein of Ball and Skein Super Sock Yarn in Turquoise:

Of course Simon also got some Spa prizes, a lobster collar (please excuse the crap camera-phone pic:)

And a stuffed lobster, which he loves:

The Madeleine Shawl as been my obsessive project for the past couple of weeks, I managed to finish it in a little over two weeks – a record for me!

I am really happy with how it turned out: the yarn is a blend of alpaca, camel, cashmere, and silk and it is sooooo soft. The shawl is also the perfect light, in-between weight for spring. I wore it on my bike commute to work today and it was perfect.  Here’s the Ravelry Link to the project.

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