Apparently it's Pi day on March 14*, which means you get to eat a pie. But Americans do not understand what a pie is. That's not a pie... this is a pie:
Real pies have meat, preferably with well-known common names like "beef", in them. And you eat them with tomato sauce, thusly:
I once retraced my steps for around 5 miles in the US to get to a pie store only to find it was all fruit! If I wanted a fruit pie, I'd have bought Sara Lee at the supermarket!
* Or, as the rest of the world has it, 14 March, which means the real Pi day would be the 3rd day of the 14th month, Octonovdecember.
Comments
Yeah! MEAT PIE!!!!!!!!!
But dude, that stuff's not "tomato sauce"; it's friggin' ketchup!
Posted by: Comrade PhysioProf | March 10, 2009 12:36 PM
Nope. Ketchup is spicier than tomato sauce - bland and meaty, that's the way it should be (unless you are an Adelaidean, in which case you add pea soup).
Posted by: John S. Wilkins | March 10, 2009 12:52 PM
Dodecember? Allowing for those crazy Romans and their 'extra' months... :)
Posted by: Andrew Broome | March 10, 2009 1:15 PM
It should be pointed out that Adelaideans don't actually eat pie floaters; we just threaten to feed them to tourists. Pie floaters exist for the sole purpose of making sure visitors stay on their best behaviour.
Posted by: Adrian Morgan | March 10, 2009 1:31 PM
Rather like drop bears, then...
Posted by: John S. Wilkins | March 10, 2009 1:54 PM
"If you don't behave I'll make you eat a drop bear" - that is the most sadistic punishment I have ever heard.
Posted by: Adrian Morgan | March 10, 2009 3:43 PM
So rather like Dunedin and the deep-fried Moro bar, then?
Posted by: Christopher Taylor | March 10, 2009 4:59 PM
Ketchup != Tomato Sauce.
I love Tomato Sauce but Ketchup is horrible! I spent 2 weeks in the US and the lack of Tomato Sauce was extremely distressing.
Posted by: ephant | March 10, 2009 8:45 PM
There are of course fruit pies and meat pies! As an Englishman living in Germany I get regaled with horror stories of English cuisine by German’s who have visited the UK. A common tail, told mostly by those who made school trips to the sacred islands, involves the reverse of JW’S experience. German cuisine doesn’t do meat pies, German pies, ‘gedeckte Kuchen’ have fruit fillings. German school kids looking for a sweet snack and too inhibited to use their faltering English, enter a shop and point to the object of their desires. Outside the shop, transaction completed, they bite into their freshly acquired pastry expecting the sweet taste of apple or cherry and are unpleasantly stunned when their mouths fill with steak and kidney or beef and onions swimming in thick spicy gravy. Ah! The joys of foreign travel.
Posted by: Thony C. | March 10, 2009 9:56 PM
It's a kind of negative reinforcement of the necessity to speak English in England. Of course, this fails to explain what the English themselves actually speak.
Posted by: John S. Wilkins | March 10, 2009 11:28 PM
Why can't the English learn to speak? Norwegians learn Norwegian, the Greeks learn their Greek...
Posted by: Christopher Taylor | March 10, 2009 11:40 PM
The very first person here to ask why women can't be more like men is in real trouble!
Posted by: John S. Wilkins | March 10, 2009 11:50 PM
this fails to explain what the English themselves actually speak.
Is it really possible that this comment was made by an Aussi?
Posted by: Thony C. | March 11, 2009 12:40 AM
"Aussie". Many of us are actually quite well spoken. Some of us read. But I've heard English accents that needed realtime subtitles.
Posted by: John S. Wilkins | March 11, 2009 12:48 AM
I watched Bend it With Beckham without subtitles and was completely lost the first time through. The second time through I added subtitles and was only lost half of the time. The slang those Brits use changes daily. I sound like a fogey, I know. (I am, but nevermind.)
Here in the Americas, mongrels that we are, we generally preface the word "pie" with and adjective describing the contents, so that we can be clear on whether we are about to eat a fruit or meat pie. It makes things simpler.
Posted by: Mike Haubrich, FCD | March 11, 2009 1:18 AM
In Canada, at least, meat pies are called pot pies -- "chicken pot pie", "turkey pot pie", etc.
Also, tomato sauce? Just weird.
Posted by: Tlönista | March 11, 2009 1:34 AM
I've always heard them called pot pies, too. And, I must say, tomato sauce sounds like a quick way to ruin a perfectly good one. Here's a tip: if you make them right, you don't need to add anything to them!
Posted by: Brandon | March 11, 2009 2:24 AM
I get the feeling that y'all mean something very different by "tomato sauce" than what I normally mean, because that looks like ketchup to me.
Posted by: Wes | March 11, 2009 3:29 AM
Some of us read
No shit!
Posted by: Thony C. | March 11, 2009 3:49 AM
And in Australia, a pie might be called "beef" but actually contain... meat... mush... stuff... The difference between "steak" and what you find in a "steak" pie in Oz is a source of great pain to a Kiwi friend of mine who lives in your brown land. Hence all the sauce, I guess.
Posted by: Chris L | March 11, 2009 7:49 AM
John, if you're judging pies by using Sarah Lee or any other store boughten pie, then no freaking wonder you're not terribly fond of them. If you lived right-side-up and in my neck of the woods I'd bake you a pie from one of grandmothers' recipes and then, no doubt, you'd see the light. :-)
Posted by: Cory Albrecht | March 11, 2009 11:44 AM
Oh, no, I don't dislike fruit pies, and I'm not judging them by store bought examples. It's just that fruit pies are the deviant form of the pie, and meat pies are the One True Pie.
ChrisL: Australian beef pies used to have regulations restricting the types of meat, fat content, and the like, which made them a really good way to eat good quality meat cheaply. At some point, it was decided the market could ensure that, and the standards were dropped.
Posted by: John S. Wilkins | March 11, 2009 12:37 PM
I must say that looks like a very fine pie. With actual real meat inside, not nondescript gravy and mysterious lumpy bits. Where did you get it? BTW, if you should chance to visit ANU, the little bakery in the Union building does pretty good pies.
Posted by: Cath the Canberra Cook | March 11, 2009 10:05 PM
I confess I found it on Google Images...
But [he hastened to add] I have had such pies!
Posted by: John S. Wilkins | March 11, 2009 10:09 PM
Loved meat pies during my stay in Oz! Much better than our Scotch pies anyway...
Posted by: Cannonball Jones | March 11, 2009 11:15 PM
Now put that meat pie in a bowl of pea soup and you'll really be cooking. :)
Posted by: Laelaps | March 12, 2009 2:17 AM
Right. If you can't put Worcestershire sauce on it, it's not a pie!!!!!
Posted by: Greg Laden | March 12, 2009 2:22 AM
It doesn't therefore follow that if you can, it is, though. If you think so, be careful not to spill any Worcestershire Sauce on your hand...
Posted by: John S. Wilkins | March 12, 2009 2:25 AM
Meat pies are the more primitive form.
And ketchup/tomato sauce/whatever is what they traditionaly put on way back when to hide the flavor of mystery meat. If it is done properly at all all you need to go along with it is a good beer (or glass of milk).
Posted by: Max | March 12, 2009 4:09 AM
Erm, I *like* pie floaters.
A variation the reader might be interested in is to line the bowl one's pie floater comes in with a Yorkshire pudding prior to carefully pouring in a thin layer of gravy, followed by pea soup, then finally pie and condiments of choice.
Anyway, John's right. Meat pies FTW (even with real meat). Fruit pies, whilst nice, are a modern Abomination (note capital).
And don't joke about drop bears. I was nearly attacked by one once...
Louis
Posted by: Louis | March 12, 2009 5:53 AM
Of course, the 'tomato sauce' is really mashed pumpkin dyed red.
Posted by: Rosie Redfield | March 13, 2009 11:14 AM
Has anyone else had chicken curry pie or is this limited to my school?
Posted by: simba | March 14, 2009 10:49 PM
Ugh. That looks too much like a pasty Wilkins
Posted by: Isis the Scientist | March 15, 2009 1:56 PM
No, a pasty Wilkins looks like the end result of hovering your mouse over the avatar in the top left corner...
Posted by: John S. Wilkins | March 15, 2009 2:04 PM
Ok, I made one up last night and take back much of what I said (but not about the beer). That tharr's some good eatin'.
Posted by: Max | March 16, 2009 1:35 AM
Well done that man. Of course the beer is taken as a given. Pale, of course.
Posted by: John S. Wilkins | March 16, 2009 1:46 AM