March 14 is a special day in the math world…numerically, it is 3.14. As many of you may remember from your school days, those are the first three digits in pi, an important mathematical constant. As I worked on ideas for recipes for this Bridges, pi (and pie) kept coming to mind, so here we are with a few different pie recipes!
    A traditional full-sized fruit pie is Bumbleberry Pie. I have always loved the rather whimsical sounding name of it. There is no “bumbleberry” and different cooks utilize their own choice of fruits to make it. I like to use a variety of berries, plus a tart apple. Use fresh if you have them, or frozen berries work well. The “three berry blend” available frozen usually is raspberries, blackberries, and either strawberries or blueberries. Either mix helps to make a delicious pie. As noted in the recipe, if you use frozen berries, plan ahead and give them time to thaw in a colander so the excess juice drains away. Otherwise, you will end up with pie soup and an under-baked bottom crust.
    How about some mini-pies made with a chocolate crust and a variety of filling possibilities? The crust can be used as the base for a regular sized pie if you wish, but making pies in canning jar rings lets you help contain filling, makes them easy to handle, and they are just plain fun to eat!
    When making ganache for the filling for your mini-pies, use good quality baking chocolate. You can use your choice of bittersweet, semi-sweet or milk chocolate, depending on how sweet you want it to be. To use the ganaches as fillings, you may want to lean toward the sweeter chocolates, as the chocolate crust is only lightly sweetened.
    Being a fan of savory pies as well as sweet, I combined a spinach-artichoke-cheese filling with pie crust folded into tidy hand-sized envelopes of deliciousness.
    My mom’s chicken pot pie was always topped with a biscuit crust, and I have continued that as my usual pot pie crust. As a change-up, however, I’ve made my usual chicken pot pie into a hearty, creamy vegetable filled soup. Serve it topped with your favorite biscuits to “shmoosh” into your soup. I include a biscuit recipe made with Greek yogurt that I flavored with chives. Add your choice of herb or none at all! To accompany the soup, I like to roll the biscuits thin and use a simple shaped cookie cutter-like flower, leaf, heart, etc. – to punch out the biscuits. A small glass can double as an ideal round biscuit cutter.
    As we move toward spring, I hope that you will enjoy Pi Day and make some pies to celebrate the imminent return of warm weather!