Gratitude Practice 2023 Nov 13: Holiday Math and the Pie to Person Ratio
Welp. We are inching our way to the most wonderful time of the year which means it's time to refresh and sharpen our holly jolly “Holiday Math” skills. What is “Holiday Math” you ask? “Holiday Math” is perhaps the most directly applicable and practical usage of basic math principles practiced by normal humans. Never once have I needed to use the quadratic formula in real life. Still searching for a chance to apply the Pythagorean theorem and outside of my last college math class I have never used slope...nope to slope.
BUT…”Holiday Math” is a totally different gig. Understanding percentages become critical for everyone throughout the Black Friday shopping frenzy…so many deals…or are there? Estimation comes in clutch when sizing up Christmas trees and stringing lights…how many feet of twinkle is needed to ensure a true winter wonderland? These questions must be answered before one begins the pokey process. Geometry and measurement skills become important while wrapping presents. Does the remaining wrapping paper have enough total area to cover all four sides of the present? Present wrapping is all about angle negotiation am I right? And how much ribbon is too much ribbon? Not enough and now the bow is a bust. Too much and it's total waste. Probability is a critical skill for mentally preparing for the seasonal small talk required at company office parties and family gatherings. Multiply and dividing fractions take center stage whenever considering holiday baking. Always grateful for each of these hard won mathematical skills but nothing seems more critical than carefully calculating the accurate person to pie ratio.
Tonight, I am grateful for pie…and I'm not talking about 3.1415926…I'm grateful for the round flaky, sometimes fruity, sometimes creamy delicious dessert of the season. Cherry. Peach. Chocolate Cream. Dutch Apple. The Kentucky Derby, which I learned last night, is the fancy name for chocolate chip cookie dough pie. Firm believer that a generous slice of my mother-in-law's apple or coconut cream pie can solve most world issues.
Brilliant. Delicious. Soul sustaining. Pie. It's the circumference of cream that makes the magic. It's the diameter of delicious-ness that we dream of. It's the crumb or crumble correlation that really brings the crowd. Varying sizes of people pleasing triangles come from the carefully created round. Some acute slices. Others slices more obtuse. Never refused an isosceles slice of delicious-ness. Pie perfection is my kind of math. And then…it's the advanced math...that upper division level stuff that is needed to accurately calculate a favorable person to pie ratio. One must speculate…will those attending reach for fruit filled double crust traditional slices or is this crowd more progressive pie eaters and will reach for some kind of creamy chocolate peanut butter or caramel filled number. One slice per person? Or will all guests want to sample all of them? These are the tricky tasks of the season.
Last night, at a cozy family gathering, the person to pie ratio was 14:8. I'm no math genius but I think that worked out to be that each person got at least ½ of a pie plus a few flavorful fork fulls. Woah. That's a whole lot of goodness in pie form and all in attendance drove away with several round wonders carefully wrapped in plastic bouncing around their back seats. The beauty of successfully calculating an accurate person to pie ratio is the generous guarantee that pie will be available for not just breakfast but for several days to come.
Grateful for “Holiday Math” and how it gets us through the season. Grateful for the invention of pie and for those who successfully calculated accurate pie ratios last night. Grateful to know that right now in my fridge I've got pie options…and as we know …options are always a good thing to have…especially this time of year.