Last Friday was Pi Day. It is a day where math lovers celebrate a concept that has roots going back to the astronomer Archimedes in 250 B.C.

The simple way to express Pi is 22/7. However, when you divide 22 by 7 you get 3.14285714. Actually, you will run out of ink in your pen because the division seemingly goes on forever.

Pi turns out to be the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter.

I was on the Mathlete team in high school, competing with other high schools in New York State. I could spend column space talking about interesting things about Pi. For example, Egyptians used Pi in the construction of the Great Pyramid. If you divide the perimeter by the pyramid’s height you 2Pi.

Luckily for my readers this column is not about the mathematical Pi. It is about the making of large pies as in pizza, cherry and pumpkin. Here are some large pies that Have been cited by the Guinness Book of World Records.

You realize that Fall is coming when the leaves begin to burst out in colors. The advertisements in magazines and on television leads you to believe that every known food or drink item must include pumpkin as an ingredient to earn a spot on the shelves. 

Believing that you can never have too much of a good thing on September 25, 2010, pumpkin pie history was made. In the town of New Bremen, Ohio, dozens of trained pastry chefs joined forces with the giant pumpkin growers of the of the area to create the stuff of dreams. They baked the world’s largest pumpkin pie. It was officially recognized by the Guinness Book of records as the second largest pie ever made coming up short of a potato pie baked in Peru in 2004 that also is in the Guinness World Records, but this pumpkin pie clocked in with a 20 foot diameter and weighed over 3600 pounds. The ingredients were 200 cans of pumpkin toot, 200 dozen eggs, 100 gallons of evaporated milk and 525 lbs. of sugar. It produced 500 servings of the treat. The pie also featured 3 lbs. of pumpkin pie spice, 7 lbs. of salt and 4.5 lbs. of cinnamon.

On the shores of Lake Michigan in an area known as “cherry farm country.” Two competing bakeries share the record for the largest cherry pie. The town of Charlevoix Michigan was the first into the mix. They set out to bake the world’s largest cherry pie. They built a giant pan along with an equally big oven. Their cherry pie weighed over 1700 lbs. The town of Traverse City, not to be outdone by their neighbor, has its own cherry festival. They baked a cherry pie that put the one that Chevrolet to shame. This one weighed over 28,000 pounds and nearly 18 feet in diameter. 

It was only a matter of time before a pizza pie battled it out to for the distinction of has the Guinness Book of Records. The current record holder is a round pizza pie manufactured by Pizza Hut. It was a classic New York style pizza meaning it was crafted to be not just large but foldable. It features an amazing 9000 lbs of cheese sprinkled on 3700 lbs of dough with a layer of marinara sauce in between. The sauce alone weighed close to 5000 lbs. the pizza was topped with precisely 630,496 slices of pepperoni. This New York style pizza was made in Los Angeles. To make the world’s largest pie it needed an arena instead of an oven. It took a whole crew of workers to complete the test that assumed the full length of the Los Angeles Convention Center. 

If they had measured the circumference and the diameter of the pizza they would have produced the first pizza pie Pi. That’s amore!

Hudson Cooper is a resident of Sullivan County, a writer, comedian and actor.