asakiyume | Epic eruptions, dramatic pies

Yesterday at the blog The Blue and Green House, they talked about the year without a summer--1816, the year following the massive eruption of Mt. Tambora. In my neck of the woods, snow fell as late as June and as early as August--across Europe there were famine conditions from failed crops. Wikipedia says that there was so much aerosolized material in the atmosphere that sunspots were visible to the naked eye.

Later in the day, out of the blue,

wakanomori started telling me about one of the most powerful eruptions in recorded history, which he'd seen tweeted about. "Oh, maybe it was the eruption of Mt. Tambora," I said--fresh from my reading. He looked at me strangely and said, "Yeah, I think that's the one."

We both mused on why, in two separate venues, two separate people should have happened to talk about Mt. Tambora.

... And discovered that yesterday was the bicentennial of the eruption. Well then!

Meanwhile, on Twitter, people were tweeting humorous thoughts for new Hugo Award categories, and Nisi Shawl suggested, among other things, an award for Most Dramatic Pie.

So I decided to make a volcano pie--surely dramatic--to commemorate the bicentennial of Mt. Tambora's eruption. Behold the Pie:

Lots of red-lava chunks