Bert Marie Callender’s pie became a Thanksgiving meme: That’s what happened

With Thanksgiving right around the corner, let’s take a look back at our interview with the ubiquitous grandmother who lit a pie on fire and became a meme that starts spreading back in November every year.

Updated November 23, 2022: A year later, We are checking With Sharon to see how fame treats her.

Memes come out of nowhere, and they don’t take a vacation. On Thanksgiving 2021, a Georgia grandmother named Sharon Weiss burned Marie Callender’s pumpkin pie, posted a photo on the food company’s Facebook page, and bitterly wrote, “Thank you Marie Callender for ruining my Thanksgiving dessert.”

But this was no ordinary holiday dinner mistake. The pie in the photo looks like it was excavated from the ruins of Pompeii. The crust was black, the filling was black, and in a delightful addition, the top of the black filling was broken off to reveal the soft—but still perfectly torched—filling underneath.

Social media users were quick to jump on the disaster, pointing out that even Christmas logs don’t burn, sitting directly in the fireplace.

Sharon Marie Callendar Pie #BurnedAlongWithTheYuleLog pic.twitter.com/QnVdpJYzUp

– Marky Mark (@Doh_Is_Me) December 21, 2021

Here’s the update you’ve been dying for. Sharon Weiss and Mary Callender have reconciled, and Weiss tells me that she now knows why her pie looks like it was thrown into Death Mountain by… Lord of the Rings.

“When I first took the pie out and saw how burnt it was, I immediately thought there was something wrong with the pie or the instructions,” Weiss told me. “My comment on Marie Callender was reckless.”

But then Weiss tried baking a turkey breast for Thanksgiving, which also came out looking burnt, “which made me realize there might be a problem with the oven,” Weiss said.

Before calling an appliance repair shop, Weiss’s husband, Josh, discovered that the error was user error — just as the Internet had announced.

“Somehow, the baking temperature changed from Fahrenheit to Celsius,” Weiss told me. “The result was that when I set the temperature to 375, it was actually closer to 700 degrees Fahrenheit.” (707, to be exact.)

That’s right, it wasn’t Marie Callender’s fault at all. Weiss’s simple pumpkin pie had met its end in a seven-hundred-degree oven.

Or… close to it. Most home ovens have a temperature of around 500 degrees Fahrenheit or so, but even if a Weiss oven doesn’t reach 700 degrees Fahrenheit, it’s still putting out a lot more heat than that poor pie requires.

“We were able to switch back to Fahrenheit by simply pressing a few buttons on the stove,” Weiss said. “Problem solved.”

But before this F/C revelation, Weiss’s impulsive Facebook comment blaming Marie Callender went viral online. People have been using Facebook’s “Safe” label to mark themselves as safe from Weiss Pie. One person joked that Weiss would be asked to bring snow to the next holiday gathering, using a photo of Charcoal to show “Sharon’s Snow.”

“Did you get a free jar when you bought this pie?” Someone asked.

10. pic.twitter.com/rbrrSnTjdO

– 🥶❄Shay❄🥶 (@cherokee_autumn) December 3, 2021

Weiss was alerted early that her post had been noticed.

“My daughter called me and said, ‘Mom, you went viral! All my friends are asking if that’s you!'” Weiss said.

But instead of sitting around fuming over her newfound fame, Weiss dealt with it. She called Mary Callender and said, “We have collectively agreed to remove my position.” And now you can’t find a bigger fan of the company than the woman who once thought it ruined Thanksgiving.

“It was very clear to me from the beginning that they wanted to make things right,” Weiss told me. The company posted a Christmas greeting joking about the spoilers, with the hashtag #SharonSomePie. And Weiss A video was shot To promote National Pancake Day, the company displayed a giant timer and told viewers to set their ovens to “Fahrenheit, not Charonheit.”

As for the famous T-Day itself, Weiss says that once the oven temperature returned to the familiar degree Fahrenheit, she baked another pie (yes, Marie Callender pie again), “and it was delicious.”

Not only that, but her family brought back “Thanksgiving” just weeks after the holiday. This time, her adult children took care of all the cooking and baking, “and it was stress-free.”

But what happened to the original volcano-burnt pumpkin pie?

“Actually,” Weiss admits, “the pie was put out there…and it disappeared.”