Blackberries and Pie

I picked wild blackberries this morning and made some of them into a pie.

The chronology was: (1) pick berries amid bushes and brambles and in very high humidity; (2) Come home and wash poison ivy contamination off hands and arms; (3) wash poison ivy contaminated jeans, shirt and socks; (4) make pie. I wasn’t counting on the poison ivy, although I know that it grows well in berry patches. I was standing in it when I noticed that it was there. Oh, well.

Unfortunately, the drought has done a lot of damage to our local wild berries. A couple of weeks ago, in my favorite berry patch, I saw that a lot of blackberry bushes were dying with baby berries on them, and the berries looked like forlorn dried up raisins. When I went back to that spot today, about half the bushes were dead. However, some bushes have survived, and they are giving us small but good berries. Large blackberries are more desirable, but small ones are better than no berries. They produce more seeds per cubic inch of berry (to get caught in the food traps in our mouths), but we can’t have everything.

Pie is a wonderful part of Americana. For me, it is the all American dessert. When it’s good, it’s very, very good, and when it’s bad, it’s horrid. I make very good pie. Many grocery stores make very bad pie. Grocery store pies often have mass produced crusts that are not flaky and taste like straw. Since I believe that pies are more than fillings stuffed between soft cement crusts, I prefer to eat pies that I make.

My great aunt Lina used to make pie crust that was like hard cement; she mixed it too much. Needless to say, she didn’t teach me how to make pies. My mother did give a few pointers, although I actually never saw her make a pie. She gave me an important bit of advice, which I have followed with good results. She said not to mix the dough very much. My pie crust is flaky and delicious. Thanks, Mother.

My blackberry pie recipe is derived from my big fat falling-apart Better Homes & Gardens New Cook Book, 1953 edition, for the crust, and adapted a pie recipe on the box of Minute Tapioca, for the filling. The tapioca box doesn’t say how to make blackberry pie. It says how to make blueberry pie. Close enough. Since my cooking interest is in how to cook for one or two people, I cut the tapioca box recipe in half to make an eight-inch pie. If your kitchen does not have an eight-inch pie plate, you are likely to find one at a thrift store. Ditto for rolling pin.

Blackberry Pie – one eight-inch pie

2 cups fresh blackberries

½ cup sugar

2 tablespoons quick cooking tapioca)

Mix fruit, tapioca and sugar in bowl. Let stand 15 minutes. Make pie crust while waiting.

1 ½ cups all purpose flour (of course I think it is bad for us, but it makes good pie)

½ teaspoon salt

½ cup lard, butter or shortening; I use lard (I’ll have more to say about this later)

4 tablespoons cold water (about)

Stir together the flour and salt. Cut in the lard or other fat until pieces are the size of peas.  Sprinkle water, a tablespoon at a time, over the mixture. Gently mix with fork until all is moistened. Don’t mix too much. Form the mixture into a ball. Divide it in half. Flatten the first half slightly and roll it on a lightly floured pastry cloth or floured sheet of waxed paper. Roll the dough with light strokes, from center of the piece to the edges, so it makes a circle of dough about the size of the pie plate. Put the dough into the pie dish. I fold half over the other half, pick it up carefully and put it in the dish, and then unfold it.

Put berry/tapioca mixture into the pie plate on the bottom crust. Dot it with butter.  Moisten the peripheral edges of the bottom crust with water, all the way around. Roll the second half of the crust dough into a circle that will fit onto the pie plate. Seal the edges with fork or Fluting. I use a fork. Consult your cookbook to flute edges. Cut vent holes in crust with fork.  Bake the pie in a pre-heated oven at 400 degrees, for 45 or more minutes, until it is brown and done. If juices escape and drip onto your oven floor during baking, resign yourself. It’s still a good pie. You can put a cookie sheet under the pie dish to catch juices. I baked my pie in the toaster oven, so that option was not available.

Comment about fat:  fat is a big issue these days, but pie requires it. I think lard makes wonderful crust, but good lard is hard to find. The lard in the big box grocery stores is partly hydrogenated and not recommended unless you don’t care about your health. I can buy pasture raised, minimally processed local lard, frozen, at the Willy Street Coop (Madison and Middleton), which is the only place I have seen it. Lard contains cholesterol.  I don’t believe that cholesterol is bad for people, but that is another story. If good lard is not available, I recommend butter. A third choice is vegetable shortening, preferably not hydrogenated, although it does not lend flavor to the crust the way lard and butter do.  Purchased pie crust is available in grocery stores, and it is all right, but in my opinion, it lacks the character of home made crust. I don’t know what extra ingredients are in it, such as chemicals and flavorings.

Pollan and Bittman on Food

There is a lot of contradiction today in the eating department, but I found soul brothers in Michael Pollan and Mark Bittman, who might be called, in the current jargon, foodies. Environmentally conscious, health motivated, list making foodies. Neither is a doctor. Neither is a nutritionist. Both are writers.

During the last week I read, not for the first time, books by Pollan and Bittman, about our relationships with food. The two have a lot in common. Their shared messages are about food, health and our environment. They have little good to say about the way many Americans eat, and much to say about changing from what is called the western diet to a plant based diet. Pollan’s book is In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto (2008). Bittman’s book is Food Matters: a Guide to Conscious Eating (2009).

Pollan opens with: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” He says plants are what humans “should eat in order to be maximally healthy.”  Bittman says that to eat fewer of some foods and more of others will make you healthier, “much like trading in your gas guzzler for something more energy and cost efficient.” He says that trading in the western diet for older, more traditional diets, is “sane eating.”

Pollan attempts to define food, mostly by telling what food is not. He points out that large areas of supermarkets are selling “foodlike substitutes…products constructed largely around commerce and hope, supported by frightening little actual knowledge,” (quoting Joan Gussow).  His suggested foods are whole, unprocessed foods, without additives, derivatives and preservatives. Mostly plants.

Bittman, who is a food writer for the New York Times, says his guiding principle is “to eat less meat and junk food, eat more vegetables and whole grains.” He is not on the side of government policy, which he says supports industrial “Big Food.” Sane eating for him is eating fewer animal products and refined carbohydrates, like some traditional diets. He offers many suggestions for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Bread pudding for breakfast? It’s there.

Pollan has plenty to say about commercially produced bread. He points out that in grandmother’s day, bread was made of a few familiar ingredients: flour, yeast, water and salt. But now, for example, Sara Lee’s Soft & Smooth Whole Grain White Bread contains eighteen ingredients before coming to the long list of two percent or less ingredients. He also notices that whole grain and white flour once were contradictions, but apparently aren’t any more. Industrial bread, he says, has become a complicated product of food science, is not food, and is only labeled “bread” because the FDA permits it. Bittman also points out the shortcomings of refined carbohydrates, including most commercially produced bread, bagels, cake, muffins, pizza, sandwiches, and sugars, and their relationships to type two diabetes.

I said they are list makers. First, Pollan: (1)Don’t eat anything your great grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food; (2) don’t eat anything incapable of rotting (like Twinkies); (3) avoid food products containing ingredients that are unfamiliar, unpronounceable, more than five in number, or include high fructose corn syrup;(4)avoid food products that make health claims because the boldest claims are often founded on incomplete and often erroneous science; (5) shop the peripheries of the supermarket and stay out of the middle, where the processed food products are; (6) get out of the supermarket whenever possible, and eat from the farmers’ market or a CSA box.

Next, Bittman: (1)eat fewer animal products than average; (2) eat all the plants you can manage (gorge on them); (3) make legumes part of your life; (4) whole grains beat refined carbs; (5) snack on nuts or olives; (6) when it comes to fats, embrace olive oil; (7) everything else is a treat, and you can have treats daily; (8) cut back on animal protein gradually; (8) eat whole grains with other foods; (9) depend on seasonings; (10) always carry snacks to make impulsive stops for junk food less tempting. His suggested snacks include fresh fruit, nuts, hummus and crackers, cut up veggies, and others.

I was reading these books simultaneously, so some points are in one or the other, and I am not sure which.  Such as: (1) avoid eating anything with more than five ingredients; (2) eat local and organic; (3) eat vegan until dinner, and then eat a normal meal; (4) some meat is ok to eat if it is a side dish and not the main ingredient; (4) nutrition science focuses on nutrients rather than the whole food, and results in isolated nutrients, such as the acai berry, as ways to help obesity, chronic conditions or other problems, while nutrients do not act alone but in concert with the whole food; (5) the large amount of cattle raised to feed the world causes more pollution than does transportation.

Mark Bittman has a website: markbitman.com. Michael Pollan has a website: michaelpollan.com.

Fiftieth Anniversary

It was fifty years ago today. It was the happiest day of my life. It was my wedding. We were in love. We invented love.

Our wedding was at 4:00 p.m. at the Church of the Atonement in Fish Creek. It rained. Father Iwick was a recently ordained Episcopal priest, and just before the ceremony began, he said, “I’m a little bit nervous. It’s my first wedding.” The groom, Rick, responded, “It’s mine too.” My mother refused to have all the music that Fr. Iwick had provided, to be played on the ancient organ, and we were there with music she and I liked better.

And so it went. My father ushered me across the street from house to church under a big umbrella. My best friend, Sally Colburn, was maid of honor, and two UW friends were bridesmaids. Early in the service, Fr. Iwick said, as part of the liturgy, ”If any man can show just cause, why they may not lawfully be joined together, let him now speak, or else hereafter for ever hold his peace,” whereupon a huge clap of thunder crashed above us. God had spoken.

The reception was an outdoor reception at the White Gull Inn. We had grilled lamb on a spit plus turkey for people who didn’t want lamb. The proprietor cooked the lamb outdoors with an umbrella over the cooker. As I recall, the rain stopped before the reception began. We had lots of people.

We drove in his sportscar to New Orleans for our honeymoon and started to learn how to live together. When Rick died five children and forty-six years later, we were still learning how to live together. It wasn’t easy.

The Donut Disconnect

How are we to manage our health when the information we get is filled with disconnects? A big one is about the food we eat and the benefits it provides.  Here is just one. “[AARP] members can get a free donut when they buy a large or extra-large hot coffee and show their AARP membership card at participating Dunkin’Donuts.” (AARP Bulletin, June 2012, p. 30.)

The donut is a good example of a cakelike substance made mostly of white flour, sugar and fat. Many people like donuts. The Dunkin’ Donuts website proclaims, “Donuts, making people happy since 1950. Our Donuts have been bringing smiles since 1950 and are made in colorful and delicious varieties - there is a favorite for everyone.”

If only the donut would offer people something more than a way to gain weight and slowly kill themselves with degenerative diseases. To its credit, the donut does offer momentary bliss to the consumer and profit for the company that sells it.

The disconnect is about donuts and other barely nutritious foods and the purpose of food for our health. Americans shovel into their bodies a great amount of junk food. Food in general exists to fuel our bodies. The donut, in my opinion, does this poorly. And here is AARP, an organization committed to health for senior citizens, endorsing a donut offer on its website and in its bulletin. AARP has plenty to say about health related issues such as supporting Medicare. AARP reminds us about degenerative diseases such as heart disease, effects of stroke and diabetes, big killers of Americans. AARP sells health insurance.

And here is AARP offering to be the middleman for Dunkin’ Donuts by offering members donuts while expressing concern about high medical costs of Medicare. It is a big disconnect.

The donut is an example of a divorce between food and the need of people to survive. Food and medical care both are big business, but they don’t seem to coordinate well for the benefit of people. The commercial food producers create processed products that taste good, are easy to prepare (or assemble in some cases), and usually are inexpensive.  Nutrition is not the primary concern; profit is.

The purpose of the human body is not to be in the service of a for-profit food delivery system. I recommend a book about this, The Blood Sugar Solution: The UltraHealthy Program for Losing Weight, Preventing Disease, and Feeling Great Now!, by Mark Hyman (Little, Brown and Company, 2012), which has a chapter about the disconnect between food, drugs and profits. The chapter is “How Big Food, Big Farming, and Big Pharma Are Killing Us.”  Hyman is a doctor, and his book is about health.  Among other things, he says, “The toxic triad of Big Farming, Big Food, and Big Pharma profits from a nation of sick and fat citizens. The government essentially stands in line next to you in fast-food chains helping you buy cheeseburgers, fries, and cola.” (p. 46.) Hyman offers a seven step program to enhance the connection of the body with health. It does not include eating donuts.

I am not proposing a government solution. I am suggesting that we might have better outcomes if food companies, drug companies, organizations like AARP, and the government would coordinate their relationships for the good of people’s health. That way people would not have to live with disconnects like the one between a donut and long life.

Bluephie's and Apostrophes

English teachers, rejoice. You have nothing to lose but your correcting pens.

This is about Bluephie’s Restaurant and Vodkatorium (www.bluephies.com). It’s not just the food, which is good. It’s the menu. The menu is an English teacher’s delight, or possibly nightmare. Every English teacher should print its online version and take it to school for his/her students to correct, by filling in the missing letters that are replaced with apostrophes, and by correcting the uses of small rather than capital letters. For me, this menu is a lesson in apostrophes. It’s also about capital letters, but that is secondary.

Bluephie’s lunch menu, in its zeal to appear informal and folksy, has given the lowly apostrophe a workout.  Examples are plentiful. “serve ‘em up.” “billy’s burger bar.” “today’s selections.” ol’ fashioned cooking.” “ Lots o’ shrimp.” “lots o’ shrimp.”  “honkin’ big tortilla.” “lil’ bites.” “that’s right.” “I’ll have that.” “big ol’ cake.”

The English language uses the apostrophe as a stand-in for letter omissions, as seen in the lunch menu. It is used to show correction, as in the name of the restaurant. It is a major workhorse for people who prefer to abridge their words. I give Bluephie’s good grades for over-using the punctuation mark correctly, although I am not sure about “lil’ bites.” Should it be “li’l’ bites?”

Some other uses of the apostrophe might be confusing. For example, Bluephie’s has a kids menu with no apostrophe on the online link. Might it be a personal menu for one kid, as a kid’s menu? Might it be for all the kids, as a kids’ menu? Bluephie’s doesn’t say. Plurals are a problem for a lot of people. Bluephie’s might have chosen to have a children’s menu rather than a kids menu. “Children” is plural, so the apostrophe goes before the final “s.” Fortunately, Bluephie’s seems to have avoided the “its” and “it’s” situation. They say, “That’s right,” and sidestep that issue. We English majors know that “it’s” means “it is,” and the possessive “its” has no apostrophe.

The Bluephie’s lunch menu uses hardly any capital letters. (More folksy fun?) Even “billy’s burger bar” refers to billy without the upper case. On the home page, not the menu, is the question, “Have you ‘ate’ today?” Actually, this one goes on to use “ate” with other words using “ate” such as “celebrate.”

I think I’ll go to billy’s burger bar for some ol’ fashioned cooking. I’ll try the honkin’ big tortilla and some big ol’ cake. I have one more question. What’s a vodkatorium?

Springfield Visit

I went to Springfield, Illinois, last weekend.  Springfield tourism is about Abraham Lincoln, and that is why I went there. Springfield is the capital of Illinois, but political presence was not as evident as the remembered presence of the deceased President.  The city seemed quiet to me after living with the ongoing activity of Madison.

Lincoln reminders abound, especially statues. Other reminders include his home, his tomb, the presidential museum and library, the old state capitol building (Illinois now uses a different capitol building), Lincoln’s law office, and even a church pew that his family used.  A church pew in a different church than the family church and that Lincoln didn’t use was a bit over the top for me, so we didn’t try to find it. We left our car at the hotel and walked to everything except the tomb, to which we drove. It was a good but short adventure.

My daughter Dolores (a.k.a. Dede and Dori) and her boyfriend Tom came with me. My little Toyota Yaris was filled with us and our bags. It’s a small car. We made the best of it.

Tourist attractions are easy to find. Springfield has at least two visitor centers that were staffed with helpful people. We needed to buy tickets for the Lincoln home. No luck at the visitor centers; we had to go to the visitor building near the home to get them. We were given maps of the downtown area, so it was easy to find other places of interest.

The Lincoln home, a National Historic Site, is restored to what apparently was its appearance when the Lincolns lived there. That was our first stop and the beginning of what I called the B.S. factor emanating from tour guides. Our guide in the home had plenty of anecdotes to tell about the family, and some of it probably was true. The house was very interesting, with floral wallpaper and very colorful carpets. The historic preservation people even preserved the family’s outhouse. The sidewalk is a boardwalk. The street is gravel with blacktop showing through. Good attempts at showing how people lived in Lincoln’s time.

I enjoyed the Abraham Lincoln Historical Museum and the old state capitol building. The historical museum is composed of exhibits that include a replica of Lincoln’s boyhood home in Indiana, and the front of the White House as it formerly appeared, into which visitors proceed to see other display areas. We saw a very poignant replica of a slave auction. A few video clips were playing. I especially liked one that featured the late Tim Russert doing a television newscast of the 1860 presidential election campaign. He did it in the style of today’s campaigns. He told the campaign story and mixed in fake political commercials sponsored by fake pacs. I laughed a lot. It was a good way to bring the 1860 story to life. Needless to say, Russert recorded this before he died.

The old state capitol building shows the simplicity of government as it was in the 1860s. We didn’t stay with the tour guide, whose anecdotal commentary carried the B.S. factor pretty far and made the tour very  long. The rooms are furnished in the style of the period and are well labeled. Large painted portraits of famous people are there, including George Washington and his young companion LaFayette, who assisted in the American Revolution.

We had prioritized our visit so we didn’t see everything due to time constraints. We omitted the Presidential Library.  We walked past the governor’s mansion and skipped the tour of the Frank Lloyd designed home after hearing that the tour would take an hour. We found the Episcopal Cathedral but it was locked. Restaurants were satisfactory but not nearly as fascinating as the restaurants around the capitol building in Madison. We found no Occupy Wall Street demonstrators around the Illinois capital building. Our last stop was the Lincoln tomb, which is occupied by the family, with the exception of son Robert, who is buried somewhere else.

A stop on the way to Springfield was at Starved Rock State Park near Ottawa, Illinois . We climbed the rock. It had stairways that made the climb relatively easy for most people. The view at the top is worth the climb. I’m glad we stopped there.

St. Dunstan's Library News April

This is my article for the church newsletter.

Here is the latest news from St. Dunstan’s Library. The library is waiting for you, right downstairs and down the hall. It’s open all the time. We have more than a thousand books on various aspects of the faith. With about 350 recent additions, the library has something for everyone.

You may have heard the news about the upcoming retirement of Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury. If you want to know more about him, come to our library. We have Rowan Williams: an Introduction, by Rupert Short, published in 2003. The book covers Williams’ career and evolution as a thinker. If you need still more, try these books by Archbishop Williams: Anglican Identities;   Lost Icons.  Tokens of Trust;  The Truce of God;  On Christian Theology;  Resurrection.

To use the library, just find the book you want. The books are arranged alphabetically by author’s last name. Books with no author (yes, they exist!) are in the alphabetical list by title. The collection is arranged in a few categories, including Bibles and commentaries, nonfiction, arboretum collection, fiction, children’s books, music, DVD and VHS recordings (only a few), and pamphlets and tracts.

After you find a book, check it out. In the notebook on the shelf, write your name, the author and title of the book, and the date you take it. Keep it until you finish and then remember to return it to the designated return shelf. It’s the same shelf where you find the checkout notebook.

Happy reading!