the church of the wild wood

The best part of any well made pie is the crust. It’s also the hardest part to master–I have cried over many, many failed pie crusts. So many, in fact, that my friend Ryan guessed that the secret ingredient to my pie crusts is tears. 

But last March when I was selling pie to buy a plane ticket home to Georgia and I made about 30 pies in two weeks, my pie crust making technique was majorly streamlined. I now can reliably make a perfect pie crust in about fifteen minutes. Pie crusts are a mystical thing, and what works for one person may not work for another, but for what it’s worth, I’ve written out my own method. Feel free to try it and see if it works for you!

INGREDIENTS

¾ cup Crisco or other vegetable shortening

2 cups flour

1 tsp salt

6 Tbsp (¼ cup) ice cold water

The trick I’ve found to making a crust that’s not to dry or crumbly is in the order of mixing the ingredients. I start by putting all of the crisco in a bowl, all of the salt, and ½ cup of flour and 2 tbsps of water. Using my pastry blender, I mix all the ingredients until blended. Then I add another ½ cup of flour and again, mix until blended. I keep doing this until I’ve added all the flour and water, and then mix it until it’s fairly solid. 

At some point, ditch the pastry blender and stick your hands in there. Form all the dough into one big ball, and then break the ball in half, making two smaller balls. Each ball of dough is one pie crust–so this recipe could either make two pies with just a bottom crust, like pecan pie or pumpkin pie, or one pie with a top and bottom, like apple pie.

Now, you need a place to roll your dough out! I have an awesome marble slab that I got and it’s incredible and perfect because it’s smooth and cool and nothing sticks to it, but it’s expensive so only worth it if you make a lot of pies. You can also use a piece of pastry cloth, or even just wax paper taped to your counter.

Sprinkle about ¼ cup of flour over your rolling surface and spread it out with your hand, and then take one lump of dough and turn it into a big flattened disk, like the same shape as a jelly filled donut. Sprinkle a little more flour on top, and start rolling!

The trick to successfully using a rolling pin is, like most things in life, patience. Resist the urge to do your best impression of a crazed baker, leaning into the dough and rolling back and forth like you’re rowing a boat or something. Always start in the middle of the dough and roll towards the edge. Roll away from you, and then pick up the rolling pin and go back to the middle and roll toward yourself. Go around the dough, rolling evenly in each direction. Don’t press down too hard–it’s better to get a heavy pin (I have a marble one) and let it do the work for you. Sprinkle and spread flour on the dough as you go to keep it from sticking to your rolling pin. 

Your crust making endeavors could be going great up to this point, but then maybe you try to pick it up and move it to your pie pan and it TEARS IN HALF. True devastation. A good way to prevent this is to lightly flip the crust in half–if you have a pastry cloth or wax paper, you can just fold the entire cloth or paper in half and then peel it back. Then pick up the crust and set it in your pie pan and unfold it. Much less risky.

Take a knife or scissors and trim off the excess dough, leaving about 1" around the edge of the pie pan. If you do have any tears or gaps, it’s fine! Just use some of your excess dough and wet the back of it with cool water and patch up any mishaps. Now it just looks cool and rustic. Don’t even worry about it. 

Finally, if you’re making a single crust pie, take the excess dough and fold it down. You can make cool designs in it if you want, or take your fingers and crimp around the edge. If you’re making a double crust pie, wait until you’ve got your filling and top crust in place, and then roll the two crusts together and crimp them with your fingers or a fork. (I think doing it with your fingers looks cooler.) 

Democratic congressional candidate Jon Ossoff trounced his Republican opponents by 30 points in the special election for Georgia’s 6th Congressional District, which is all the more remarkable when you consider that a Republican state legislator openly admitted that the district’s lines were drawn to disenfranchise Black voters and beat Democrats like Ossoff.

The special election in Georgia’s 6th Congressional District — to fill the seat vacated by Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price — is turning out to be symbolic on many levels.

Democrat Jon Ossoff’s 30-point clobbering of the Republican field, for a seat Republicans have held for four decades, is a powerful referendum on Donald Trump’s presidency and shows that his plummeting approval could mean major problems for Republicans in the 2018 midterms.

Even more remarkable is that Ossoff just barely missed the 50 percent mark necessary to avoid a runoff — no small feat in such a solidly Republican district. But Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez’s explanation for why Ossoff was not able to pull off a knock-out win is highly troubling:

“Here’s what I do know. We haven’t controlled that seat in 37 years. And the Republicans in Georgia gerrymandered the heck out of it.”

Gerrymandering is the process of drawing district lines in order to favor the candidate of one party over the other, and Republicans got to do a lot of that by virtue of the wave election in 2010. While corporate media types like National Journal’s Josh Kraushaar skeptically call the issue a “crutch” for Democrats, it turns out we do not have to take Perez’s word for it.

There is an even more reliable source to confirm the accusation and its racist intent: Georgia’s Republican state Senator Fran Millar. According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Millar recently let the racist cat out of the bag:

According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Millar recently let the racist cat out of the bag:

At a GOP breakfast on the district’s eastern DeKalb outskirts, state Sen. Fran Millar criticized Democrats who think it’s a “done deal that this kid’s going to become the Congressman.  I’ll be very blunt:  These lines were not drawn to get Hank Johnson’s protégé to be my representative. And you didn’t hear that,” said Millar. “They were not drawn for that purpose, OK? They were not drawn for that purpose.”

Millar’s reference to Rep. Hank Johnson (D-GA), who is Black, is not very subtle. Such an admission would likely prompt a federal civil rights investigation, if the Department of Justice were not under the control of the blatantly racist Jeff Sessions, whose own career has included attempts to disenfranchise Black voters. Such disenfranchisement has been further enabled by a conservative-dominated Supreme Court that gutted the Voting Rights Act, and a Republican-controlled Congress that refuses to fix the problem.

Those factors have made Ossoff’s hill a good bit steeper to climb, as it has for other Democrats. But they are also a beacon at the top of that hill, reminding us that if we are to regain those things we lost, then climb we must.

🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸

 ➢ Kindly read that last paragraph again –  & then consider donating to the Ossoff campaign:

https://electjon.com  – (Contribution prompt on home pg., upper right corner)

GA 6th District Special Election                                                    🇺🇸   VOTE your OSSOFF on JUNE 20th!   🇺🇸

➣ Go here:  electjon.com

Cecropia Moth (Hyalophora cecropia)

What flies in the night, is almost as big as a bat, is brown and red and white, and (possibly) lives in your own backyard?

You may never have seen one, but chances are good you’ve hosted giant Cecropia Moths at some phase of their lives. Adult Cecropia Moths, the largest North American moth, flaunt their nearly 6-inch wingspan after dark, but vanish against tree trunks during daylight.

Caterpillars eat leaves from many common backyard trees, and grow to fat, green, 5-inch sausages on their diet. Every bite these caterpillars eat counts twice as much, since they’re also eating for their future selves.

Adult Cecropias live for up to two weeks on energy stored from their youth, because after pupating, Cecropias never eat another bite.

photo by Mark Beckemeyer | Flickr CC

Shirley Chisholm. As the first black woman to run for president for a major political party, she was years ahead of her time. So why don’t more people know about her?

She championed a bill to ensure domestic workers received benefits, was an advocate for improved access to education, and fought for the rights of immigrants.

“She had guts, and she made people believe that they too can be someone, that we are equal, that gender doesn’t mean you can’t achieve the highest office of government,” her goddaughter Marya Boseley says.

That desire to break boundaries was what drove Shirley Chisholm to make a run for president in 1972, seeking the Democratic nomination a mere three years after she became a congresswoman.

Ms Chisholm, whose slogan was “Unbought and Unbossed,” said she never expected to win but hoped her candidacy would “change the face and future of American politics”.

“I stand before you today, to repudiate the ridiculous notion that the American people will not vote for qualified candidates, simply because he is not white or because she is not a male,” she told supporters as she launched her campaign.

I never heard her name in school. Other than hearing Method Man say “I voted for Shirley Chisholm” on Blackout, I knew nothing about her til I read about her on the internet as an adult.

The Democratic Party really fucked Shirley Chisolm over because they wanted a “safe” candidate in George Mcgovern. Then they lost to Nixon.