Impossible to Spell

Like, 'Am I 6’ tall and standing far from you, or 5'5" and right here?? You can’t tell!' 

Katy made me promise to post the recipe for this, THE MOST AMAZING PIE IN THE WORLD, a million years ago and I never did because I’m lazy.  This is kind of a fall thing I guess but I’m pretty sure it’ll be real good at any time.

SAVORY APPLE PIE

Ingredients:

Pie crust - I made a pâte brisee crust using this recipe. It was perfect and you should do it too, but you could probably also substitute a different pie crust or even the pre-made ones.

Three large baking apples - mine were Jonagold

Brie cheese

2 large-ish onions, white or yellow probably

A couple tablespoons olive oil

2-3 tablespoons butter

A small handful of sage leaves

A sprig of rosemary 

A sprinkling of nutmeg

Directions:

Peel your onions, cut them in half, and slice them up. Put them in a skillet with a drizzle of olive oil over medium heat. Cook them for an hour, stirring only occasionally, until they become soft and brown and start smelling incredible. If they start to dry out while they’re cooking, add a little water to keep them soft. You can also sprinkle in some salt and sugar. A more thorough explanation is here.

Make your pie crust. You’ll need a crust for the bottom and a crust to go over the top. Put the bottom pie crust in a pie plate/pan. You don’t need to grease the pan since there’s so much butter in the crust.

Brown the butter. I’ve explained this in recipes before, but you’re basically putting the butter in a skillet over medium heat until it turns brown and starts smelling nutty. While it’s browning, throw in a few of the sage and rosemary leaves. For a more detailed explanation of browning butter, check my recipe for pumpkin gnocchi.

Peel your apples and cut them into fairly thin slices. Put a layer of apple slices into your bottom crust.

Cut up the brie into thin slices. Put a layer of brie slices on top of the apple layer. 

Periodically tear up a few of the sage leaves and some rosemary and layer them into the pie. Sprinkle in a little bit of nutmeg. Periodically drizzle some of the browned butter over the pie ingredients.

Continue layering apple slices/brie slices/herbs/browned butter. When the pie is about half full, spread your nice brown caramelized onions on top of your layers of ingredients. 

Finish layering your remaining apple slices/brie slices/herbs/browned butter on top of the caramelized onions.

Put the top crust on. Make sure to make a few slits in the top. (You can also do the fancy criss-cross thing if you want.)

Bake at 400 for an hour-ish. You’ll know it’s done when you can see the sides of the pie starting to bubble and the crust is a nice golden brown.

Biologists Induce Flatworms to Grow Heads and Brains of Other Species

Biologists at Tufts University have succeeded in inducing one species of flatworm to grow heads and brains characteristic of another species of flatworm without altering genomic sequence. The work reveals physiological circuits as a new kind of epigenetics - information existing outside of genomic sequence - that determines large-scale anatomy.  

The finding that head shape is not hard-wired by the genome but can be overridden by manipulating electrical synapses in the body suggests that differences in species could be determined in part by the activity of bioelectrical networks. The discovery could help improve understanding of birth defects and regeneration by revealing a new pathway for controlling complex pattern formation. It has long been known that neural networks exploit bioelectric synapses to store and re-write information in the brain.

The findings are detailed in the cover story of the November 2015 edition of the International Journal of Molecular Sciences, appearing online Nov. 24.

~*~~follow for more soft biology~~*~

After protests over the erasure of trans women of color from Robert Emmerich’s Stonewall, expectations are high for the short film Happy Birthday, Marsha!, about trans activist Marsha P. Johnson. If the trailer’s any indication, this movie will slay!

Marsha features acclaimed Tangerine star Mya Taylor in the title role.

The trailer shows off a sumptuous, hyper-real 60’s aesthetic.

The film also features trans actresses Eve Lindley, Cherno Biko, and Rios O’Leary-Tagiuri.

There’s even a glimpse of Marsha P. Johnson herself in the trailer!

That’s right — it’s gonna be legendary.

BuzzFeed News caught up with filmmakers Reina Gossett and Sasha Wortzel, who showed us some wonderful exclusive images from the making of the movie.

Gossett told BuzzFeed News: “The pictures were all taken during the shooting of our ‘Hotel Dixie’ scene in which Marsha, Sylvia, Bambi and Andorra are hanging out in a hotel room they share.The scene is a flashback to 1965 when Sylvia is new to their scene and to sex work. Marsha is acting a as a sort of mentor to Sylvia.”

Commenting on the rich look of the film, Gossett notes: “We wanted the movie to reflect Marsha’s beauty. She wasn’t really fancy but she was fanciful, and when we talk about aesthetics it’s about the beauty of how she relates to other people.”

Wortzel adds: “Frequently people expect that if a film is political it’s not going to be beautiful. It was really important for us to make a film that was deeply political and personal in many ways but also gorgeous to look at.”

I found out why after I’d been working there, oh, about a month. My period started suddenly, as it sometimes does, and I asked to excuse myself to go to the ladies’ room. He wanted to know why. I told him.

He started ranting about how lazy women were. How we wasted time. How we were so careless and unhygenic, and that there was no call for that. He finished by telling me that I certainly was NOT going to the ladies’ room and that I was just going to sit there and work. He finished this off with a decisive nod, as if I’d just been told and there could be no possible argument.

“If I don’t go,” I said in an overly patient tone, “the blood is going to soak through my pants, stain my new skirt that I just bought, and possibly get on this chair I’m sitting in. I need something to soak up the blood. That’s why I need to go to the bathroom.”

His face turned oatmeal-gray; an expression of pure horror spread across his face. He leaned forward and whispered, “Wait, you mean that if you don’t go, you’ll just keep on bleeding? I thought that women could turn it off any time that they wanted!”

I thought,  You have got to be kidding.

Several horrified whispers later, I learned that he wasn’t. He actually thought a) that women could shut down the menstrual cycle at will, b) that we essentially picked a week per month to spend more time in the bathroom, i.e. to goof off, and c) that napkins and tampons were sex toys paid for by Health and Human Services. I didn’t know the term then, but he believed that tampons were dildos. Which was why he and a good number of his friends considered them luxuries.