Thursday, October 11, 2007

We're Going to Need More Pie

The other day I got embroiled on a newsgroup in one of those endless discussions/debates/headbangings about what the best approach to greening the planet is. Of course, all of you know that my defining characteristics are my reasonableness, aversion to confrontation and sensitivity, so my role here was to calm the hot tempers and settle the differences of others, which I do from my sheer love of humanity. I provided a calm and rational perspective that I know helped settle everything right down, because that's just the kind of healing, caring person I am.

Ok, just on the off chance that anyone involved in that group says otherwise, I want ask you upfront, who will you believe - them or me? After all, the people saying I was fanning the flames of this stupid umm...integral argument are nothing more than two or three hundred ordinary voices, where as I am a professional idio...author. I daily produce hundreds of words that are pulled randomly out of my a...er...finely crafted and honed for maximum effect. Sometimes the words even make sentences. Once in a while even grammatical sentences. These words are read by as many as eight or nine people around the world every single day. So you can certainly imagine that my ravings...um wisdom should outrank the sworn testimony of several hundred people.

So you'll be proud to know that I, of course, natural leader that I am, did come up with a healing solution, something that we could come together on, a real commitment to change, a possible solution to the profound difficulties wrought upon us by the Great Change that comes sweeping over the (ok, stupid metaphor deleted).. But I did have an idea.

The idea was pie. And my position is that I'm for it. I know this is just the kind of hard-edged, radical position taking that you can expect on this blog, the reason you know you can turn here first to hear opinions that are beholden to no one...except the guy up the road with the cherry trees, who I can't afford to piss off if I want pie. But this kind of risky political statement in favor of pie is just the sort of thing I know you'll wish to support by donating a large portion of your salary to keep me going. Just click on the button below that says "big heaping wads of cash."

I'm in favor of pie. I mean, what could be better than pie? It is commonly associated with good, noble things like motherhood, America, light bondage and domination, clowns and the federal reserve, so how could we not be for pie? In fact, who isn't for pie? Well...I have to tell you the ugly truth. There are powerful anti-pie interests in our government, and people working night and day to restrict your pie access. But we here at Casaubons book (Who is "we" you ask in puzzlement? Well, Sharon has obviously gone off the deep end writing her book, as you can tell from this post, so mostly the voices in her head. But they sometimes wear cool hats, and one of them is named "Leo.") are committed to bringing you the truth about pie access and other equally crucial issues, like socks and beer.

It occurred to me, as I was healing the rift in this newsgroup brought on by unnamed troublemakers not named Sharon, that pie can do a great deal to heal our environmental crisis. For example, today's climate change and peak oil news was particularly awful. There's the coal, the war, the monks in Burma. There's the fact that even if we halved our emissions, global warming will keep going for 600 years http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/44719/story.htm . There's the mass extinctions. The fact that one of the few bits of environmental good news, the reforestation of the east is threatened by us: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/07/nyregion/nyregionspecial2/07rCOVER.html?_r=1&ref=nyregionspecial2&pagewanted=all&oref=slogin There's the money news. All in all, I think the only possible reaction (other than hysterical weeping) to all this bad news on a cool, grey October afternoon is to put on fuzzy pajamas, bunny slippers and eat half a pie. Or to drink a lot of local beer, I guess. Heck, you could drink beer and eat pie together.

Yes, I know that’s pathological of me, but sometimes a retreat into pathology is rather comforting. I doubt I’m the only person who has ever responded to the bad news about our environment by thinking “apple or pumpkin?” The reality is whether we believe in stockpiling ammo or creating sustainable ecovillages, the need to derive comfort where we can is our common ground. Pie can bring us together. And that unifying power isn’t limited to the peak oil movement – pie can cross religious, cultural and national boundaries. While there may be deep cultural divisions between those who believe that you should make your sweetened orange vegetable pies with sweet potatoes and those who vote for pumpkin, I believe these barriers can be crossed, if only we’ll just take a piece of each with a lot of whipped cream.

Pie can be a powerful political motivator as well. Right now, money tends to be the most powerful tool in politics, but let us not underestimate the influence of pie. Pies in the face are a powerful tool of political resistance in Europe. I’ve heard rumors that Bill Clinton sent the Haitians back because the republicans offered him all the blueberry pies he wanted. Dick Cheney regularly sits around nude, plotting his attacks on Middle Eastern countries while eating entire mince pies. If he gets indigestion, he invades – a reliable source tells me it is as simple as that. This kind of inside information isn’t easy to come by – the author had to send several pies to congressional aides. Fortunately, they are sleep deprived, wired on coffee and morally bankrupt so bribing them with pie is very easy.

But pie is also essentially, deeply democratic. Pie is an essential ingredient in town-meeting style democracy in many New England states, along with baked beans. And pie is about democracy – fundamental pie (and pasties, empanadas, dumplings, wontons and all the other pie relatives) are about stretching high value foods to share with everyone. If you have six apples and ten guests, someone gets screwed, unless you put them between two crusts with some spices and call it pie – everyone gets a piece of sweet apple, everyone gets some crust. Pies are a way of getting maximum enjoyment from high-value foods. Meat, fruit, spices – these things are special. But they can be enjoyed regularly if carefully combined with filling starches. They are about democracy, frugality, comfort and family.

And pies are things that you have to produce either for yourself or in your locality. The truth is that frozen pie crust tastes awful, and that Sara Lee pies taste like corn syrup, which is what they are mostly made from. Real pie. Good pie comes either out of your kitchen or a local bakery or diner where they make it fresh every single day from real ingredients. Pies are part of a whole lifestyle – if you want to eat pie, you have to cook, or you have to have a little Mom and Pop bakery. And those things are democratic too – as opposed to corporatist.

Sure, you say, but if I eat too much pie, I’ll get fat. And lord knows, that’s a real possibility. But here’s the thing. How many of you have ever met a really fat Amishman? I haven’t. And they eat pie more or less constantly, or so my Amish neighbors tell me. Pie can power a human-powered lifestyle in the way that junky processed crap can’t. Certainly the Amish cookbooks I’ve seen are filled with pies. And back when dessert (or breakfast in New England) was routinely pie, people were a lot thinner. One might argue that pie isn’t what makes you fat – it is not living the pie lifestyle. Because the pie lifestyle means picking berries or walking to the bakery. It means eating pie as a treat, and as the place where you put your special festival foods that you don’t have all the time, while most of you meals are basic, beans, rice, greens, vegetables. Instead, our breakfasts are poptarts, which despite a plastic resemblance are not pies at all – because they aren’t actually food. The poptart lifestyle makes you fat, the pie lifestyle makes you thin, or thinner.

Pie makes you thin. It brings about democracy. It brings about agrarian or relocalized societies and economies. It provides comfort, crossing political lines. People talk about oil as the “master resource” but perhaps we need to start reconsidering the power of pie to create a sustainable, human powered economy. Pie-centered societies, ones that provide a chicken in every pot pie, are what we're striving for. We can all consume less, and still have an evenly distributed piece of the pie.

Which is why I must say to you with a heavy heart – we are facing peak pie. Corporate interventions, and the “better than homemade” slogan has resulted in a US population that mostly doesn’t know how to cook anymore. Millions of people think that pumpkin comes from a can. Farmers are still going out of business at an appalling rate. The majority of our pie ingredients are contaminated by pesticides. Our ability to provide for our pie needs is deeply threatened. We are facing the final destruction of the pie lifestyle – and the end of the last remnents of our democracy.

So what can we do about it? How can we fight back for the pie lifestyle, for Mom, Teddy Bears and Apple (or Peach) pie? The only way to deal with this depletion crisis is to start living the pie lifestyle. Bake a pie today from locally grown ingredients. Eat a pie today, and use it to fuel human powered activity – dump your leaf blower and get out a rake, get rid of the power mower and bring out the push mower, lose the chainsaw and get the bucksaw down. Make a pie and give it to a neighbor. Give out the recipe. Get together and make pies for elderly shut ins or the school bake sale or to buy solar lighting for the neighborhood watch. Throw a pie at a warmonger – we’ll have a bake sale to raise your bail. Point to the coal plant builders and the energy wasters and tell people - they are against pie! Start "Pie Eating Veterans for the Truth" and tar polluters and heavy emitters with the scorned label "pie haters." Don't forget to mention that they don't like mothers, babies or kittens either. Have a town meeting and hand out pie. Give out pie at the voting booths, to hungry people in the park, to the shelter and soup kitchen. Try pies from other places, other lands – and send the money you would have spent on poptarts to good causes. When the world seems to suck, eat pie, and use that energy to get back on your feet and fight again.

Fight now, for motherhood, justice and apple pie!

Sharon

45 comments:

Anonymous said...

Bake on! Thank you for the morning laugh, to help fight back the hysterical weeping. If my range hadn't just blown a fuse, rendering it inoperable (and I didn't have to work today ...) I would rush home and bake an apple pie, with apples from the farmers market. damn, I'm really going need to get that range fixed, if I'm going to survive any more national and world news. nmontesano

Anonymous said...

Not to nick pick, but I've seen plenty of fat Amish women.

Other than that, brilliant.

If I have time, I'll make pies before knitting tonight. One to bring, one for my girls and their baby sitter to guzzle, one for the people across the road with bad colds and 3 year old twins, and I'm not sure if I'll give number 4 to the people with the new baby (who already scored a huge chicken cassarole) or split it aming the three old ladies who live alone. (I can only fit 4 pies in the oven at once.)

But they'll be be back yard cherries, home made pastry (with crisco and bulk flour). And I'll have a blast.

MEA who likes writing about pie a lot more than trying to respond to your previous post. Easy as pie, don't you now.

jewishfarmer said...

MEA, I've met fat Amish women too, which I tend to describe to the gendered division of labor, which is why I mentioned the men. And I've never met an Amish woman I would call "really" fat - usually just the kind of middle aged fat that I already am, a decade younger than they.

Sharon

Anonymous said...

But the women bake the pies. I'd bake the pies. Therefore, I'd get fatter.

MEA

Anonymous said...

I just made 24 pies this past Monday ....'twas fun , shared the work with another family - We each had 11 for our freezer. Doesn't add up?
Well we had to *test* 2 with dinner that night

Jai

The Baklava Queen said...

Love it! I'm doing my part, Sharon... I made three apple pies (or two pies and a tart) this week and gave 'em away. Actually, I had a slice each of two of them, but I did use them to fuel my own human-powered lifestyle, so it's good.

Brilliant post, and it really shows what we need most of all in coming days and years... a healthy appetite and a good sense of humor!

Anonymous said...

I proudly hold my fork high!

Mike said...

I'm so in. I just e-mailed my friend with a gaggle of kids to make a play/bake date for the weekend. I've been putting it off for about a week already, so it's totally time to bake. I have locally grown pears and pumpkins already. I'll grab some apples at the farmers market. I even found Florida-grown sugar (o.k. that's not even close to local for the midwest, but it's closer than the alternatives). Maybe we can find MAPLE sugar at the farmer's market! OOOH! Hurrah and thank you for the inspiration/kick in the butt, as well as for your absolutely funniest post in as long I can currently recall due to the brain cells I killed holding in my laughter.

BTW -- if anyone is looking to mix up the whole apple pie thing, add pears and dried fruit (I am particularly fond of apricots and currants) for a twist on the tradition.

tk said...

MAKE THE PIE HIGHER.

Sharon ... Sharon ... Sharon ... I love you, I truly do. Your writing inspires me to get off my tochis and stop thinking about my friends' dramas and focus on a) mindful consumption avoidance, b) sustainable grocery shopping or c) retirement plans. But in this case I think it's going to be also your fault if I go home and make myself a ding-dang pie. So, thanks. You may have jumped the shark (don't argue on newsgroups! This is a better use of your time) on this one but pie will rally us through.

Anonymous said...

Thank you, Sharon, that's beautiful. Pie in the sky and here on earth, Amen.

And, radical garbage man, where in the Midwest are you? They grow sugar beets in North Dakota (and process them in Mason City, Iowa, among other places) and if you're in Missouri or Indiana you can probably get sorghum syrup from a crotchety old farmer near you, or if you're really lucky, from Sandhill Farm.

feonixrift said...

And if you can't have bread, it's no reason to stop! Crusts of pecans, crusts of meringue, crusts of just about anything! I've even heard you can make pie without the crust, if you really really want. Pie of everything!

feonixrift said...

And what was next on my reading list? More pie!

Hanley Tucks said...

So is that how you moderated the shitstorm? I just decided that I was getting too angry with whiny wusses, so I should stop posting for a few days to calm down... and refrain from calling them whiny wusses, since that's something that drives whiny wusses crazy.

Now you've made me curious and I'll have to go back in and have a look :D

Anonymous said...

From what I've seen at our school farm, nothing turns kids on to local food more quickly than desserts made from local ingredients... squash bread or better yet zucchini chocolate cake, apple crisp, and tomorrow, apple doughnuts (with a bit of end of season raspberries thrown in.)

I promise I'll get to pies soon.

Lastly, do what I do and drop the newsgroups. There be trolls there (if not dragons) and it just isn't worth our time to debate things with cranky, strange people that patrol alt.this.that.and.the.other.thing just for them to have flame wars.

What an enjoyable blog!

Stephen B.
from ROE2

Deb G said...

I knew there was a reason home made pie was one of my favorite things to eat for breakfast :)

Think I'll go make some right now.

Anonymous said...

You are so right! I bake a lot of pies for friends and family and they pacify and satisfy an unruly crowd like nothing else.

After I graduated college I realized that my Grandmother wouldn't always be available to fill my pie needs, so she taught me to bake them myself. She is still my primary cooking advisor and I am eternally grateful for her.

Greg.

Michelle In TN said...

squash bread? intriguing

Anonymous said...

One of the favorite meals in our house is chicken pot pie. Mmm.

Anonymous said...

Bake on ! is right...
I have a huge basket of a neighbors apples, left over from canning. You know what I was going to do with them? Freeze PIE filling, I hope that still counts.
I also want to be a voice for cobbler....

Anonymous said...

Well, pride doesn't half goeth before the fall. No pies last night. Car wouldn't start last night. Nothing new. I need a new battery, but am putting it off in the hopes that the transfer to the branch will come and I can ditch the car. However, I couldn't jump it. Pouring rain, of course. Got a ride home from a co-worker after AAA said it would be hour 45 mins before they could come. In the mean time, my mother had to pack up the baby and get my younger dd from Brownies. She didn't tell me that pushing the pushchair sets her neck off or I'd have tried to get someone else to get C. C gamely pushes the baby home, wetting herself in the process becuase she was so excited to see Gran she forgot to go before leaving school (because of mild PC she's on a try every 2 hours scheme in the day). So when I got to my mothers, she was in agony. I changed the baby, and as soon as my SIL came, C and I set off home. We made it just as E. was dropped off from choir, and that was good. (I'd left my cell in the car I rode to my mother's in so I couldn't try to get in touch with her ride) By the time we got there we just had time to get supper on the table before I went off to knitting -- which was great. But I didn't make 4 pies.

However, I know that some kind soul here having read by tale of woe, will send me virtual pie -- with cream.

TIA

MEA

Anonymous said...

A local non-profit group does a spring all-you-can-eat pie party. Not surprisingly, it gets a huge turnout every year!

Theresa said...

Your post reminds me of a Bill Bourne song, Pie and Ice Cream, about how pie can lead to world peace by trading pie for guns. I blogged about it this summer after going to our local Folk Fest, where he sang the song to an appreciative crowd.

anna j said...

*sends MEA virtual pie with cream*

last night i baked a kuchen with damsen plums and raspberries... it's almost like pie except that it has custard (and making pie crust makes me wary)!

then i shared it with everyone in the house. mmm... kuchen for breakfast with coffee.

Zach said...

The Growing Hope project in Ypsilanti, Michigan, is way ahead of you here, Sharon:

Pie Lovers Unite!


peace,

Anonymous said...

PIE! :-D Sharon, I love you so very much.

Ok, now I'm really going to have to make pie for dinner tonight!

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Anonymous said...

I was just going to post on my blog -- The World Needs More Pie -- and discovered your post in the process. I don't feel the need to write anything today because, well, you said it all already! I am soooo with you on your Pie Lifestyle philosphy and I plan to help spread this message. I hope to read more pie musings from you again soon. P.S. I have a stash of hand-picked summer berries in my freezer. When we get our first snow, I'm going to bake a marionberry pie for the parapalegic guy down the street.

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