You come to me on National Pi Day and want to know what's for dinner? Pull up a chair and let's talk a bit.
Now, I get my best thinking done when my hands are doing something familiar, so excuse me if I grab a cup of flour, and dump it in a bowl, and add a couple of tablespoons of sugar and a bit of salt and stir it up with a fork, nothing really fancy. Then I'll take a stick of butter and cut it in til it's almost entirely, but not quite, disappeared into the flour, but you can still see some small (pea size or smaller) chunks, because those melted bits of butter make for a tender crust.
But that's my way of doing things. You might get a measuring cup or two and carefully sift your flour and add in lard, measured to the quarter-teaspoon, because the term "a bit" is a bit too irrational for you.
I'm going to add two tablespoons of cold water to the mix and stir it just until it's not quite coming together, and if that's not enough I'll add a third tablespoon, and after that water goes in one teaspoon at a time but never exceeding a total of a quarter cup, because we have standards. I need to do all this by hand. I tried food processor-made crust, but it's no substitute for getting my hands floury and feeling the dough.
Put down that vodka bottle! Vodka does not improve the crust.
Now, I came to DailyKos for the climate politics, but I stayed for the pie, so I'm going to pit about four to five cups of Michigan cherries for the filling, all the while wondering if climate change will kill Michigan cherries and we'll have to import them from Canada. Then I'm going to add some almond extract, made from the California almonds sucking dry my beloved state, and a bit of flour and brown sugar, and pile it into the chilled and rolled-out pie crust, and put it in the oven for about 45 minutes.
You might be making a very different pie, perhaps one with apples or pecans or perhaps a savory meat pie. That's okay. There's room for all kinds of pie in this world.
While the pie bakes, I'm going to listen to my favorite song about pies
from a movie about pies. And domestic violence. And being a single mom on a tight budget. And love.
This pie is going to my next presentation on behalf of Climate Hawks Vote, or maybe a Democratic club meeting, because pies need to be shared, and souls and bodies need to be fed.
And that's my story of pi-self. Because practical pie-baking is practicing democracy. What's for your dinner?