O life! You beauty, you vessel of weirdness and despair and joy unending. Tiny green things in the beds around the trees on our street. Perfect green; bright and clean.
Because we moved into our apartment in November, my relationship to our neighborhood has been limited by sleet. Yesterday I went on a walk, and in the 30 minutes that I was outside, I discovered that the park three blocks away has a small amphitheater, that the giant mural one block away honoring Shirley Chisolm and other NYC female activists is slated for demolition this spring, that we're surrounded on ALL SIDES by small green spaces cultivated in abandoned lots, and that we're four blocks away from a community garden that houses a Magnolia grandiflora, the last remaining tree designated as a historical landmark in NYC. The garden was founded by a woman named Hattie Carthan in the 1970's motivated by the changes she observed in her neighborhood. In an early fundraiser solicitation: “The magnolia tree will thus become a living symbol of man’s concern and love for nature, and…this symbol will hasten the day when our city of New York will be a natural garden.” Read more about her/this garden, here .
New York inevitably inspires lots of thinking about change and impermanence. Storefronts shift, are rebuilt, disappear in a not so slow time lapse. Neighborhoods become different neighborhoods become different neighborhoods, are on fire, are home to families, are home to no one, are home to families again. It is possible to know so little about the space you inhabit, (and how strange it is to live in that unknown.) How many people have looked out these windows, asked different questions, found different answers? Many. Many!
Very, extremely important to remember our newness. On the planet and in our neighborhoods. (With all of the change, what is it that remains? a spirit of a place? A mission, a garden, an energy? How can I be a part of preservation and growth as a relative interloper?)
Thank you, Hattie, for these trees.
I baked a lemon meringue pie this week, (recipe here,) but I'd rather talk about pie crust, which I haven't quite figured out. Here is the recipe for pie dough that has been most frequently successful for me:
all butter crust recipe (from the four and twenty blackbirds pie book)
- 1 1/4cups unbleached all-purpose flour
- 1/2teaspoon kosher salt
- 1 1/2teaspoons granulated sugar
- 1/4pound (1 stick) cold unsalted butter, cut into 1/2-inch pieces
- 1/2 cup cold water
- 2tablespoons cider vinegar
- 1/2cup ice
- Stir the flour, salt, and sugar together in a large bowl.
- Add the butter pieces and coat with the flour mixture using a bench scraper or spatula.*
- With a pastry blender, cut the butter into the flour mixture, working quickly until mostly pea-size pieces of butter remain (a few larger pieces are okay; be careful not to overblend).
- Combine the water, cider vinegar, and ice in a large measuring cup or small bowl.
- Sprinkle 2 tablespoons of the ice water mixture over the flour mixture, and mix and cut it in with a bench scraper or spatula until it is fully incorporated.
- Add more of the ice water mixture, 1 to 2 tablespoons at a time, using the bench scraper or your hands (or both) to mix until the dough comes together in a ball, with some dry bits remaining.
- Squeeze and pinch with your fingertips to bring all the dough together, sprinkling dry bits with more small drops of the ice water mixture, if necessary, to combine.
- Shape the dough into a flat disc, wrap in plastic, and refrigerate for at least 1 hour, preferably overnight, to give the crust time to mellow.
- If making the double-crust version, divide the dough in half before shaping each portion into flat discs.
- Wrapped tightly, the dough can be refrigerated for 3 days or frozen for 1 month
*I like to add the butter to half of the flour mixture first, coat it, and then add in the remaining flour/salt/sugar.
what recipe has worked the best for you? tips? thoughts?
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