Strawberry Rhubarb Pie

On By SarahIn Food & Cooking2 Comments

Pie Dough

2 ½ cups all-purpose flour, plus a little extra for dusting dough and work surface
1 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons sugar
12 tablespoons unsalted butter, chilled, cut into ¼-inch pieces
8 tablespoons all-vegetable shortening, chilled
6-8 tablespoons ice water

Mix flour, salt, and sugar. Using a food processor fitted with a steel blade, or using a pastry cutter, cut the butter into the flour. Add shortening, continuing to cut into the flour until the flour is pale yellow and looks like coarse cornmeal.

Sprinkle 6 tablespoons of the water over the mixture. Using a rubber spatula, fold the mix to work in the water. Press down on dough with broad side of spatula until dough sticks together, adding up to 2 tablespoons of water if needed to help the dough come together if needed. Divide into 2 balls, flattening each into a disk about an inch thick. Dust lightly with flour, wrap in plastic, and chill for ½ hour.

Filling
3 1/2 cups 1/2-inch-thick slices trimmed rhubarb (1 1/2 pounds untrimmed)
1 16-ounce container strawberries, hulled, halved (about 3 1/2 cups)
1/2 cup (packed) golden brown sugar
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 cup cornstarch
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon salt

Mix ingredients for filling and set aside.

Pie Assembly

Preheat oven to 400°F.

Roll out 1 dough disk on floured work surface to 13-inch round. Transfer to 9-inch-diameter pie dish. Trim excess dough, leaving 3/4-inch overhang.

Roll out second dough disk on lightly floured surface to 13-inch round. Cut into fourteen 1/2-inch-wide strips. Spoon filling into crust. Arrange 7 dough strips atop filling, spacing evenly. Form lattice by placing remaining dough strips in opposite direction atop filling. Trim ends of dough strips even with overhang of bottom crust. Fold strip ends and overhang under, pressing to seal. Crimp edges decoratively.

Blend 1 large egg yolk with 1 teaspoon water for glaze. Brush the exposed lattice.

Place the pie pan on a baking sheet and place in oven. After 20 minutes at 400°F, reduce temperature to 350°F, and continue baking for 1 hour and 25 minutes.

Pie

July Fourth Musings

On By SarahIn Opinion, Politics1 Comment

On this national holiday, I find myself wondering why there aren’t more people in the streets protesting what is going on within our current administration, fighting to preserve our civil rights. I’m not just talking about a minority that is being treated unfairly. I am talking about the erosion of the Constitutional rights of all citizens. We should all be f****ing pissed! If you’re not sure why, take a look at this video:

The latest antics should make all of us alarmed and angry. I could go on about the various scandals and horrific actions of Bush Cheney & Co., but there is no need. We all know the litany of offenses and crimes they have committed. But this crap has been going on for so long now. During the entire time Bush has been in office I have often thought to myself “Well, this must be it. They’ver really done it this time. There is no way things will get any worse. They are really going to be taken to task, called on the carpet, have to answer for their bad behavior this time!”

But it hasn’t happened! Why aren’t people hitting the streets the way they did back in the 1960s? Or even at the beginning of this immoral war? Do we need every protest to be an organized event that features entertainment and T-shirts? These types of events are important cultural moments, but I really wonder what it is going to take for people to get really angry, angry enough to really effect change.

Meanwhile, Bush’s approval rating is in the toilet, at an all-time low, according to that ever-reliable source Fox News. And still, Bush has the gall to pardon Libby (and yes, I do mean pardon — let’s call it what it is. Libby is getting off easy, and Bush & Co. are a bunch of hypocrites). What will it take to stop them?

They never will until more of us start paying attention and getting angry! I think that many of us feel so depressed, disaffected, and powerless that we think nothing that we do will matter. So, what am I doing? Will marching down my quiet neighborhood street with a picket sign really make a difference? Maybe not immediately. Maybe my neighbors will think I’m a little nutty, but I know may of them are aligned with me politically, and those who are not or who maybe don’t care will stop and think about the erosion of their Constitutional rights.

Well, I’m not marching down the street exactly. I, too, feel depressed and disaffected and powerless. I’m not sure what to do, and in some ways I feel that my very survival is a subversive act. I do what I can, I speak up, and I pay attention, and I am outraged.

Today I’m quietly being patriotic in my blogging, relaxing with my wife as we grill our steaks, as she makes her fabulous Ceasar Salad and as I make strawberry rhubarb pie. Perhaps I’ll post the recipes later.

Happy Fourth of July, everybody! Exercise and fight for your civil rights while you still can!

Blogging Revelations

On By SarahIn Community, Friends & Family, Internet2 Comments

When I started blogging back in November of 2006, a mere nine months ago (but time really does fly), I felt that a whole new world had opened up to me. I was stumbling across tools and other blogs that gave me ideas and inspiration. I ventured into the world of social networking, and at every turn I discovered people and communities doing really cool stuff.

In November, I felt as if I was diving in with my whole self, embracing my inner geek, and I have been having loads of fun writing, sharing photos and sharing my newly discovered links (I really love Ma.gnolia). When I speak about blogging and social networking to my friends, many of the either have no idea what I’m talking about, or they think that it’s simply about a MySpace page, and I am too old for that. I admit that I feel a little old sometimes out there. It does seem as though many bloggers that I come across are a good decade younger (at least!) than I am. But many are not, and I found an article recently about how folks are using blogs and web presence to enhance their resumes.

So far, I have met and corresponded with a few strangers with shared interests, giving me a little taste of what it’s like to have an on-line community. I have found many great resources this way, and encountered a few blogs that I now like to check out regularly. Admittedly, I have not been producing enough content on a regular basis that would be of interest for readers to check back regularly. I guess I am still a bit of a lurker, in a way. I haven’t quite found my place in Cyberspace.

But when you have more of a personal blog, I realize that it is a really cool way to keep in touch with friends and family. Indeed, that is how many of my younger friends are using blogging and social networking. I guess my close friends and family just need to catch on, check in regularly, and leave a comment now and then.

Yesterday, I had the experience of finding a bunch of websites that really put things in perspective for me. Some times you find a link to a site or blog that becomes a portal to another world that takes you to places you didn’t know existed. I love the Internet for that. One of my Ma.gnolia contacts posted a link to the blog of librarygrrl, which for those of you who know me that blog name has appeal for numerous reasons. I had to check it out.

librarygrrl’s blog, cool in and of itself, has a blog roll for other websites run by librarians. I found the The Cool Librarian, The Library Spot, Library Thing, The Beacon for the Freedom of Expression. What a gold mine! And this is just a sampling. I kind of went crazy with Ma.gnolia with all of this.

By absolute random coincidence, by searching for favicons in WordPress blogs, I found the blog of a Quaker Ph.D. candidate from LA at gatheringinlight.com, and through his blog I found the Convergent Friends blog, for Quakers responding to the challenges of defining what it means to be Quaker in the world today. I am not in the world of Quakers too much these days, but as a formerly Quaker-identified progressive Christian, I am delighted to come across these sites. I now have a place to check once in a while to see what people are talking about in these communities, and perhaps even find a place for me there.

All of these discoveries yesterday I now am aware of how much I have to learn about blogging. I don’t think I will ever fully be on the tech side of things. I blog more for sharing content, and beyond adding specific functionality to my sites, I really don’t care to delve that far into the world of programming and web development. I do find this world and the language they speak a little intimidating, so I guess my struggle will be not to let my limited abilities hold me back.

As in real life, I am a Jill of all Trades, Mistress of None. My interests are broad and varied. And even if I was able to pick just one topic to write about, I don’t think that blogging would give me the satisfaction and even the focus that I find in it. I guess one of my passions in life is information. I love information, hence my excitement about the library links! Blogging and social networking give me the media and tools through which to find, organize, and share information about everything that piques my interest. Perhaps my blog will be a portal for someone else to make their own discoveries, leading to their own blogging revelations.

Faux Pas. My Bad.

On By SarahIn Fun & Entertainment, Internet1 Comment

So, being the Internet obsessed social networker that I long to be, I made the dumbest and most frowned-upon faux pas yesterday.

I spammed my entire address book.

I’m so ashamed.

So, I found this pretty cool social networking site, and I thought I’d check it out.

Change.org

It’s like MySpace for activists. You can only look at people’s profiles if you are a member, and the stated purpose of the site is to promote your favorite non-profit organizations and network with like-minded individuals. This automatically makes the intelligence quotient slightly higher than many other networking sites, and so far it seems to be lacking the creep factor of online stalkers. I’m sure it’s not totally absent, but it doesn’t seem to be as prevalent. When I first joined MySpace, I couldn’t believe how much porn spam I received, and requests to be friends with some really creepy people.

I created an ID, and the system automatically prompts you to look for your friends from your address book. So I uploaded my address book from my Yahoo account, and pushed the button that I thought would actually search for people, but what happened was that an email was generated and sent to everyone. Yes, I didn’t read the fine print, but it was still too easy to do, if you asked me. Yes, it was a totally bone-headed and ditzy thing to do, and I take full responsibility for being a bone head and a ditz. But still, it was just too darn easy.

It emailed everybody. Mind you, I don’t regularly update this address book because I don’t really use my Yahoo account any more (too much spam!). But the address book there is HUGE, and there are people I haven’t been in touch with in years, old acquaintances who are probably not expecting to hear from me at all, and old colleagues, who, when I look at their names I say “who is that?”

If you received one of these invitations, I am truly sorry. But perhaps it’s not so bad.

The really astonishing thing is that people actually signed up for it! I have six friends in my network, including one old college friend, Pavel (whom I knew as Jim), who is now a clown and performance artist in Berlin. I was very happy to get in touch with him, actually.

I really expected to get in trouble. I thought people were going to laugh or be mad, or scold me….and I would have deserved it. But I have a network now! Perhaps people will actualy find this a useful site!

And a bunch of folks at my office now know that my personal email is silly.goose. Oh, well. I guess it’s not a bad thing when you bring more of yourself into your work life. It mixes it up a bit. I always enjoy people letting their hair down after spending eight hours a day with them wearing a suit. I enjoy learning surprising and unexpected things about people.