This mostly-raw blueberry pie is a snap to make and very versatile--the filling microwaves in a few minutes, and you don't even have to bake the zippy gingered graham cracker crust--perfect for a hot Fourth of July and all summer long.
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ADS AND AFFILIATE LINKS
I may post affiliate links to books and movies that I personally review and recommend. Currently I favor Alibris and Vroman's, our terrific and venerable (now past the century mark!) independent bookstore in Pasadena. Or go to your local library--and make sure to support them with actual donations, not just overdue fines (ahem!), because your state probably has cut their budget and hours. Again.
In keeping with the disclaimer below, I DO NOT endorse, profit from, or recommend any medications, health treatments, commercial diet plans, supplements or any other such products.
DISCLAIMER
SlowFoodFast sometimes addresses general public health topics related to nutrition, heart disease, blood pressure, and diabetes. Because this is a blog with a personal point of view, my health and food politics entries often include my opinions on the trends I see, and I try to be as blatant as possible about that. None of these articles should be construed as specific medical advice for an individual case. I do try to keep to findings from well-vetted research sources and large, well-controlled studies, and I try not to sensationalize the science (though if they actually come up with a real cure for Type I diabetes in the next couple of years, I'm gonna be dancing in the streets with a hat that would put Carmen Miranda to shame. Consider yourself warned).
Yes. LV Anderson, the Slate columnist/editor of “You’re Doing It Wrong” infamy, the one who so often makes unnecessary, fussy, time-consuming and sometimes even adverse recommendations for how to “fix” some fairly common and popular foods like chili or muffins. Or guacamole. I’ve disrespected quite a number of her columns over the past year or two, and so have many Slate readers.
But her review of local (LAish) professor Alison Pearlman’s new book on the shallowness of foodieism is really good. It’s thoughtful, sharp and thorough without being annoying.
Anderson has clearly been stuck in an awkward niche for a year or more; her cooking tips are not much to write home about but her book review is, so I’m doing it.
Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon have paired up again in a new movie called The Trip and I actually got to see it in an actual movie theater Thursday! First time I’ve been in a theater since Ratatouille came out. (Hadn’t realized that was going to be a foodie movie; at the time I just wondered why they didn’t make good movies like that for grownups anymore.)
I was going to see The Trip anyway because I’d seen Tristram Shandy several years ago on disk and got bitten by Coogan and Brydon’s backstage banter. I was looking forward to seeing how the pair, who had played exaggerated versions of themselves in the first movie, were planning to stretch their dueling Robert deNiro and Al Pacino impressions from the end credits of Tristram Shandy–by far the best shtick in the whole thing–to a two-hour buddy road trip format.
And The Trip was also supposed to be about food–specifically, the current state of northern England’s upscale eateries (now apparently as haute as anywhere on the continent) and the shockingly savage and comical food reviewing traditions of British news media.
So I dragged my husband with me to the matinee and promptly started disregarding the “please, no talking during the film” signs. What fun is it to sit there not giggling horribly as Coogan and Brydon get on the road north to Yorkshire, or saying nothing to my mate as they try to correct each other’s Michael Caine impressions and improve on them in increasingly loud voices while being served all manner of square food on long rectangular plates lapped with flavored foams à la Adrià? With the inevitable scallops for starters, and a number of historical interludes–a sleep in one of Coleridge’s beds, visiting the church ruins in a town where Ian McKellan did not actually grow up, but it’s got the same name, so it counts?
The truth is, of course, that The Trip is much less about food (despite several spliced-in foodie snippets of what’s going on in the kitchens and pans where tasting menus are being prepared) than about love, loss, what’s left to look forward to in one’s encroaching middle-40s, and how to impress girls with your Michael Caine (or Al Pacino) impressions at a 3-star restaurant in the Yorkshire dales or the Lake District.
Of course, the sixth or seventh rendition of Michael Caine (interspersed with Pacino and friends) starts to wear even on our intrepid actors-almost-playing-themselves as they grapple with the hearts they refuse to admit are pinned to their sleeves. It turns out there’s a solid reason for this: Continue reading →
My quick-and-dirty printable PDF version of the new Dietary Guidelines, which as of January 2016 were still available only as an online site at https://health.gov/dietaryguidelines/2015/. You can now download the official version there. And it’s probably still a better, less politicized and more reliable version than the newer 2020 version, unfortunately, given the 45th administration’s HHS and USDA directors.
Pyrex Warning
Many of my older posts call for microwaving recipes in Pyrex bowls or pie plates. But my plates are the old Corningware USA ones made of borosilicate or lab-grade glass–feels warmer and “clicks” rather than clanks. The new “Pyrex” plates and casseroles — made outside the US — are generally made of much weaker soda lime (“coke bottle”) glass. That can crack or even explode with any temperature fluctuation (Consumer Reports, Jan. 2011). DON’T USE THEM.Go with microwaveable and oven-safe stoneware instead.
UPDATE 2020–OXO is now making borosilicate glass bakeware for sale in the US–check the use labels.
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