Grape Pie for Thanksgiving 2020

We love hosting a giant Thanksgiving table.  This year is different of course, but the importance of pie remains the same!  Ideally there should be 1/3 to 1/2 pie per person.  I start eating pie for breakfast while getting everything else cooked.  I like to have a piece with every helping of leftovers.  It doesn't have to be a full size slice of pie, sometimes just a taste is better than a full piece.  I like it when everyone gets to take some pie home.  Pie is important :)

The most important pie is the grape pie.

Classics like pumpkin are important, but so are 'not pie', like the apple dessert cake thing.

Pie glorious pie!

To make a grape pie, 

separate the skins from the innards.

Cook the innards, send through a strainer, throw out the seeds.

Mix the skins with the cooked innards.  Add sugar, lemon juice and a thickener.  I tried clear jel this year which gives that particular gloopy texture, but also lets you preserve it, like jam or jelly.  The proportions were a little tricky, but I like it better than cornstarch.  

This year we experimented with alternatives to full on pie.  

Hand pies:

Slice the crusts off sandwich bread, flatten with a rolling pin. Add filling to one slice, dampen the edges, cover with a second slice, and seal the two pieces together with a fork.  Flip it over and seal the edges from the other side.  These can be deep-fried in shallow oil or cooked in the oven (350°F for 15 min).  

I turned the crusts into croutons that were fantastic

Not super professional looking, but darn tasty.  Especially with some peanut butter on the side.

Tiny pies in muffin tins:  

A pat-in-the-pan crust is a great alternative to a roll-out crust.  This is from a 1950’s Better Homes and Garden. If you don’t care about a flaky crust and just want the pie, this is the best! 

For 3 muffin tins:

• Mix 1 cup flour, 1 teaspoon sugar and ½ teaspoon salt in a bowl.  

• Add 2 tablespoons milk to ⅓ cup vegetable oil and mix with a fork to emulsify.  Add to the dry mix slowly; you may not need all the liquid.  Stir until all the flour is moist and it clumps together to the consistency of play-doh.  

• Press into the muffin tin, add grape pie filling, and sprinkle any left-over crust onto the filling.  

• Bake at 350°F for 20 min.

The milk falls under the oil.

This is my first chemistry memory-an emulsion!

The crust is pretty crumbly and you just have to go for it.  All delicious all the time!

What I've been watching while staying home, 2020

 What I've been watching while staying home, 2020 (plus cats)

A big adjustment we have made to our lives is that we get together with friends on video chat and the big upside is that it doesn't matter where they are.  So we hang out with the folks who moved to Arizona even more regularly than before-yeah!!  We have figured out how to watch tv together-it involves one side turning off the local sound and using sub-titles.  Turns out I love this and now use subtitles for everything!  This makes it super easy to watch foreign films and shows where it is better to pay attention.  

Cat series is the boys cleaning each other in the sun.

We decided to have a Charlie Kaufman festival.  I do like all types of movies and would love to take a film class but in the meantime will have a DIY class.  I like not knowing anything when starting a movie, but then reading up on it afterwards.   I've now read a couple of Kaufman interviews and he explicitly says that whatever you get out of his films is 'right'.  There is no one way to interpret them and they are a conversation. I noticed that different critics have different favorite films.  So often everyone agrees on the basic ranking of an artists work, but with Kaufman the lists are all over the place.  There seems to be something for everyone to love and to hate.

The big themes he loves are mental conditions/disorders, Who Am I, Who Are These People Around Me, Time distortion, Perception distortion, repetition of scenes/settings, play within a play.

-Being John Malkovitch:  Totally watched this when it came out, but had forgotten almost everything.  super fun

-Confessions of a Dangerous Mind:  Screenplay by Charlie Kaufman, directing debut by George Clooney.  Most folks say this is the least Kaufman film because Clooney's directing style makes it less weird.  Less memorable for me, but I did love seeing Clooney.

-Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind:  Also saw this when it came out.  I feel it has the happiest ending.  I would recommend it to almost anyone.

-Anomalisa:  The weird stop motion film.  I kind of hated it while watching it....puppet sex is just....uncomfortable, But now that I've seen a bunch, I kind of like the whole thing.  I think it has the saddest ending.

-Synecdoche, New York:  The most existential?  This one really draws some hate.  I felt it could have used some editing, but some part were super great.  I love the whole multi-layers of people acting as other people who are right there.  Best sets.

-I'm Thinking of Ending Things:  So many references to culture-now I want to watch Oklahoma! and go read up on so many others.

We had to watch some 'normal' or 'classics' to balance things out.

Back to the Future trilogy:  For a bit of nostalgia.  These were fine, but not great (no surprise).  These are Robert Zemekis films, which were referenced in I'm Thinking of Ending Things, a nice tie in.

Cabin in the Woods:  For Halloween, the best psychological thriller for folks who don't love a standard gore/horror film.  I saw this in the theater and is it still SO GOOD.  If you only have time for one movie on the whole page, this should be it.

Ghostbusters:  Also for Halloween and nostalgia.  It was fine.

Casa du Papel:  Season 1 and 2, excellent!  Heist story but with extra drama/soap opera stories.  Plenty of episodes, though not really the bingeable type.

Foreign movies with some emotional weight

Force Majeur:  Swedish film about....I'm not really sure?  Family of 4 at a ski resort and there is an avalanche that scares them and they deal with the emotional aftermath?  No clue why the ending is what it is!

Border:  Swedish fantasy about finding out about your true self?  Slow pacing, incredible makeup.

Kai Po Che:  Indian movie about cricket and friendship and an earthquake and politics.

Disturbing foreign films

Okja: Director Bong Joon-ho (all disturbing all the time) about the love between a girl and her genetic mutation pet. Industrial animal farming complex.  No need to watch this again, but I still need to see a few more of his films

I Lost My Body:  French animated film where a separated hand is trying to get back to its body.  Lonliness!