Pecan pie


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This was the first pecan pie I’ve ever made. It also was the most challenging pie I’ve ever made.

The problem was in figuring out when the pie was done. Erma Rombauer, in the 1943 edition of The Joy of Cooking, calls for 375 degrees for 30 minutes. That was not enough. The pie came out of the oven runny in the middle. I had to put it back into the oven. I was afraid I’d ended up with a disaster. But I ended up with the best pie I’ve ever made.

There is a strange alchemy in pecan pie, unlike any pie I’ve ever made before. Corn syrup is an essential ingredient. I had never even bought corn syrup before, but of course I bought some for this pie. My guess is that the eggs and corn syrup interact in a magical way to create a translucent soft custard that caramelizes very quickly in the oven. That’s why it’s tempting to take the pie out of the oven too soon — the top browns so quickly. But the browning of the top is part of the alchemy — a thin, chewy-crunchy crust on top of the pie. As for the bottom crust, I used my regular recipe of olive oil and unbleached flour. Rombauer’s recipe called for pre-baking the crust, which I don’t usually do. What a difference! The crust was flakier, and the chewy texture of the pie melded with the flaky pie crust in an unexpected alchemical way. The effect was so sophisticated that I’d have sworn the pie came from a Paris pastry shop rather than my own oven.

Note to MHK: I forgot to add the coffee, but I will remember next time. There definitely will be a next time.

Cracking out the pecans was tedious, but I got that job done in about half an hour. I couldn’t find an authoritative history of the pecan pie, but the consensus seems to be that it originated in New Orleans, with French (and I suspect African, as well) influence. The pecan tree is native to the Southern United States. Those of you in Europe, I’m guessing, won’t be able to find pecans. But the alchemy of pecan pie could surely be achieved with any nuts that go well with pastry, such as walnuts. Do you have corn syrup in Europe? If not, my guess is that any thick syrup would do. Even molasses (treacle) probably would produce the same effect, though the flavor would be intense. Corn syrup, by comparison, has very little flavor on its own.

I very much doubt that Erma Rombauer’s recipe is her invention. Every basic recipe I’ve seen is pretty much the same. Compare Karo’s recipe. Note that Karo’s recipe calls for a longer bake and an internal temperature of 200 degrees. If I had read Karo’s recipe first, I probably would not have had to put my pie back into the oven.

Erma Rombauer, 1943:

Don’t Look Up

Don’t Look Up can be streamed on Netflix.

First, a hat tip to Ken, who alerted me that this movie is a must-watch. Ken also wrote about it on his blog.

I’m not as critical as Ken on the quality of Don’t Look Up. If there are flaws, I didn’t mind, other than that the movie is about 20 minutes longer than it needed to be. It’s laugh-out-loud funny. It’s surgically accurate. And I rejoice because at last we’re heaping ridicule on Trump, Trumpism, and the millions of gullible and deplorable people who can’t see through Trump and who were willing to kill for Trump in the trenches of Trumpism. (Images from the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol are my evidence that I’m not exaggerating.)

A major — and overlooked — marker in deplorable people’s eagerness to deify Trump was when John Stewart left The Daily Show in 2015. Trevor Noah said that Stewart told him this about why he left The Daily Show:

“He said ‘I’m leaving because I’m tired.’ And he said, ‘I’m tired of being angry.’ And he said, ‘I’m angry all the time. I don’t find any of this funny. I do not know how to make it funny right now, and I don’t think the host of the show, I don’t think the show deserves a host who does not feel that it is funny.'”

It was in 2015 that we lost public ridicule as a defense against the rise of Trumpism. Finally, at the end of 2021, ridicule returns in Don’t Look Up. Stewart is right. There was nothing funny about Trump’s occupation of the White House. We were all angry, too angry to employ ridicule. Hand-wringers on the left told us that we should “reach out” to Trumpists and “try to understand them.” Wrong. We should have relentlessly ridiculed them.

I was curious about how the right-wing propagandists who feed Trumpism to the Trumpists would respond to Don’t Look Up. I think I found the answer in a review in The Washington Examiner, which boils down to, “Nothing to see here. Move along. Everyone knows it’s really the libs who are ridiculous.”

It is definitely not from the Democratic Party that the ridicule must come. President Biden and the Democrats in Congress understand that. The Democratic Party must stay focused on governing and working for the good of the American people. The ridicule is more a cultural than a political responsibility. Thank you, Hollywood. Television, where are you? More, please.

Two very good essays in the New York Times this morning are reminders that, though Trumpists eagerly embrace their own deception, the rest of us understand quite well what’s going on. The first is by Rebecca Solnit, “Why Republicans Keep Falling for Trump’s Lies.” Solnit focuses on gullibility. The second is by Francis Fukuyama, who focuses on the world’s horror at what happened at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.

But understanding what happened is not enough to pull the American Democracy back from the brink. Those who broke the law to follow Trump must be brought to justice. And those who followed Trump but didn’t break the law must face public ridicule and public contempt so severe that they would be embarrassed to show their faces among decent people again for the rest of their lives.

Some progress with the old calculator

There are a number of YouTube videos about the restoration of machines like this (a Monroe 8N-213) and comparable machines (such as the Friden STW10). The challenge to getting them fully operational is getting them to multiply and divide, operations that are much more mechanically complicated than addition and subtraction. So far, though, I have not discovered anything that is actually broken. All the problems have been caused by gears, levers, cams, and shafts that stuck as the old lubricants dried out, plus 50 years of not being used.

Khatia Buniatishvili

Not until last year did I discover the pianist Khatia Buniatishvili. There are many recordings of her concerts on YouTube, and I have listened to almost all of them. Living here in the sticks as I do now, it would be a great overreach for me to claim that she is our greatest living pianist. But I will say (with gratitude for the many concert videos to be found on YouTube) that she is the greatest living pianist that I have heard.

Buniatishvili, according to the Wikipedia article, was born in Georgia in 1987. She started piano lessons, with her mother, at the age of 3. I believe she now lives in Paris. She clearly is in great demand in Europe’s concert halls, and she is a regular at the annual Verbier Festival in Switzerland. Her repertoire is decidedly and unapologetically romantic. Her style is a touch theatrical, in a good way.

My own musical talent is limited, but I was born with a good ear for both language and music. With the exception of my years in San Francisco, where the urban noise was terrible, I have taken good care of my hearing over the years and have no hearing loss. Except when the cat has something to say to me, these days I live mostly in silence. I never listen to music as a “background.” Listening to music requires our full attention and concentration. Audio-only recordings, as good as they can be, can never capture a full musical experience. For that, one must be in the same room as the musicians. When that’s not possible, well-recorded concert videos can come close. Of the various forms of social media, I like YouTube best. There’s plenty of garbage on YouTube, certainly. But the garbage is easy to ignore. YouTube’s search function is pretty good, with just enough imprecision to find things that you didn’t exactly search for but that are good finds nevertheless.

I have enough experience with Europe and Europeans to lament the quality of education that most Americans receive. Music has almost vanished from our public schools. Few Americans ever really master a foreign language. Today, a billion people speak English as a second language, but there are only 400 million people for whom English is the first language. Presumably, Buniatishvilli’s first language is Georgian. She speaks English very well, and her French is even better. She also speaks German. Only a tiny percentage of Americans have access to the kind of privilege and educations they would need to attain so much by the age of 34.

If you have 35 minutes to spare, I highly recommend the performance below of the Beethoven piano concerto. Notice how carefully Buniatishvili listens to the orchestra. Notice how she flirts with the orchestra. Notice how much fun she is having. The conductor, too, is remarkable and is clearly having a grand time. Notice how the conductor, Marin Alsop, often turns back to the orchestra with a smile on her face when the music passes from the piano back to the orchestra. I get the impression that they all had so much fun in rehearsals that they will feel sad when the performance ends.

By the way, in our noisy world, I think that a good pair of noise-canceling headphones is a must, both for preserving some silence and for listening to music. Apple’s noise-canceling headphones are extremely expensive, but the Anker Soundcore Q20 headphones are a bargain at $54.

With the Orchestre de Paris:

An encore at the Verbier festival:

Speaking English:

Speaking French:

Speaking German:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=noe0nFWmusw

Upgrading our masks

As the pandemic wears on, we need to consider switching to better masks. The simple pleated masks, or homemade fabric masks, no longer cut it. N95 masks are certainly an upgrade. But from an article last week in the Economist, I learned about an even better mask, the FFP2 mask. The FFP2 masks are available on Amazon, or were last week. I ordered 50 of them.

The FFP2 masks have two straps rather than one. One stap goes around the back of the neck, the other around the back of the head. There is a kind of foam gasket over the nose that improves the over-the-nose seal. The filter material is four ply. I ordered a 50-pack last week from Amazon for $28.99. That should be more than enough to last me a while, plus some to give away.

I’ve had all my shots, but the Omicron variant is spreading very fast. As we all struggle to keep the world going around while staying healthy, the simple precautions of masks (with the best masks we can get) and washing our hands are still the best defenses.

Hidden Figures (the book)

Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race. Margot Lee Shetterly. HarperCollins, 2016. 348 pages.

Margot Lee Shetterly writes that, when she was working on this book, people repeatedly asked her why they had never heard this story before. There is a related question that I find very disturbing. What if this book had never been written? If it had not been written, then it’s entirely possible that these stories would have been lost to American history. That would have been a great tragedy. The book became a No. 1 New York Times bestseller. The book was quickly followed by a movie with the same name, focusing on the story of Katherine Johnson.

I find this story fascinating for two reasons.

First there is the story of inequality and how hard some people have to struggle not only to develop the talent they were born with but also to find a way to have those talents recognized and put to use. Fiona Hill, whom Donald Trump called “the Russia bitch,” is a much more contemporary example. In Fiona Hill’s case, what held her back was the fact that she is a woman, and her provincial accent, which elites did not like. Katherine Johnson had even more obstacles to overcome. She was black, and her career began in the 1940s in a still-segregated United States.

Second there is the history of computers and how the history of computers ties in with the space race, the Cold War, the Apollo project, and the eventual creation of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. This is the only book I’ve ever read that illustrates how numbers were crunched in the days before computers. Even before rockets, designing fast airplanes (including supersonic airplanes) required heavy number crunching. This work was done by teams of people with training in mathematics who did the computing work using mechanical calculators made by Monroe, Friden, and Marchant. These people were referred to as “computers.” I don’t know for sure, but my guess is that that’s why we call computers “computers” today. They were the machines that took the place of teams of human computers. The scientists and engineers who needed the early computers made by IBM were the same people who had relied on human teams of “computers.” They simply redirected the term.

Katherine Johnson died in 2020 at the age of 101. The author of this book of course interviewed Katherine Johnson, so the book includes her memories.

The stories of people such as Katherine Johnson and Fiona Hill are immensely inspiring. But there are two sides to that coin. Both Johnson and Hill earned their way up, but there also were lucky breaks and helpers along the way. That side of the coin is inspiring. But the other side is tragic. The tragedy is the many people — poor people without privilege — who never got the education they needed, never got a lucky break, and never had helpers. Hidden Figures and Fiona Hill’s There Is Nothing for You Here are powerful arguments for why all of us should join the struggle for equality of opportunity and economic and social justice. The right, including even the church, demonize the struggle for social justice and even have made an insult out of it — “social justice warrior.” This struggle is not over. Far from it.

Local pecans!

One of my friends here in Stokes County is a horticulturist who used to work for the county’s agricultural cooperative extension service. He was here a couple of days ago for my winter solstice fire. He brought for me a couple of pounds of pecans, which were grown in a pecan orchard only a few miles north of me. The pecan orchard, I understand, is small. It sells its crop to local buyers. This is wonderful.

Historically (and my memory goes back to the 1950s), pecans in this area of North Carolina were brought in from Georgia. Pecan trees will grow here, but I think that, historically, only connoisseurs have grown pecan trees in North Carolina for their own use. I’m no expert on pecans, but I suspect that the warming climate means that pecan trees are as happy now in North Carolina as they were decades ago in Georgia. I have two three-year-old pecan trees in the abbey orchard. They are years away from producing. But, as my horticulturist friend said, pecan trees get off to a slow start as they build their root system.

Walnut trees grow wild here and are quite common. Harvesting walnuts involves a lot of work. By comparison, harvesting pecans is a piece of cake. Or should I say, a piece of pie.

Do I dare make a pecan pie from my local pecans? Pecan pie is the classic Southern American way of disposing of pecans.

Can this old machine be saved?


The eBay portrait of the machine I bought

With apologies to non-nerds, this is a nerd post.

I have written in the past about a quirk I have — empathy for mechanical things. Seeing a beautiful old machine (or any beautiful machine, for that matter) abused or falling into ruin is painful. Like abused or abandoned animals, old machines silently cry out to be rescued and given a forever home, and I hear them. There comes a time in the life of a machine when its value falls to near zero. Many go to landfills, or to crushing machines, at that point. And yet, if an old machine survives to a certain age in restorable condition, its value may start to rise. Think of “barn finds” of classic automobiles. Some barn finds, after being rescued and restored, are worth a fortune.

My particular weakness is for old machines that are complicated and that have a keyboard and a complicated set of controls. That is my favorite kind of toy. My brother, coincidentally, has the same syndrome but with a different twist. His weakness is for old machines with engines. He just bought a 1941 Aeronca airplane. My toys are far less expensive than his, though.

This Monroe 8N-213 electromechanical calculator cost me $125 on eBay (plus a hefty shipping charge). The eBay listing said that it made a noise when plugged in but that otherwise its condition was unknown. On the outside, the machine looked very good and showed no signs of abuse. It was a pretty safe assumption that the inside would be in good condition, too. The problem, though, is that even a machine that went into storage in working condition will soon stop working. All the lubricants dry out and become sticky. The moving parts all freeze up. The process of getting the machine back into working order is long and tedious. It involves cleaning up the residues of old lubricants, then using new oil and new grease to get everything moving again. Getting things moving again means exercising the machine. Not long ago I bought a Remington adding machine on eBay and got it working again, but that was a simple process compared with a machine as complicated as the Monroe 8N-213.

Part of the romance of the Monroe 8N-213 is that it was the type of machine used by Katherine Johnson, the mathematician who worked for NASA and the subject of the wonderful movie “Hidden Figures.” In “Hidden Figures,” a Friden STW10 calculator is shown on her desk as a prop. That is only partly historically accurate. It’s true that the Friden machine and the Monroe machine were contemporary and comparable. But Katherine Johnson preferred, and used, a Monroe. Restoring one of these machines, in a way, is a way to honor Katherine Johnson (and all the old NASA mathematicians and engineers). I hope her Monroe 8N-213 is in a museum somewhere, or maybe in the hands of her family, but I was unable to find out her machine’s fate. There are examples of this machine in the Smithsonian.

My Monroe machine surveyed the trip with UPS, though I was not greatly pleased at how the seller boxed it. When I plugged it in for the first time, the motor ran, but none of the keys worked. Everything was stuck — everything. After the generous application of a solvent (CRC 2-26 is my preference), it was fairly easy to get addition and subtraction working again. Multiplication and division, though, are much more complicated. That’s because, when dividing or multiplying, the machine’s carriage flies back and forth. An addition or subtraction takes only a fraction of a second. But multiplication and division may go on for quite a while. If you try to divide by zero, the machine will never stop (though the Monroe 8N-213 has a handy “stop” key for such situations).

At the moment my machine is stuck again. I made the mistake of attempting to do a division, because I had gotten the carriage moving again. I thought that doing a division might be good exercise for the carriage. But it stuck. It’s not possible to force the machine to come unstuck. That would cause damage. So I have to hope that continuing the process of de-gunking the machine will get the carriage moving again. Once I get things working (fingers crossed), I have two types of grease and two types of oil to apply to the thousands of moving parts. These machines don’t appear to wear out. Lack of use and dried-out lubrication is what disables them.

I estimate that my machine was made around 1956. Its cost then was just over a thousand dollars — about the cost of a new car at the time. Electromechanical calculators were built that were much more complicated (for example, the Mark I that IBM built for Harvard). But the Harvard machine was a one-off custom machine. As far as I know, the Monroe 8N-213 was pretty much the apex of mass-produced electromechanical calculators, just as the IBM Selectric III was the apex of typewriters (I have one, in excellent working condition). You can see a Monroe 8N-213 in operation here, on YouTube. It was computer chips and digital calculators, of course, that brought the era of mechanical calculators to an end.


I’ve removed the case to work on the machine.


Katherine Johnson at her desk at NASA. That’s a Monroe 8N-213 in front of her. It is said that, when a computer helped with orbital calculations, she would check the computer’s work with her Monroe. NASA photo.

Tit for tat


Gavin Newsome: payback as justice. Source: Wikipedia

Gavin Newsome, governor of California, deserves great credit for what may be the most inspired political tactic of the year. He slammed both right-wing Texas and the right-wing hacks on the Supreme Court in a single move. Newsome will work with the California legislature to enact a law that allows private citizens to sue gun manufacturers. The law is to be modeled on the Texas law that allows private citizens to sue abortion providers, a law which the U.S. Supreme Court so far has refused to strike down. Letitia James, the New York attorney general, has called for legislation in New York that would follow California’s lead.

Though “tit for tat” sounds petty and mean, it actually is an effective strategy in game theory. There also is the theory that it was tit for tat which, over time, led to the development of social cooperation and altruism. In tit for tat, you cooperate as long as your opponent cooperates. But if your opponent plays a dirty trick, then your next move is to strike back with an equivalent dirty trick. Both players stand to lose until cooperation resumes.

Are the right-wing hacks on the Supreme Court hackish enough to tie themselves into knots to uphold the Texas law while overruling a California law? They may well be.

For decades, the United States was governable because norms were in place that fostered cooperation and fair play. But today the Republican Party has seen that its only means of getting and keeping power is to violate those norms. Thus political tit for tat, with smart countermoves like California’s, is now necessary.

Democrats have been infuriatingly slow to play hardball with extremist Republicans. The tit for tat should have started years ago, say, 1995. That was when Newt Gingrich, Republican speaker of the House, shut down the government in an attempt to get cuts in Medicare, Medicaid, and other social programs. (Or was it because Clinton made Gingrich sit at the back of a plane?) President Clinton won that standoff. But Republicans paid Clinton back by trying to impeach him over Monica Lewinsky. Gingrich never got paid back for that.

One of the things I learned in my six years as a Democratic county chair is that, even in small-pond politics, political payback is necessary. When harmful political players play dirty, they must pay a price for it. If they don’t, the dirtiness not only will continue, it will escalate. Democrats wasted years trying to play nice with extremist Republicans. That’s part of how we got to where we are today.

There is a big difference, though, in how tit for tat is played. Nasty players will do things that are simply mean and harmful. Better players will find ways to make tit-for-tat moves that strike a blow for justice.


Newt Gingrich: a pioneer among extremist Republicans playing dirty. Source: Wikimedia Commons

Guernsey

One review described “The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society” as comfort food. I’d agree but go a step further: It’s a confection, very suitable for the holidays. If you have an annual tradition of watching “Love, Actually,” at Christmas, then you might consider taking a break from that this year and watching “Guernsey” instead.

It’s a period piece, set in 1946 just after the war (though there are flashbacks to the German occupation of Guernsey during the war). The film is worthwhile just for the Guernsey scenery. I had no idea that Guernsey is so rugged, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the island was, and remains, a kind of 25-square-mile garden, with the highest point at 364 feet (111 meters).

Like many good movies, the film is based on a book (published in 2008). The plot is well constructed, the dialogue is smart, and the cast is first rate.

“Guernsey” can be streamed on Netflix.